About

Sarah Gimbert Sterman is an Assistant Professor at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on interactive computing, with recent courses taught including Interactive Computing (CS 591 IC) and research methods in human-computer interaction. She has received recognition for her work, including the Google Academic Research Award for a project aimed at making education equitable, accessible, and effective using AI, specifically through teaching debugging skills in the context of large language models and version control for process as a material to think with. Her research process, interaction, and creativity are central to her academic contributions, and she is actively involved in advancing education and research in computing and data science.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Human–computer interaction
• World Wide Web
• Engineering
• Data science
• Multimedia
• Natural Language Processing
• Systems engineering
• Literature
• Software engineering
• Art
• Psychology
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• From Crafting Text to Crafting Thought: Grounding AI Writing Support to Writing Center Pedagogy

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-02-03

  articleOpen access

  As AI writing tools evolve from fixing surface errors to creating language with writers, new capabilities raise concerns about negative impacts on student writers, such as replacing their voices and undermining critical thinking skills. To address these challenges, we look at a parallel transition in university writing centers from focusing on fixing errors to preserving student voices. We develop design guidelines informed by writing center literature and interviews with 10 writing tutors. We illustrate these guidelines in a prototype AI tool, Writor. Writor helps writers revise text by setting goals, providing balanced feedback, and engaging in conversations without generating text verbatim. We conducted an expert review with 30 writing instructors, tutors, and AI researchers on Writor to assess the pedagogical soundness, alignment with writing center pedagogy, and integration contexts. We distill our findings into design implications for future AI writing feedback systems, including designing for trust among AI-skeptical educators.

  PublisherOA PDF

• From Crafting Text to Crafting Thought: Grounding AI Writing Support to Writing Center Pedagogy

  2026-04-13 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  As AI writing tools evolve from fixing surface errors to creating language with writers, new capabilities raise concerns about negative impacts on student writers, such as replacing their voices and undermining critical thinking skills. To address these challenges, we look at a parallel transition in university writing centers from focusing on fixing errors to preserving student voices. We develop design guidelines informed by writing center literature and interviews with 10 writing tutors. We illustrate these guidelines in a prototype AI tool, Writor. Writor helps writers revise text by setting goals, providing balanced feedback, and engaging in conversations without generating text verbatim. We conducted an expert review with 30 writing instructors, tutors, and AI researchers on Writor to assess the pedagogical soundness, alignment with writing center pedagogy, and integration contexts. We distill our findings into design implications for future AI writing feedback systems, including designing for trust among AI-skeptical educators.

  PublisherDOI

• From Crafting Text to Crafting Thought: Grounding AI Writing Support to Writing Center Pedagogy

  Open MIND · 2026-02-03

  preprint

  As AI writing tools evolve from fixing surface errors to creating language with writers, new capabilities raise concerns about negative impacts on student writers, such as replacing their voices and undermining critical thinking skills. To address these challenges, we look at a parallel transition in university writing centers from focusing on fixing errors to preserving student voices. We develop design guidelines informed by writing center literature and interviews with 10 writing tutors. We illustrate these guidelines in a prototype AI tool, Writor. Writor helps writers revise text by setting goals, providing balanced feedback, and engaging in conversations without generating text verbatim. We conducted an expert review with 30 writing instructors, tutors, and AI researchers on Writor to assess the pedagogical soundness, alignment with writing center pedagogy, and integration contexts. We distill our findings into design implications for future AI writing feedback systems, including designing for trust among AI-skeptical educators.

  DOI

• The First Reflection in Creative Experience (RiCE) Workshop

  University of the Arts London Research Online (University of the Arts London) · 2026-07-13

  otherOpen access

  Reflection and metacognition are central to the creative user experience. However, most HCI research on reflection focuses on clear, task-oriented goals such as to reflect on personal data or pedagogical outcomes. This contrasts with the open-ended and challenging to articulate goals of creative user experiences. For the first time, this workshop brings together interdisciplinary researchers, designers, educators, and artists across HCI, Cognitive Science, Design, AI, Learning Sciences, and Digital Art to examine reflection in creative interaction. The workshop will discuss themes, drawn from earlier discussions with HCI researchers and artists, on: how best to capture reflection in creative contexts, how to leverage the arts to support reflection for ethical change, and how to design creative AI that enhances – not hinders – critical thinking. By bringing interdisciplinary perspectives on reflection into discussion, the workshop will develop a guiding taxonomy for reflection in creative interaction to inform future creative practice and tool development.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Crafting a Personal Journaling Practice: Negotiating Ecosystems of Materials, Personal Context, and Community in Analog Journaling

