2026-09-24 –, Hewitt Boardroom (Capacity 35)
As consumer BCI devices move from research labs into everyday products, designers face a new and largely unexplored challenge: what happens to a user's sense of control when an interface changes based on their brain signals, without them asking it to? This talk introduces a working research paper examining user agency and perceived control in passively adaptive BCI systems. Drawing on a Wizard-of-Oz study design and mixed-methods methodology, the research identifies four experiential themes, surveillance discomfort, misattribution of cause, adaptive trust collapse, and emergent co-agency, and proposes a preliminary neural transparency design framework with four actionable principles for designers building BCI-integrated interfaces. The talk aims to open a conversation about what responsible, legible design looks like when the system reads your mind.
Yuti Vora is a product designer and independent researcher working at the intersection of design, AI, and human-centered technology. She holds a Bachelor's in Visual Communication and a Master's of Science in Experience Design with a focus on Human-Centered Technology Design.
Her relationship with design began at age five, with crayons, pencils, and paint, long before she had a name for it. That early curiosity about how things look eventually deepened into a curiosity about how things feel, and why people need what they need. It is a question she has been chasing ever since.
Having worked across multiple domains throughout her career, Yuti brings a rare cross-disciplinary perspective to her work, one shaped by the conviction that understanding all viewpoints is not optional, it is the work. She believes the learning curve never truly ends, and that this is precisely what makes design worth doing.
Her current research explores what happens to human agency and perceived control when AI-driven interfaces begin to read cognitive state through brain signals. This question sits at the frontier of HCI, neurotechnology, and ethical design. This work reflects a broader commitment to ensuring that as technology grows more intimate, it remains legible, trustworthy, and human.