The following research group descriptions are archived because they are no longer offered, the faculty member is on sabbatical, or the group is taking a break. Please contact the faculty member or an advisor to learn more about these groups.

• Decolonizing Mental Health and Beyond: Building mental wellness with community assets
• Everyday Sensor Sharing: Reimagine location sharing / Speculating about the future of digital technology
• Mapping Collective Visions for Tech Workers in the aftermath of the 2022-2023 Tech Layoffs
• Landscape analysis of human centered design methods for improved nutrition outcomes
• Speculative Engagements with Post-mortem Digital Legacies
• Understanding experiences from people who have gained insights from tracking, that suggest taking action
• Understanding how Older Adults and their Support Network use Always-On IoT Devices
• Analyzing the Preferred Futures of Sports Technology
• Designing for an Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) tool to support adolescent depression treatment
• Speculating the Future of Sports Technology 
• Discursive Design Inquiry with Home Cameras
• SwitchTube: Testing a Mobile App for Self-Control on YouTube
• Redesigning YouTube to Remove Dark Patterns (Spring 2020)
• Redesigning YouTube to Remove Dark Patterns  (Winter 2020)
• Designing to Support Clients and Therapists in Engaging with Therapeutic Activities
• PhoneBalance: Prototyping a Website and Diary to Help People Address Their Concerns with Smartphone Use
• Identifying Dark Patterns on YouTube and Twitter
• Implementing Mental Health Strategies in Everyday Life
• A Design Space for Mindfulness Technologies
• Technology Design for Goal-Directed Migraine Tracking 
• A design space for mindfulness technologies
• Everyday personal tracking: an exploration through practice
• Implementing mental health strategies in everyday life
• How Do People Architect their Environment to Manage (Addictive) Smartphone Use?
• Design and Development for Crowdsourcing Physical Activity Advice
• Managing a field study of an app for telling stories with personal data
• Exploring the Use of Wearables in College Athletics
• Technology Design & Development for Healthier Eating
• Youth Mental Health: a Family-Oriented Approach
• Epiphany moments: Understanding catalysts for health behavior change
• Supporting Designers of Behavior Change Technologies
• Crowd and Friend-sourced Support for Behavior Change
• Patient-Provider Sharing of Consumer Lifelogs
• Wins and false starts: Why and how do people stop self-tracking?
• Technology Support for Health & Wellness
• Designing and Evaluating Tools for Presenting Diversity Online
• The Internet and the 2012 Election
• Social Applications to Support Health & Wellness

Winter 2024

Decolonizing Mental Health and Beyond: Building mental wellness with community assets

This DRG aims to explore and discover concepts of community mental health and wellness engagement, tools, and artifacts that center the needs of members of the [HCDE? DUB? University?- to be shaped by who joins] community, include those who may not be familiar with mental health services, who could benefit from support and resources for their mental health and wellness.  Through a decolonial lens, we will examine what could exist independently and interact with traditional healthcare models and technologies. 

We will engage in the Discover and Design aspects of the Discover, Design/Build and Test (DDBT) model by Lyon, Munson et al,  and using Pendse’s From Treatment to Healing: Envisioning a Decolonial Digital Mental Health as a guide for our work. 

We will do this work while focusing on the UW Student community- understanding what gaps exist and explore the design space for creating mental health engagement on our own campus and within our departments.  

Outcome

We will host a short informal mental health & wellness showcase conversation, where we share our learnings and low-fidelity (simple mockups) of our ideas.

Planned activities

• Ground setting: Collecting, Reading and sharing relevant literature across disciplines 
• Refinement of Interview questions and guides
• Qualitative (open-ended questions) Interview & Analysis Training
• Qualitative interviews with your peers

Required availability

• This DRG is designed as a 2-credit 
  • 2 hours in person discussions
  • 4 hours of independent reading, research and/or interviews
    • If you have extenuating circumstances and you would like to register for a different amount of credits- please share the details in the google form
• Attend one two-hour discussion/ideation session each week 
  • Schedule TBD
  • Preferably in person- but some hybrid options circumstantially 
• Work 4 hours outside of class each week engaging in materials or collecting data 
• Available to recruit your peers to participate in qualitative interviews.

Skills 

• Growth Mindset
• Communicative & authentic
• Curious, excited about following non-traditional learning paths
• Passionate about supporting mental health in a campus community, with a focus on support for people who have historically been marginalized

This DRG will be led by PhD student Nichole Sams with guidance from HCDE Professor Sean Munson. 

