New Trends in User-Centered System Design and Development

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid maturation of artificial intelligence has opened unprecedented opportunities to place human needs, values, and experiences at the very core of complex software and cyber–physical systems. This Special Issue aims to capture the newest theoretical insights, methodological advances, and empirical evidence, serving to demonstrate how AI can be harnessed—rather than merely added—to create user-centered systems that are more inclusive, trustworthy, adaptive, and ethically responsible. We invite contributions that critically examine how AI shifts traditional user-centered design (UCD) paradigms, and conversely how rigorous UCD practices can steer the development of safer, fairer and more meaningful AI artifacts.

We welcome original research papers that bridge human–computer interaction, AI/ML and design.

This Special Issue will focus on (but is not limited to) the following topics:

• AI-driven user modeling and personalization that respect privacy and cultural diversity;
• Human-in-the-loop and human-AI co-creation frameworks for iterative system design;
• Explainable, interpretable and contestable AI interfaces for non-expert users;
• Adaptive user interfaces and context-aware systems powered by large language or vision models;
• Conversational, multimodal and immersive AI agents in everyday applications;
• Tools, toolkits and design patterns for integrating AI capabilities into low-code/no-code platforms;
• Accessibility and inclusive design of AI-enabled products for under-represented communities;
• Evaluation methodologies and benchmark datasets for assessing user experience of AI systems.

Dr. Silvia Imbesi
Dr. Angela Giambattista
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.