  2025-06-22 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Analog journaling has grown in popularity, with journaling on paper encompassing a range of motivations, styles, and practices including planning, habit-tracking, and reflecting.Journalers develop strong personal preferences around the tools they use, the ideas they capture, and the layout in which they represent their ideas and memories.Understanding how analog journaling practices are individually shaped and crafted over time is critical to supporting the varied benefits associated with journaling, including improved mental health and positive support for identity development.To understand this development, we qualitatively analyzed publicly-shared journaling content from YouTube and Instagram and interviewed 11 journalers.We report on our identification of the journaling ecosystem in which journaling practices are shaped by materials, personal context, and communities, sharing how this ecosystem plays a role in the practices and identities of journalers as they customize their journaling routine to best suit their personal goals.Using these insights, we discuss design opportunities for how future tools can better align with and reflect the rich affordances and practices of journaling on paper.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sketching Snapshots: Reflecting on Human–Computer Interaction Education through Sketching

  ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · 2025-10-17

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Reflection provides students and instructors insight into mindsets, learning progress, and course design. However, most reflective activities in HCI courses focus on specific skills and content. We propose sketching as a flexible and expressive medium for reflecting on larger topics to reveal implicit perspectives about multifaceted concepts of HCI. We developed “Sketching Snapshots,” an activity to elicit student perspectives on high-level concepts. To evaluate this activity, we ran pre- and post-semester workshops in two HCI courses in the US and UK. We analyze 68 sketches from 41 students, 9 student interviews, and 2 instructor interviews and find that sketching is effective for supporting student and instructor reflection. We then report case studies in two additional contexts and synthesize recommendations for deploying reflective sketching. We propose incorporating Sketching Snapshots in courses can facilitate reflection on complex concepts, improve teaching, and spark conversations about what HCI means to us and our students.

  PublisherDOI

• Speculative Design in Spiraling Time: Methods and Indigenous HCI

  ArXiv.org · 2025-06-11 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  In this position paper, we first discuss the uptake of speculative design as a method for Indigenous HCI. Then, we outline how a key assumption about temporality threatens to undermine the usefulness of speculative design in this context. Finally, we briefly sketch out a possible alternative understanding of speculative design, based on the concept of "spiraling time," which could be better suited for Indigenous HCI.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Crafting a Personal Journaling Practice: Negotiating Ecosystems of Materials, Personal Context, and Community in Analog Journaling

  ArXiv.org · 2025-04-28

  preprintOpen access

  Analog journaling has grown in popularity, with journaling on paper encompassing a range of motivations, styles, and practices including planning, habit-tracking, and reflecting. Journalers develop strong personal preferences around the tools they use, the ideas they capture, and the layout in which they represent their ideas and memories. Understanding how analog journaling practices are individually shaped and crafted over time is critical to supporting the varied benefits associated with journaling, including improved mental health and positive support for identity development. To understand this development, we qualitatively analyzed publicly-shared journaling content from YouTube and Instagram and interviewed 11 journalers. We report on our identification of the journaling ecosystem in which journaling practices are shaped by materials, personal context, and communities, sharing how this ecosystem plays a role in the practices and identities of journalers as they customize their journaling routine to best suit their personal goals. Using these insights, we discuss design opportunities for how future tools can better align with and reflect the rich affordances and practices of journaling on paper.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Thoughtful, Confused, or Untrustworthy: How Text Presentation Influences Perceptions of AI Writing Tools

  2025-06-22 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Figure 1: Text presentation style is a key design element of AI writing tools.This paper explores the possible impacts of five text presentation speeds (i.e.streaming speeds) on the perceptions of tools and outputs.See Table 1 for a more precise example of each speed.Figure text adapted from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll).Clip art figures were generated using DALLE.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Front Matter

  2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  paratextOpen access

  Vishakh Padmakumar, Katy Gero, Thiemo Wambsganss, Sarah Sterman, Ting-Hao Huang, David Zhou, John Chung. Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants (In2Writing 2025). 2025.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Joy Kim

  Oregon Health & Science University

  13 shared

• Michael S. Bernstein

  13 shared

• Eric Paulos

  University of California, Berkeley

  7 shared

• Allegra A. Beal Cohen

  7 shared

• Molly Jane Nicholas

  University of California, Berkeley

  5 shared

• David Zhou

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  3 shared

• Vipul Raheja

  2 shared

• Disha Shrivastava

  2 shared

Labs

• Process, Interaction, and Creativity Lab (PICL)PI

Education

• Ph.D., Computer Science

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2009

• M.S., Computer Science

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2005

• B.S., Computer Science

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2003

Awards & honors

• Google Academic Research Award for 'Making education equitab…
• Best Paper Award at Reflective Documentation Tool (2024)