Winter 2024

Everyday Sensor Sharing: Reimagine location sharing / Speculating about the future of digital technology

The widespread use of smartphones, location trackers, and GPS-based apps has led to the generation of highly precise geographic location data. While this leads to benefits for users and the companies, it also raises ethical questions. For example, misuse can evolve into severe power abuse and surveillance struggles in current and future everyday life. Thus, it affects interpersonal tensions, social dynamics, and relationships. Yet, little design research has explored how location data is being used as a material for design and can be used for design of social and collaborative systems.

Therefore, this DRG aims to foster a craft-based design research process. By engaging in different design activities we will explore different avenues and perspectives of how location sharing could be integrated into people’s everyday lives. The outcome of this DRG will ideally be one or a series of artifact (s).

Planned activities

1. Become familiar with what location data “is” as a resource for design: how it can be materialized, worked with, and its limits. 
2. We will follow principles of participatory design and design ethnography to explore how location sharing is currently implemented in people’s everyday lives.
3. Design outcome: design proposals or other artifacts. 

Required availability

• Attend our 2-hour class each week: 
• Work 4 to 6 hours each week outside of meetings
• Winter quarter: January 3 - March 4, 2024

Skills

• Any design skills welcome (e.g., UX/UI design, graphic design, IxD, industrial design, etc.)
• Research skills: User research/testing, ethnographic research methods

This DRG will be led by PhD student Claire Florence Weizenegger with guidance from Assistant Professor James Pierce (Art + Art History + Design) and Professor Sean Munson (HCDE). 

Autumn 2023

Mapping Collective Visions for Tech Workers in the aftermath of the 2022-2023 Tech Layoffs

Led by Samuel So, PhD student (HCDE)
With guidance from HCDE professors Sucheta Ghoshal and Sean Munson

Overview:
By early 2023, several big tech companies, such as Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and Intel, announced layoffs that would impact up to 100,000 people. Company leadership justified these decisions as the result of lowered sales and preemptive measures in anticipation of an economic recession. The current wave of layoffs comes at a time when tech workers are increasingly critical of their employers’ values and practices. The designers, engineers, and other techworkers in the workforce have an increasingly conflicted relationship with the managerial class within Big Tech, particularly with corporate leadership that gets to define the goals and visions of this industry. As a result, many of them are actively seeking out newer means of accountability within and outside the workplace.

As the next phase of this NSF-supported project, we will investigate the emergent relationships tech workers have with their employers, their value systems, and potential modes of accountability in the aftermath of the layoffs. In this 2-credit DRG, we will recruit for- and conduct an 8-week asynchronous remote communities (ARC) research study involving recently laid off tech workers. DRG students will facilitate ARC activities and qualitatively analyze participant responses.

For more information on the study, please refer here.

We are looking for:

• 2-3 graduate students (MS or PhD), or upper-level undergraduate students in their 3rd+ year
• No prior software development experience necessary
  • No experience with qualitative data analysis software necessary 
• Folks with qualitative data collection and analysis experience (e.g., interviews, surveys, focus groups, ARCs)
• Interest in technocultural analysis, labor studies, and/or CSCW research, theory, and methods

DRG Format and Expectations:

• Attend two weekly meetings: 75-minute research group meeting and 90 minute co-working session. Times TBD (see survey)
• Work on the DRG outside of scheduled meeting times for 3 hours 
• Graded credit/no-credit for 2 credits (3 hours per credit = e.g., 3 hours of meetings + 3 hours of outside work = 2 CR)

Students in the DRG will:

• Co-create, workshop, facilitate, and monitor weekly ARC activities with participants
• Collect participant data and write observational memos based on participants’ weekly responses
• Collaborate on qualitative data analysis through grounded theory open-coding and research memos

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Samuel So via email (samuelso@uw.edu) or HCDE Slack.

Winter 2023

Landscape analysis of human centered design methods for improved nutrition outcomes

Led by: Tricia Aung, PhD student (HCDE)
With guidance from faculty advisor, Sean Munson (HCDE)

Overview:
Human centered design (HCD) is increasingly used in global health, however, these projects are commonly led by individuals in high-income countries. The current movement towards decolonizing global health highlights how systematic limited participation of low- and middle-income country experts and affected communities in designing health solutions and setting research agendas perpetuates inequities. With the launch of Tanzania’s new National Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Action Plan, the Government of Tanzania is committed to addressing the triple burden of malnutrition through increased community engagement and multi-sectoral research. There is an opportunity to apply HCD methods to innovate context-appropriate solutions that tackle nutrition issues across the lifecycle. In partnership with the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC)—the Government of Tanzania’s lead in nutrition policy and research—we will be laying a foundation for a HCD-trained hub within TFNC. We aspire for this hub to lead initiatives that leverage HCD methods to create context-appropriate, community-informed solutions to priority nutrition issues.

