ABOUT

I am a Ph.D. candidate at the College of Information, University of Maryland, College Park, where I work with my advisor Dr. Ge Gao. I defended my dissertation, Supporting Reader-Oriented News Experiences for Immigrants through Chatbot Design, in December and expect to graduate in May 2026.

RESEARCH

My research interest lies in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). I apply mixed methods to design and evaluate emerging language technologies that support immigrants in the U.S.

My dissertation work explores how immigrants interact with news, one important information source, with the assistance of an LLM-based chatbot. Through comparing their interactions with those of local residents, my study highlights critical differences between these social groups in how they leverage language technology for everyday information seeking [CHI 2025]. My most recent research examines how conversational agents can support reader-centered news experiences through co-design with immigrants and journalists. By bringing together perspectives from consumers and producers, this work identifies areas of alignment and tension in how conversational agents are valued and used. The findings offer design guidelines for developing conversational systems that better support a reader-centered news ecosystem [CHI 2026].

TEACHING & MENTORSHIP

Over the years, I have supported students in Information Science and Computer Science across courses in user-centered design, statistics, programming, and senior capstone projects. I have also mentored undergraduate and graduate students on research projects and organized career development Q&A sessions focused on UX career pathways.

If you are interested in working with me or would like to discuss UX careers, please refer to the contact section below.

UNDERGRAD

Previously, I obtained a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and a B.E. degree in Computer Science and Technology from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (电子科技大学). I was lucky to be an undergraduate research assistant supervised by Dr. Haiyi Zhu and Dr. Lana Yarosh at Grouplens Research.

NEWS

Jan 2026: Our paper “Are Conversational AI Agents the Way Out? Co-Designing Reader-Oriented News Experiences with Immigrants and Journalists” got accepted to CHI 26!

Jan 2026: Invited article published in XRDS: Crossroads, introducing recent work from our lab on designing language technologies for immigrants.

Sep 2025: Our paper on understanding lay users’ trust on machine translation is accepted to EMNLP 25!

Sep 2025: Presented our poster with Yimin Xiao and Dayeon Ki to share our recent project collaborating with Language Science Station.

March 2025: Awarded the prestigious Wylie Dissertation Fellowship from UMD’s Graduate School!

Feb 2025: Our paper “The News Says, the Bot Says: How Immigrants and Locals Differ in Chatbot-Facilitated News Reading” got accepted to CHI 2025.

Jun 2024: Started my UX research intern at eBay in San Jose, CA!

GET IN TOUCH

Email: yongle[at]umd[dot]edu
Check my LinkedIn and Google Scholar page below:

• LinkedIn
• Google