Throughout his career, professor James Fogarty, who joined the Allen School faculty in 2006, has grown to become a central figure in Seattle’s human-computer interaction (HCI) community and beyond. His research has made key contributions in sensor-based interactions, interactive machine learning, personal health informatics and accessibility, publishing over 100 peer-reviewed papers. At the same time, he has played a pivotal role in founding and growing Design, Use, Build (DUB) — University of Washington’s cross-campus HCI alliance bringing together faculty, students, researchers and industry partners.
The ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) recognized Fogarty’s contributions and inducted him into the SIGCHI Academy Class of 2025. Each class represents the principal leaders of the field, whose research has helped shape how we think of HCI.
“I am honored to be among the SIGCHI Academy Class of 2025,” Fogarty said. “I’m grateful for the amazing students and collaborators that I’ve had the pleasure to work with over the years, advancing HCI, interactive machine learning, personal health informatics and accessibility research.”
Since the beginning of his career, Fogarty has made breakthroughs in HCI research. As a first-generation student, he was introduced to HCI research at Virginia Tech and was part of the first cohort of Ph.D. students in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Key research from his dissertation, which focused on using sensor-based interactions to predict the best time to interrupt someone, received a 2005 CHI Best Paper Award.
Upon joining the UW, Fogarty launched a new research emphasis in interaction with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Fogarty’s research into new methods for engaging end-users in machine learning training and assessment and understanding difficulties that machine learning developers encounter was considered ahead of its time. The researchers contributed to what is now known as human-AI interaction before it became a trending topic, and this line of research went on to directly impact industry guidelines for the field.
In the same period, Fogarty and his collaborators developed Prefab, a system for real-time interpretation and enhancement of graphical interfaces through reverse engineering their pixel-level appearance. Prefab, which earned a 2010 CHI Best Paper Award, was a breakthrough in interface systems research, foreshadowing current work using AI to understand, interact with and enhance graphical interfaces.
Fogarty then turned his research interests toward digital health, including tools to support people in self-tracking and making sense of health data. He and his collaborators provided new insights into the design of tools to support menstrual tracking, informing the design of Apple’s menstrual cycle tracking support. The research received a 2017 CHI Best Paper Award and helped expand the field’s conception of personal informatics to account for the role of design in experiences people have with their tools. Fogarty also researched the design of mobile food journals and activity-tracking visualizations as well as tools to help patients collaborate with their health providers to interpret and act on self-tracked data. More recently, Fogarty and his collaborators developed a new goal-directed approach to long-term migraine tracking, which earned them a 2024 CHI Best Paper Award, and a new tool for home-based self-monitoring of cognitive impairment in patients with liver disease, recognized with a 2025 CHI Best Paper Award.
Outside of health tracking, Fogarty has also made important strides in accessibility research. He and his team drew inspiration from epidemiology to conduct the first large-scale assessment of accessibility in 10,000 Android apps. The Department of Justice cited the work as part of its updates to the Americans with Disabilities Act. He also extended his work on interface understanding and enhancement to demonstrate real-time repair of mobile app accessibility failures. This research helped directly motivate and inform Apple’s launch of accessibility repair in its pixel-based Screen Recognition.
“James has made an exemplary impact across research disciplines and industry,” Allen School professor Jeffrey Heer said. “His research prowess, volunteer spirit, deep care, thoughtfulness and community-mindedness have helped guide DUB and advance the HCI community in Seattle and across the globe.”
Fogarty is one of five UW faculty being recognized with ACM SIGCHI Awards this year. Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) professor and Allen School adjunct faculty member Kate Starbird joins Fogarty as part of the CHI Academy Class of 2025, and her work sits at the intersection of HCI and computer-supported cooperative work.
Information School professor and Allen School adjunct faculty member Alexis Hiniker also won an ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact Award for her research into ways that consumer-facing technologies can hurt young people instead of helping them thrive. Nadya Peek and Cecilia Aragon, both HCDE professors and Allen School adjunct faculty members, were honored with ACM SIGCHI Special Recognitions. Peek was recognized for “democratizing automation through open-source hardware, building global maker communities and bridging academic research with grassroots fabrication practices,” and Aragon “for establishing human-centered data science as a new field bridging HCI and data science, demonstrating its impact through applications from astrophysics to energy systems.”
Read more about the 2025 ACM SIGCHI Awards, and see more about DUB and the UW presence at CHI 2025.