In this DRG, we will conduct a landscape analysis of the use of: (1) HCD to improve global health and nutrition outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including Tanzania; and (2) HCD in Tanzania. This will be a collaborative literature review paired with discussion on how the identified case studies define HCD, types of methods used, positionality, strengths, and weaknesses. The output of this DRG will be: (1) a database that systematically organizes findings (examples: Personal Informatics Paper Browser, LIVE Dashboard); and (2) a paper for peer-review. Participants of the DRG will be eligible for paper authorship if meeting ICMJE criteria for authorship. Findings from the landscape analysis will ultimately be used to develop customized curriculum to develop the TFNC HCD hub.

We are looking for:

5-7 students (undergraduate or graduate)
Interest in or experience with HCD and nutrition in LMICs
Relevant coursework (e.g. HCDE 318, 419, 502) helpful but not required

Attend 1 hour weekly meetings (dates/time TBD)
Work on the DRG outside of scheduled meeting times, 3 hours per credit.
Graded credit/no-credit for 2-3 total credits. (e.g., 3 hours of meetings/study sessions + 6 hours of outside work = 3 CR)

Students in the DRG will:

Collaborate on literature review and outputs.
Expand understanding of how HCD methods are applied in LMIC nutrition and Tanzania contexts.

Autumn 2022

Speculative Engagements with Post-mortem Digital Legacies

Led by: Samuel So, PhD student (HCDE)
With guidance from faculty advisor, Sean Munson (HCDE)

Personal data play increasingly prominent roles in everyday life, as people continue to produce, share, and manage their data in the form of photos, texts, documents, and other digital media. But what happens to our data after we die? And how will this data be used to remember, commemorate, and honor our lives? In this 2-3 credit DRG, we will investigate the relationships between personal data, identity/self-concept, and post-mortem digital legacies. This research project engages adult dyads who trust each other (e.g., close friends, family members, intimate partners) in a speculative co-design exercise about their post-mortem digital legacies. DRG students will facilitate co-design activities and qualitatively analyze interview and observational data gathered from sessions.

We are looking for:

• 3-4 undergraduate or graduate students (BS, MS, or PhD).
• Folks with interviewing or qualitative coding experience (either in a research project or qualitative methods course)
• Interest in or experience with co-design, speculative design, and/or personal data research

DRG Format and Expectations:

• Attend 1 hour weekly meetings (dates/time TBD)
• Around weeks 3-9, attend one study session per week (1.5-2 hours)
• Work on the DRG outside of scheduled meeting times, 3 hours per credit.
• Graded credit/no-credit for 2-3 total credits. (e.g., 3 hours of meetings/study sessions + 6 hours of outside work = 3 CR)

Students in the DRG will:

• Assist with scheduling and running co-design sessions (either in-person or hybrid)
• Transcribe interview and observational data from study sessions
• Collaborate on data analysis through qualitative coding process

Spring 2022

Understanding experiences from people who have gained insights from tracking, that suggest taking action

Led by: Carla Castillo, PhD Student, HCDE
With guidance from faculty advisor, Professor Sean Munson, HCDE

About the DRG:

In this DRG, we will conduct interviews, analyze qualitative surveys and interview data gathered from this ongoing research study.

This project gathers experiences from people that use or have used technology, journaling, or any other way to track within three tracking domains (health, physical activity or finances) and have gotten insights from tracking. Tracking information over time can lead people to learn something or gain insights about themselves. Sometimes insights suggest taking action. Yet taking action from tracking can be difficult to do. To help us better understand this problem we are gathering and analyzing experiences from people who have gained insights, from tracking, that suggest taking action.

We are looking for:

• 2-3 undergraduate or masters students
• Students with interviewing and qualitative coding experience (in a research project or in a qualitative methods course)
• Nice to have:
  • Interest in self-tracking within the health, physical activity or finance domain
  • Interest in qualitative research

Expectations:

• Attend weekly meetings (in-person; day and time TBD)
• Later in the quarter, we may choose to be remote and asynchronous due to the nature of the work
• Work on the DRG 2-3 hours per credit (2 CR requires about 6 hours a week, excluding “class” time). You can choose between taking 2-4 credits.

This DRG will consist of:

• Assisting with scheduling and conducting interviews
• Coding survey and interviews
• Collaborate on analysis of the survey and interview data during the coding process

Questions? Please contact Carla (carla23@uw.edu).

