Hello/你好/雷猴/Bonjour! I am Liwenhan Xie (Shelly), an HCI researcher studying human–AI interaction, expressive technologies, and creativity support tools.

My work asks how interactive systems can better support human agency in creative practices, where exploration, ambiguity, and personal expression are central.

I am currently a research fellow in the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore. I received my Ph.D. from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and my B.Sc. from Peking University.

Latest News  
⊙ I joined the NUS 🎨 Palette Lab! My email address has been updated.
⊙ DataSway was honored with the Best Paper Award at DIS’26!
⊙ I release my LaTeX CV template. Welcome to reuse and adapt!
⊙ One paper about storytelling with collages was accepted to CHI’26.
⊙ I defended my Ph.D. dissertation! 🍰 Take a Cake!
⊙ I received 5 (out of 6) special recognition for outstanding reviews at CHI’26.
Liwenhan Xie

Projects   Overview

DataSway
DIS'26

DataSway brings metaphorical visualizations to life, translating a creator’s high-level animation intent into vivid motion that can be tweaked with low-level clips.

Website Video Demo
DataWink
VIS'25

DataWink supports creative reuse, using a VLM-powered pipeline to extract a template from a vis example and allows dynamic adaptation in low-level features.

Website Video Code
WaitGPT
UIST'24

WaitGPT translates complex LLM-generated code into a live, interactive diagram, giving data analysts the power to proactively steer the agent’s analysis.

Website Video Code
Wakey-Wakey
UIST'23

Wakey-Wakey applies the motion pattern of a sticker into kinetic typography, giving creators a powerful new path while allowing tweaking with intermediate features.

Website Talk Code
Emordle
TVCG'23

Emordle generates word clouds that express nuanced emotion, moving beyond simple categories to allow for subtle and personal refinement with dedicated parameters.

Website Talk Demo

👀  How can we express naturally?    Projects    Publications

Designing Interactive Scaffolds for Steering VLM-Powered Visualization Generation

Liwenhan Xie
Ph.D. Dissertation
About Thesis DOI Slides (.pdf) Slides (.pptx) Ack

DataSway: Vivifying Metaphoric Visualization with Animation Clip Generation and Coordination

Liwenhan Xie, Jiayi Zhou, Anyi Rao, Huamin Qu, Xinhuan Shu
DIS 2026 ACM Designing Interactive Systems in Singapore
Best Paper Award
DOI arXiv Website Video Corpus Code Slides (.pptx)

Collaposer: Transforming Photo Collections into Visual Assets for Storytelling with Collages

Jiayi Zhou, Liwenhan Xie, Jiaju Ma, Zheng Wei, Huamin Qu, Anyi Rao
CHI 2026 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Barcelona, Spain
DOI arXiv Website Video

DataWink: Reusing and Adapting SVG-based Visualization Examples with Large Multimodal Models

Liwenhan Xie, Yanna Lin, Can Liu, Huamin Qu, Xinhuan Shu
VIS 2025 IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
DOI arXiv Website Video Code Slides (.pptx)

WaitGPT: Monitoring and Steering Conversational LLM Agent in Data Analysis with On-the-Fly Code Visualization

Liwenhan Xie, Chengbo Zheng, Haijun Xia, Huamin Qu, Chen Zhu-Tian
UIST 2024 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Pittsburgh, USA
DOI arXiv Website Preview Video Code Slides (.pptx)

Creating Emordle: Animating Word Cloud for Emotion Expression

Liwenhan Xie, Xinhuan Shu, Jeon Cheol Su, Yun Wang, Siming Chen, Huamin Qu
TVCG 2024 IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
DOI arXiv Website Talk Corpus Demo Slides (.pptx)

Wakey-Wakey: Animate Text by Mimicking Characters in a GIF

Liwenhan Xie*, Zhaoyu Zhou*, Kerun Yu, Yun Wang, Huamin Qu, Siming Chen
UIST 2023 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in San Francisco, USA
DOI arXiv Website Talk Code Slides (.pptx)