Hi there, I'm Sejal!
Welcome to my little corner of the internet! Here you'll find a collection of my software engineering work, HCI research, and various things I've been tinkering away at. I also write about what I'm learning, exploring, and thinking about when building human-centered technology.
Building things, asking questions. Always making, always learning. Designing for humans. Make it, break it, learn from it.
chapter one
I'm a Computer Science Master's student at the University of Waterloo, where I conduct research at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, artificial intelligence, and education. Before that, I studied Software Engineering at the University of Victoria. Through my studies and internships, I've become passionate about creating pixel-perfect designs that feel intuitive, thoughtful, and fun to use.
I like moving between design, code, and the questions that make a project worth building. This notebook is where I collect the work, HCI research, and little experiments I make along the way.
chapter two
Research Intern, Agentic Canvas Interactions
Designing and building interactive canvas prototypes that explore direct-manipulation interfaces for real-time agentic workflows, in close collaboration with research, design, and engineering.
Software Engineer Intern
Shipped A/B-tested UI/UX experiments across key customer workflows that increased new-buyer sign-ups by 25%, guided by experimentation telemetry and close work with product and data teams.
Software Engineer Co-op
Migrated 40% of a large web codebase (about 60,000 lines) from JavaScript to TypeScript and built a live-feed image carousel that cut streaming costs by 20%.
Software Engineer Intern
Refactored about 20% of an Angular application, shipping 5 new user-facing features and expanding Jest test coverage to make the platform more stable and maintainable.
Full-Stack Developer Co-op
Led a platform-wide user migration for the GALE telehealth platform, consolidating 7 permission roles into 4, and integrated Bluetooth medical devices to stream live patient health metrics.
Junior Technical Analyst
Researched and tested Atlassian Server-to-Cloud migration journeys, partnering across engineering, consulting, and marketing to turn the findings into technical blog posts.
chapter three
Graphics Interface 2026 · first-author paper
We tested whether answering guided questions helps people write better first prompts for building UIs with GenAI. It led to fewer revisions and more deliberate planning, and most participants preferred it.
A 2×2 within-subjects study with 8 participants comparing scrollytelling with free exploration for understanding data stories. Accuracy was the same either way, but preferences split: scrollytelling for learning and context, free exploration for control and quick lookup.
We tested PrefillOnly-style optimizations, hybrid prefilling and JCT-aware scheduling, for prefill–decode disaggregation in vLLM. They lost to the baseline at every load, with 0.34–0.75× the throughput, clashing with vLLM's memory, scheduling and compilation assumptions.
chapter four
A journal for learning UX law! Includes a gallery of 30 laws with a progress bar, a notes page and small interactive examples for each law.
A RAG-powered study workspace and instructor dashboard built with Next.js, PostgreSQL, and REST APIs, featuring role-based experiences, anonymized usage analytics, and automated weekly summaries.
A full-stack community marketplace for UVic students, designed and shipped by a 14-person engineering team that I led as technical project lead.
chapter five
1 min read
Learning the laws of UX
2 min read
Welcome to my first blog
chapter six
Hi there,
Whether you want to talk research, swap ideas, or just say hi, my inbox is always open. Would love to connect with you!
Talk soon, Sejal