Spring 2022

Understanding how Older Adults and their Support Network use Always-On IoT Devices

Led by:
Shengzhi Wang, PhD Student, HCDE 
Neilly H. Tan, PhD Student, HCDE 
With guidance from faculty advisor, Professor Sean Munson, HCDE

We are looking for:

• 2-3 undergraduate or masters students
• Folks with qualitative coding experience (in a research project or in a qualitative methods course)
• Nice to have:
  • Interest in designing or evaluating technology for older adults
  • Interest in researching smart home technologies
  • Interest in qualitative research

About the DRG:
In this DRG we will be gathering and exploring interview data through a qualitative coding process for an ongoing research study. This project focuses on how older adults and people in their support networks use and perceive always-on smart home technologies, with the goal of learning more about associated privacy concerns, family dynamics, support networks, and design opportunities. We are collecting interview data from conversations with older adults and family members about their devices and other existing smart home technologies. 

What students will do:

• Assist with scheduling and conducting interviews
• Assist with transcribing interviews
• Code interviews
• Collaborate on the analysis of the interview data during the coding process

Expectations:

• Attend weekly meetings (Likely on Zoom, time TBD)
• Work on the DRG 2-3 hours per credit (you can choose between taking 2-4 credits) per week outside of weekly meetings 

Winter 2022

Analyzing the Preferred Futures of Sports Technology

Led by: 

• Sam Kolovson, PhD student, HCDE
• With guidance from faculty adviser, Sean Munson, HCDE

Who: 

• 2-3 undergrad or master’s students. 
• Preferably folks with experience with qualitative methods and/or have taken an HCDE qualitative methods course (312 or 519)
• Nice to have is an interest in speculative design and /or the subject matter (data use on college sports teams)

About the project:

• In a DRG last year, Sam worked with a group of students using speculative design to develop three videos that portray scenarios with tensions between student-athletes and coaches around tracking data use in college sports. View the videos and more on the project here: https://kolovsam.com/speculating-future-sports-tech/
• The goal of these videos is to spark discussion and/or reflection among the college athletics community (student-athletes, coaches, staff, and other stakeholders) and designers of sports tracking technology about how sports tracking technologies should be designed and used. 
• For Winter 2022, we will be wrapping up the second stage of this project by analyzing data from interviews where participants are asked to watch the videos and discuss their reactions to the videos. Through this analysis we aim to find if the speculative videos were an effective tool for sparking the discussions or reflections that were intended in the design of the videos and understand how designers and the college athletics community think sports tracking technologies should be designed and used.

What students will do:

• Assist with conducting interviews
• Transcribe interviews
• Code interviews
• Collaborate on overall analysis via Miro board or in-person (covid-guidelines dependent)

Expectations/Commitment:

• Attend a weekly meeting (time and location TBD).
• Attend additional meetings as necessary for analyzing the data.
• Work 4-6 hours outside of the meeting time.
• Register for two credits of HCDE 496/596 (code supplied on DRG admission).

Spring 2021

Designing for an Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) tool to support adolescent depression treatment

This DRG was offered by Julie Kientz, PhD and Jessica Jenness with guidance from Sean Munson, PhD and Elin Björling, PhD

Over 60% of adolescents diagnosed with depression do not receive mental health care and treatment engagement is low among those who do access care. Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) are a promising technology-based approach for engaging adolescents in mental health care that capitalizes on the reach and scalability of technology while also providing support, social interactions, and motivation to engage. ARCs use private online platforms (e.g., Slack, Microsoft Teams) to deliver and gather information from adolescents in a format that is lightweight, accessible, usable, and low burden. Our team of researchers including HCDE faculty Juile Kientz, PhD, Sean Munson, PhD, and Elin Björling, PhD and Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine faculty Jessica Jenness, PhD have conducted pilot work to develop a functional Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) platform to supplement behavioral activation (BA+ARC) therapy for depressed adolescents using Slack. Our BA+ARC platform included peer and therapist coaching through direct messaging and chat channels, chatbot supported therapy tools, and real-time mood and behavior tracking and visualizations. Mental health clinician and adolescent target users provided critical feedback on design requirements including ARC supplementing versus replacing synchronous therapy sessions and tested preliminary prototypes that adapted core BA elements to a technology platform (BA+ARC). 

We are seeking to adapt our Slack prototype to Microsoft Teams in order to meet certain design criteria including HIPAA compliance and meeting the needs of the clinician’s workflow. We are partnering with Microsoft and Seattle Children’s Hospital engineers to begin the development work and are seeking students to assist in the creation of a design specification document related to this shift from Slack to Teams as well as the addition of automated data collection and visualization tools identified as important by target users.

