Sean Rintel

Senior Principal Research Manager

A blue gradient background with subtle diagonal lines and a curved dark accent in the top right corner. Centered in bold white text with a soft shadow is the word “Promptions,” enclosed within a rounded white border. The design is clean and modern, suggesting a digital or creative theme.

Promptions on AI Foundry Labs

Promptions dynamically generates UI to help users steer AI responses more effectively. It’s simple, effective, and easily customizable, making it suitable for developers from individual vibe-coders to enterprise…

Tools for Thought: Better Thinking with AI

Much AI research focuses on solving specific tasks for people – generating content or automating processes. While such systems may be powerful, there are risks that this approach…

A hybrid workspace throughout with both onsite and virtual people at and around a long table

AI and Intentional Meetings

We aim to help organizations develop a goal-oriented meeting lifecycle that leverages Generative AI to construct dynamic goal-driven interfaces that adapt to organizational and team tasks and contexts.…

Four-panel collage showing mixed reality and virtual interaction: - Person wearing headset, gesturing with hands toward virtual objects. - Second person with headset, interacting with virtual interface. - Two virtual avatars, one in purple, one in green, appearing to converse. - Three avatars in a virtual room with tables, suggesting collaboration

Avatars in mixed-reality meetings

We conducted a within-subjects study to examine how realistic faces and cartoon faces on avatars affect communication, task satisfaction, sense of presence, and mood perception in mixed reality…

About

Research

I am a social scientist of human-computer interaction, exploring distributed team collaboration and AI workflows at Microsoft Research. I work in Brisbane, Australia, reporting to the Cambridge UK Lab.

I currently co-lead the Tools for Thought team, which aims to put human cognition at the heart of our AI systems. I also lead the Intentional Meetings workstream, which investigates how to evolve purposful meeting systems, behaviors, and cultures with Generative AI.

Approach

My training is in qualitative sociology (Ethnomethodology, to be precise), drawing on video-recorded conversations and ethnographic data, and analysing that data using qualitative methods such as conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis.

I specialize in field research but also conduct interview, diary, and survey studies, as well as lab-based studies of prototypes. Increasingly, however, I combine qualitative with quantitative approaches, such as surveys and telemetry, to answer questions at scale.

Hackathons

I have been a member of a global Grand Prize winning project, five global category First Place projects, and one global category Second Place project in the annual Microsoft Hackathon.

One of these Hackathon projects is on the Garage Wall of Fame: Mobile Sharing and Companion Experiences for Microsoft Teams Meetings. This was the first prize winning project that I was on, and it became a feature in Microsoft Teams.

One day I might even be able to say what the other ones were! 😉

Academic

I received my PhD in 2010 in the field of Sociology specializing in Communication, from the University at Albany, State University of New York (opens in new tab). My dissertation was chaired by Professor Emerita Anita Pomerantz with committee members Professor Teresa Harrison, Professor Glenna Spitze, and Professor Ronald Jacobs.

Prior to working at Microsoft, I was a Lecturer in Strategic Communication at The University of Queensland (opens in new tab), Brisbane, Australia.

I have been a PC member of CHI and CSCW many times and I review for many major HCI, communication, and technology journals and conferences.