About Me

Inha Cha is a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech working with Dr. Richmond Y. Wong. She works at the intersection of Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), Science and Technology Studies (STS), and Tech Policy.

She critically examines the lifecycle of AI systems, focusing on how innovation-driven narratives frame AI progress as inevitable and obscure the costs, trade-offs, and uncertainties of adoption. Using qualitative, interpretive, and design methods, she empirically explores how organizations and nation-states mobilize AI as a strategic priority, and how these ambitions influence decisions around adoption, refusal, and deliberation in practice. Her work focuses on:

• when, why, and how AI is adopted, refused, or deliberated within organizational settings.
• how national strategic priorities are constructed and justified through discourses of “AI sovereignty.”

By tracing the social, organizational, and political conditions that shape AI adoption, she identifies opportunities to foster more deliberate and responsible approaches to AI within complex institutional environments.

Before joining Georgia Tech, she worked as an AI product UX designer at Upstage. She completed her master’s degree in the Department of Industrial Design at KAIST, advised by Dr. Youn-kyung Lim, and earned her undergraduate degree in Aesthetics and Information Science and Culture at Seoul National University.

Publications

Please see my Google Scholar page for the most up-to-date publications.

The Values of Value in AI Adoption: Rethinking Efficiency in UX Designers' Workplaces
Inha Cha, Catherine Wieczorek, and Richmond Y. Wong
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing System 2026 (CHI 2026)
To Appear

Beyond Claiming Sovereign AI: Motivations, Challenges, and Contradictions in Developing and Deploying Local Foundation Models in South Korea
Inha Cha and Richmond Y. Wong
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing System 2026 (CHI 2026)
To Appear

“My Body is Not Your Porn”: Identifying Trends of Harm and Oppression through a Sociotechnical Genealogy of Digital Sexual Violence in South Korea
Inha Cha*, Yeonju Jang*, Haesoo Kim*, Seora Park*, Joo Young Park*, and EunJeong Cheon
ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing 2026 (CSCW 2026)
To Appear

Culture is Everywhere: A Call for Intentionally Cultural Evaluation
Juhyun Oh, Inha Cha, Michael Saxon, Hyunseung Lim, Shaily Bhatt, Alice Oh
Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing 2025 (EMNLP 2025 Findings)
pdf

Discovering Factor Level Preferences to Improve Human-Model Alignment
Juhyun Oh, Eunsu Kim, Jiseon Kim, Wenda Xu, Inha Cha, William Yang Wang, Alice Oh
Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing 2025 (EMNLP 2025 Findings)
pdf

Understanding Socio-technical Factors Configuring AI Non-Use in UX Work Practices
Inha Cha and Richmond Wong
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing System 2025 (CHI 2025)
pdf

Ethics Pathways: A Design Activity for Reflecting on Ethical Engagement in HCI Research
Inha Cha*, Ajit Pillai*, Richmond Wong
ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems 2024 (DIS 2024)
pdf | resource

Investigating the Potential of Group Recommendation Systems As a Medium of Social Interactions: A Case of Experiences Between Two Users
Daehyun Kwak, Soobin Park, Inha Cha, Hankyung Kim, Youn-kyung Lim
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2024 (CHI 2024)
pdf

Unlocking the Tacit Knowledge of Data Work in Machine Learning
Inha Cha*, Juhyun Oh*, Cheul Young Park*, Jiyoon Han, Hwalsuk Lee
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2023 (CHI LBW 2023)
pdf

Exploring the Use of a Voice-based Conversational Agent to Empower Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Inha Cha, Sung-In Kim, Hwajung Hong, Heejeong Yoo, Youn-kyung Lim
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2021 (CHI 2021)
pdf

Toward Becoming a Better Self: Understanding Self-Tracking Experiences of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Custom Trackers
Sung-In Kim, Eunkyung Jo, Myeonghan Ryu, Inha Cha, Young-Ho Kim, Heejung Yoo, Hwajung Hong
EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare 2019 (Pervasive Health 2019)
pdf

A Study for Specializing a Chatbot-based Self-Management Program for Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Sung-In Kim, Myeonghan Ryu, Eunkyung Jo, Inha Cha, Young-Ho Kim, Heejung Yoo, Hwajung Hong
Proceedings of HCI KOREA 2019 (HCI Korea 2019)
pdf

Service