Activities:

Understand the design of our current Slack-based prototype that has been developed and feasibility tested with teens and clinicians
Adapt the design of a Slack Prototype for delivering treatment for depression for teens to the Microsoft Teams platform
Create a set of annotated wireframes or an interactive prototype for the new design
Conduct informal usability testing on new ported design
Write a design spec document for communicating that design to a team of developers working at Seattle Children’s and Microsoft by the end of the quarter

Winter - Spring 2021

Speculating the Future of Sports Technology 

Led by: 

Sam Kolovson, PhD student, HCDE
With guidance from faculty adviser, Sean Munson, HCDE, and input and critique from other students and faculty with relevant experience

Who 

Seeking 4-6 HCDE/Art/Design students who will work with Sam and 6 student-athletes.
Open to BS, MS, or PhD students.
Preferred experience: We are looking for students with experience in one or more of the following: design, art, storytelling, cinematography, and video editing. 

What

We will create three short videos to provoke discussion around the future of tracking and data collection in sports. Through a research method called Speculative Design we will aim to get student-athletes, coaches, and staff at universities in the US as well as the wider collegiate athletic community to think about what they want (or don't want) from sports tracking technologies.

Videos might raise questions such as:

Should coaches have access to their athletes’ sleep data?
Should we design a device to collect a detailed caloric breakdown of every meal an athlete eats? 
What about swallowing or installing a sensor under an athlete’s skin to track exertion? Hydration?

Examples

An example of a video we might create is this project titled "Uninvited Guests" that is intended to provoke reflection and discussion about whether using tracking devices for remote health monitoring: Example here.
A pop culture example of the narrative we might strive for is the movie Her.

What students will do

Throughout the duration of the DRG, students will be introduced to relevant research methods and design skills read through literature, films, and other media. We may also discuss proper execution of these methods and skills during our meetings.

Winter 2021: Students will be directly involved with developing original ideas, creating storyboards (narratives for the videos), and designing possible futuristic technology prototypes to appear in the videos.
Spring 2021: Working in teams, students will develop the script for the videos, recruit actors, plan out how to create the videos, and shoot the videos (ideally, in-person, socially distanced, but we will adjust our plans for COVID-19 safety).

Autumn 2020

Discursive Design Inquiry with Home Cameras

We encounter cameras in our home in many different ways. For example, some might film a family member for a funny TikTok video, or turn on their webcam to join a Zoom meeting. For others, always-on smart home camera systems record movements in and around the house. 

Our research team has been conducting a study with households across the US who are participating in a series of activities with cameras in their home that provoke speculation, play, and criticality around the nature of recording in domestic scenarios. 

In this DRG, we are seeking 2-3 highly motivated individuals to support our project. Please note that the workload for this DRG will be frontloaded in early September, and will decrease in late November (by Thanksgiving).

Planned activities:

• Read and review relevant literature and media
• Conduct semi-structured interviews with households
• Announce weekly activities through a private Slack group with participating households
• Code and analyze participant interviews, reflections, and activities

This DRG will be led by PhD student Neilly Herrera Tan, with guidance from Associate Professor Sean Munson (HCDE) and Assistant Professor Audrey Desjardins (Design). This DRG is full for autumn and no longer accepting appplications.
 

Summer 2020

SwitchTube: Testing a Mobile App for Self-Control on YouTube

Many people express concern with the ways that social media like YouTube captures their attention. Users describe being “sucked in” when they would rather be doing something else. Designers, meanwhile, employ their knowledge of psychology to “hook” users and maximize user engagement.

In this DRG, our research team will refine, develop, and evaluate three different versions of a mobile app for Android that plays YouTube videos. The high control version is designed to support self-control, the low-control version is designed to undermine self-control, and the final version allows users to “switch” between the two versions. In previous quarters, our team created detailed mockups of these three versions. In this quarter, we will support the development of the mobile app by testing and fixing any design issues that arise. 

Finally, we will run a field experiment with about 50 participants to test the three different versions against each other. Participants in this DRG will be responsible for helping to run the experiment, manage the participants, and evaluating the results (analyzing log data and survey data). Students will also help write up the results.

Planned activities:

1. Support the development of the SwitchTube app for Android (testing, fixing design issues that arise);
2. Run a field experiment with about 50 participants;
3. Analysis and writeup of field experiment results.

Required availability:

• Attend our 2-hour class each week: Thursdays 1:30-3:30pm
• Work 4 to 6 hours each week outside of meetings
• Summer quarter: June 22 - August 21, 2020

This DRG will be led by PhD student Kai Lukoff, with guidance from Associate Professor Sean Munson (HCDE) and Assistant Professor Alexis Hiniker (iSchool).

Spring 2020

Redesigning YouTube to Remove Dark Patterns 

Many people express concern with the ways that social media like YouTube captures their attention. Users describe being “sucked in” when they would rather be doing something else. Designers, meanwhile, employ their knowledge of psychology to “hook” users and maximize user engagement.

