From an idea in one room to a field, a specialisation, and a centre.
CHISEL is the human-computer interaction & design lab at LUMS, working on inclusion, wellbeing and learning. This is how it started, what it set out to do, and where it went.
A first of its kind
CHISEL began in late 2015 as the first human-computer interaction lab in Pakistan — and, so far as we can tell, the country's first design research lab of any kind. There was no local community to join, no established venue to publish in, and no course to recruit from. There was a conviction that the way technology gets designed here needed to change.
The lab, and the course
The lab was fully established in 2016 when Dr. Suleman Shahid joined LUMS full time. Human-Computer Interaction was introduced as a regular course in the same period, and the two grew together: the course brought students in, the lab gave them somewhere to take the work further.
From coursework to top venues
A series of student projects were extended, studied properly and written up — several reaching the field's leading venues. What started as coursework became a body of published research, and what started as one lab became a movement. HCI is now a full-fledged field at LUMS.
Carry HCI forward on both legs — the research and the practice.
The vision has not changed since 2015. Human-computer interaction only takes root in a place if both halves of it grow together: rigorous research that stands up at international venues, and applied UX practice that shows people what the research is for. One without the other stalls.
Our mission follows from that — to help students and the wider community arrive at a working understanding of human-centered design, not as vocabulary but as a way of deciding what to build. That means teaching it, publishing it, practising it in public, and building the venues where it can be discussed.
Research
Empirical HCI work with the communities it concerns — studied in homes, schools and clinics, and published where the field will read it.
Build
Working systems, not concepts. If a study points to something worth making, we make it and put it in front of real users.
Teach
Courses across computer science, business, humanities and education, so design thinking reaches students who will never take a CS degree.
Partner
Projects with government bodies, NGOs and industry on local challenges — designed to be handed over and run without us.
Three directions the lab took
Designing technology for disabilities
The lab's clearest pivot was towards disability — assistive and therapeutic technology built with neurodivergent children, families, therapists and special schools. That work eventually outgrew the lab and became its own centre.
Taking UX out of the seminar room
A second direction was the applied side of HCI: not only courses, but projects with real depth of UX work behind them. The lab founded UXPakistan, the country's first and longest-running UX conference, with the department's wholehearted support.
Human-centered digital pathways to mental wellbeing
Most recently, mental health. CHISEL:ReMIND brings this work under one programme: digital screening that identifies conditions earlier, rehabilitation tools that sustain therapy between sessions, and support designed for settings where formal care is distant or stigmatised.
Research that went to work
The lab has run a long line of projects with government bodies, NGOs and industry — deployed, not proposed.
See the impact page →Women Safety App
A reporting and response tool built with the Punjab Safe Cities Authority, designed to an existing response chain rather than around it.
OpenData Pakistan
A national portal with the Planning Commission, HEC and NCBC, making public datasets findable and legible to people who are not data scientists.
Humqadam
An app addressing gender-based violence in remote communities, built with Shirkat Gah for a context where phones are shared and seeking help carries risk.
A decade in, still recruiting
The lab still works the way it did in 2016 — a course, a project, and someone who wants to take it further.