This book is the product of collective wisdom, and I am deeply grateful to the many people whose generosity and expertise made it possible.
I’m especially grateful to Felicia Tan. In the early going we met each week to go over the chapters; I supplied rough notes and she helped shape many of them into coherent text, and kept the manuscript on track. Her help was essential.
Sonne Chen Yang brought scholarly rigor and visual clarity to the project. She compiled the references and redrew every figure and diagram, ensuring both accuracy and elegance.
Carmen Li, my personal assistant, took chapters born as plain-text Markdown and shepherded them through the intricate production process that produced this e-book.
The students of the Synteraction Lab enriched the book in countless ways. Nuwan and Ashwin contributed a lot to the chapter “How to Conduct Your First Research Project in HCI”; Felicia Tan then refined it into its final form. The research methods and examples scattered throughout these pages are the fruits of our collaborative lab life.
Graduate students in my courses at the National University of Singapore (Advanced Topics in HCI) and at the City University of Hong Kong (Topics in Interactive Systems) field-tested early drafts and returned invaluable suggestions.
Participants in the Chiang Mai summer training camps read each chapter with sharp eyes and generous spirits; their feedback helped to correct typos and improve the overall quality of the book.
Portions of the manuscript first appeared on the Synteraction Lab WeChat public account; I thank Huining for her graceful Chinese translations of those early versions.
To every person named here—and to the many whose contributions are woven invisibly into the text—thank you for turning isolated ideas into a shared resource for the HCI community.
Shengdong Zhao
Jan 8, 2026
Bistro Lodge, City University of Hong Kong