In this DRG, our research team will conduct interviews to generate and evaluate potential redesigns of the YouTube mobile app using paper mockups. Some of these have already been reported (e.g., autoplay and infinite scroll), but others likely still remain to be identified. Conversely, we will also use the same methods to identify light patterns that support people in using YouTube in ways that align with their enduring personal values.

In parallel, we will also design and test versions of the YouTube mobile app that are redesigned to be as dark or as light as possible. For example, one light version of the YouTube mobile app might feature a “search first” interface that reduces the role of recommended videos. Throughout the quarter, we work with developers to implement our designs using the YouTube API.

Planned activities:

Conduct and analyze interviews to generate and evaluate potential redesigns of the YouTube mobile app
Create specifications and work with developers to implement the most promising features in a redesigned version of the YouTube mobile app
 Run a pilot deployment study with a prototype version of our redesigned YouTube mobile app

Required availability:

Attend our 2-hour class each week: Time TBD
Work 4 to 6 hours each week outside of meetings

This DRG will be led by PhD student Kai Lukoff, with guidance from Associate Professor Sean Munson (HCDE) and Assistant Professor Alexis Hiniker (iSchool).

Winter 2020

Redesigning YouTube to Remove Dark Patterns 

Many people express concern with the ways that social media captures their attention. Users describe being “sucked in” when they would rather be doing something else with more enduring personal value. Designers, meanwhile, employ their knowledge of psychology to “hook” users and maximize user engagement.

In this DRG, our research team will conduct walkthrough interviews with users of YouTube, one of the most popular of these social media services, to identify dark design patterns that capture attention in unwanted ways. Some of these have already been reported (e.g., autoplay and infinite scroll), but others likely still remain to be identified. Conversely, we will also use the same methods to identify light patterns that support people in using YouTube in ways that align with their enduring personal values.

In parallel, we will also design and test prototypes of a web version of YouTube that are redesigned to remove dark patterns and add light patterns. For example, one version of YouTube might feature a “search first” interface that reduces the role of “recommended videos.” Throughout the Winter quarter, we will work with a small team of developers led by a PhD student in the UW iSchool to implement the most promising of these prototypes using the YouTube API.

Planned activities:

Conduct walkthrough interviews with YouTube users
Prototype redesigned versions of the YouTube interface
Create design specifications and work with a team of developers to implement the most promising prototypes

Required availability:

Attend our 2-hour class each week: Thursdays 1-3pm (Sieg 427). The first class is on Thursday, Jan 16th.
Work 4 to 6 hours each week outside of meetings

To apply, please complete this form. Applications are due by Tuesday, Jan. 14 at 8 p.m. and decisions will be shared on Wednesday, Jan. 15 at 8 p.m.

This DRG will be led by PhD student Kai Lukoff, with guidance from Associate Professor Sean Munson (HCDE) and Assistant Professor Alexis Hiniker (iSchool). This DRG is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Winter 2020

Designing to Support Clients and Therapists in Engaging with Therapeutic Activities

Many people cope with mental health challenges. In this DRG we draw on insights about how older adults work with therapists to set goals related to mental health, create activity plans to help clients engage in positive activities, and manage stressful situations outside of therapy sessions.

We seek to (1) describe the design space of opportunities to support clients and therapists in managing mental health issues through goal setting and planning, during therapy sessions and outside of therapy sessions, and (2) create low fidelity prototypes (e.g. scenarios, storyboards or design cards) for how to better support patients and therapists in the above activities. 

Requirements: Students are expected to have taken HCDE 318/518 or similar. 

Meeting time: We will meet for 90 minutes weekly. The time and day of the DRG will be decided to accommodate the schedule of accepted students and the research team. You can register for 2–3 credit hours in HCDE 496/596; for each credit, you should expect to spend about three hours of work per week outside of meeting times.

Students will work closely with PhD Student Elena Agapie, with guidance from Prof. Sean Munson. Please contact Elena Agapie (eagapie@uw.edu) if you have questions.

Autumn 2019

PhoneBalance: Prototyping a Website and Diary to Help People Address Their Concerns with Smartphone Use

Many people find that smartphone use interferes with their productivity, health, and social interactions. As technologies become ever more immersive and ubiquitous, managing one’s relationship with them will become increasingly important. In human-computer interaction, past research has focused on how developers can build digital tools that nudge people to reduce their screen time. Yet technology users themselves have also identified creative strategies to self-nudge their behavior into alignment with their values and goals. For example, they temporarily disable access to certain apps, change the display to grayscale, and set rules for technology use in their home and at work. 

