“Knowledge without action is wastefulness while action without knowledge is foolishness” – Al-Ghazali
Research Fellow | Communication Strategic Coordinator
Dr. Mohamad Hidir Mhd Salim
Dr. Mohamad Hidir is a research fellow at the Institute of Visual Informatics (formerly known as the Institute of IR4.0), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He is appointed as the communication strategy coordinator to enhance the institute's visibility. He is passionate about UI/UX, behavior change, persuasive technology, privacy & ethics, and has presented his work at international conferences and seminars. He earned his doctorate under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nazlena Mohamad Ali. He is also involved in developing innovative products through research grants. His most recent projects include designing a mobile application for elderly diet management and persuasive learning tools to assist researchers with statistical difficulties. Besides conducting research, he has been appointed as a fellow advisor for several national-level programs. One of the high-impact programs he supervised was the Malaysia Wind Orchestra Competition. He also actively participates in national and international volunteer initiatives. He is the president of the Developing United Malaysian Association, a non-governmental organization that aims to inspire youth to be educated and responsible citizens. During his leisure time, he enjoys reading books, creating graphic designs, and listening to music, but his music taste can be quite unconventional, varying with his mood.
Professional Membership
Research Direction
His expertise is grounded in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) as the core discipline, which informs how humans interact with digital systems.
Within HCI, his work is organised into four tightly connected research areas:
Behaviour Change
He studies how digital systems can support behaviour change by influencing factors such as motivation, engagement, and related psychological mechanisms.Persuasive Technology
He focuses on how persuasive strategies are implemented through technologies such as web-based systems, mobile applications, and immersive environments (AR/VR/XR) to support intended behavioural outcomes.UI/UX
He examines how usability, interaction design, and visual design shape user experience and determine whether persuasive and behaviour-change mechanisms are effective in practice.Privacy & Ethics
He addresses the philosophical, ethical, and regulatory dimensions of interactive systems, ensuring that persuasion and behavioural influence are designed responsibly.
These four pillars are applied across multiple domains, including:
Education (e.g. STEM education, learning technologies),
Health (e.g. active lifestyle, healthy ageing, diet),
Digital Religion (e.g. adab-based design, spiritual encouragement),
and other emerging application areas.
In short, he does not study domains in isolation. He develops and apply HCI-driven, ethically grounded persuasive and behaviour-change design principles across different real-world contexts.