In this DRG, we will generate multiple prototypes of a website and diary for a “PhoneBalance” program that teaches people strategies to address their concerns with smartphone use. The website will map people’s concerns to specific strategies. A reflective prototype of the website might ask people to envision the outcome they hope to gain from implementing a particular strategy. Another social prototype could ask them to share and discuss with a friend, roommate, or partner to help them identify strengths and weaknesses of the strategies they selected. Similarly, we will create different prototypes of a learning diary (either paper or digital)--which has people monitor their use of strategies--that could emphasize reflective, social, or gamification elements. We will use rapid prototyping and iterative usability testing to move from low fidelity to high fidelity prototypes.

Planned activities:

Read about and discuss nudging (choice architecture) strategies
Rapid prototyping of a website and diary
Iterative usability testing of a website and diary
Other human-centered design practices as needed: personas and storyboards

Required availability:

Attend our 2-hour class each week: Thursdays, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
Work 4 to 6 hours each week outside of meetings
Register for 2 to 3 credits of HCDE 496/596 or INFO 499

Autumn 2019

Identifying Dark Patterns on YouTube and Twitter

Many people express concern with the ways that social media captures their attention. Users describe being “sucked in” when they would rather be doing something else with more enduring personal value. Designers, meanwhile, employ their knowledge of psychology to “hook” users and maximize user engagement.

In this DRG, our research team will conduct interviews and walkthroughs to identify dark design patterns on YouTube and Twitter that capture attention in unwanted ways. Some of these have already been reported (e.g., autoplay and infinite scroll), but others still remain to be identified. Conversely, we will also use the same methods to identify light patterns that support people in using these apps in ways that align with their enduring personal values.

Planned activities:

Read research articles on design patterns in technology design
Review popular media for design patterns that “hook” users (e.g., in books like “Irresistible Apps”)
Conduct semi-structured interviews and walkthroughs with YouTube and Twitter users
Analyze interview and walkthrough results

Required availability:

Attend our 2-hour class each week: Tuesdays, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
Work 4 to 6 hours each week outside of meetings
Register for 2 to 3 credits of HCDE 496/596 or INFO 499

This DRG will be led by PhD candidate Kai Lukoff, with guidance from Associate Professor Sean Munson (HCDE) and Assistant Professor Alexis Hiniker (iSchool). This DRG is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Implementing Mental Health Strategies in Everyday Life

Summer 2019

Many people cope with mental health challenges. People develop strategies to cope with stressful situations and to improve outcomes for supporting mental health. In this DRG we seek to understand how people implement strategies to support mental health in their everyday life. Through a qualitative study we will understand how people work with health providers to decide on goals to support mental health, how individuals implement solutions towards mental health goals, and how people update their goals and strategies as they try to implement them every day. We will be working in the context of depression and older adults, focusing on people who are working with a therapist towards their goals.

Requirements: It is strongly recommended that students took HCDE 313/418/518. If you have not taken any of these courses please provide a strong explanation of your interest in participating in the DRG, and any other relevant experience that would inform your participation in the DRG.

DRG Activities: During the DRG we will conduct an interview and diary study to understand how people implement mental health strategies in their everyday life. We will also analyze interactions between clients and therapists to understand their practices in setting goals and planning actions during the therapy session.

We will finalize protocols to interview clients and therapists, analyze therapy sessions between clients and therapists, conduct interviews with therapists and clients, and analyze qualitative data.

Students will be expected to participate in some or all of: recruiting participants, conducting interviews, analyzing qualitative data, and writing up results.

We will meet for 90 minutes weekly. The time and day of the DRG will be decided to accommodate the schedule of accepted students and research team.

Credits: We expect students to register for at least 2 credits, and we highly encourage students to register for 3-4 credits HCDE 496/596; for each credit you should expect to spend about three hours of work per week. If you are seeking research experience but cannot sign up for credits, please explain in your application.

Students will get exposure to a variety of facets of the research process, and can expect to work closely PhD Student Elena Agapie, with guidance from Prof. Gary Hsieh and Sean Munson. Please contact Elena Agapie (eagapie@uw.edu) if you have questions.

To apply, fill in this form (Deadline: Thursday, June 6). We will be making decisions soon after the deadline.

A Design Space for Mindfulness Technologies

Spring 2019

Mindfulness can be defined as awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. Its roots lie in Buddhist traditions from thousands of years ago. Yet today, new technologies (e.g., mobile apps, wearable devices, and VR) are bringing this ancient practice to new audiences.

How are these new technologies currently being designed to cultivate mindfulness? Which design choices require special consideration in mindfulness technologies? For example, are ‘social gamification’ features appropriate in an app that teaches mindfulness? How can we help designers who are new to mindfulness become aware of these considerations? The goals of this DRG are: (1) characterize how mobile apps are currently designed for mindfulness; (2) create a representation of a design space that designers can use to generate new mindfulness technologies.

Planned activities:

Practice mindfulness using a different mobile app each week
Explore and characterize the current landscape of mindfulness technologies
Represent a design space for mindfulness technologies. This could be in the form of a visualization, a Wiki, or a simple website.
Write up our findings in the form of an academic research paper

This DRG will be led by PhD student Kai Lukoff, with guidance from Associate Professor Sean Munson (HCDE) and Assistant Professor Alexis Hiniker (iSchool). This DRG is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Technology Design for Goal-Directed Migraine Tracking 

Spring 2019

People with migraine often track migraine-related data for a variety of goals (e.g., identifying migraine "triggers", communicating with their doctors, predicting future migraines). However, current technology often fails to support the specific goals people have for migraine tracking.  We hope to better support migraine tracking and management via goal-directed self-tracking, a novel method we are developing to help people with migraine: 1) track exactly and only what they need to track to achieve their goals, and 2) interpret the resulting data with respect to those goals.

In this DRG, we are looking for a student experienced in visual/graphic design who is interested in helping us design our goal-directed self-tracking app.  We have a paper prototype and some initial development already completed.  Based on the needed functionality and predicted use cases for the app, we expect the student to iteratively develop visual prototypes of the visual and interaction design of the app. Optionally, if they have programming experience with CSS/HTML and/or Ionic, they could also contribute directly to the app development.  

We plan to conduct a pilot study with the app in late spring/early summer. Depending on how the project proceeds, the student may have the opportunity to be involved in that and/or future studies around goal-directed self-tracking. Future interest and availability are not requirements for participating in the spring DRG.

You must register for 2-3 credits of HCDE 496/596. Typically, we expect this effort to represent a weekly 60-minute meeting (time to be set based on mutual availability), plus 2-3 hours per credit of work outside of our meetings each week.  This DRG will be led by PhD student Jessie Schroeder, with guidance from Professors Sean Munson (HCDE) and James Fogarty (CSE).  

A design space for mindfulness technologies

Winter 2019

Mindfulness can be defined as awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. Its roots lie in Buddhist traditions from thousands of years ago. Yet today, new technologies (e.g., mobile apps, wearable devices, and VR) are bringing this ancient practice to new audiences.

How can these new technologies be designed to cultivate mindfulness? For example, are ‘social gamification’ features appropriate in an app that teaches mindfulness? Which design choices require special consideration in mindfulness technologies? The goal of this DRG is to create a representation of a design space that can guide the development of mindfulness technologies.

Planned activities:

Test and evaluate a different mindfulness technology each week
Compile a library of mindfulness technologies
Represent a design space for mindfulness technologies. This could be in the form of a visualization, a Wiki, or a simple website.
Use our design space to sketch new designs/prototypes

To apply, please complete the following application form by Monday, Dec. 10: Application form.

Meeting times are Wednesdays from 2:30 - 4 p.m. in Sieg 129.

You must enroll in 2 credit hours of HCDE 496/596. Typically, we expect this effort to represent our weekly 90-minute meeting plus 3-4 hours of work outside of our meetings each week. This DRG is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

This DRG will be led by PhD student Kai Lukoff, with guidance from Associate Professor Sean Munson (HCDE) and Assistant Professor Alexis Hiniker (iSchool).

Everyday personal tracking: an exploration through practice

Winter 2019

This DRG focuses on understanding the motivations and challenges around self-tracking and personal informatics. With the introduction of self-tracking tools, people have the possibility to learn about their own behavior and health more than ever before. However, individuals often struggle with how to interpret their data and transform it into behavior change. By experiencing self-tracking over the course of the quarter and engaging with current literature on personal informatics, we seek to understand these challenges and explore ways in which a human-centered design and research approach can offer solutions.

To inform our brainstorming and design efforts, students will track one or more aspects of their daily lives and discuss their experiences with self-tracking in class. From this, students will identify potential research questions and/or project ideas related to personal tracking for the future.

Requirements

We are looking for 10 students who have an interest in learning about personal tracking and will be committed to tracking one or more aspects of their daily lives for 10 weeks. We encourage both novice and experienced personal trackers to apply.
This group is open to undergraduate and graduate students from any department and will be meeting every Thursday from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m. in Winter 2019.
We expect students to register for 2 credits of HCDE 496/596.

Please note that space is limited. If you are interested, please apply for the group by November 30, 2018, using this survey.

This research group will be led by PhD students Calvin Liang and Susanne Kirchner-Adelhardt with the guidance of Associate Professors Julie Kientz (HCDE) and Sean Munson (HCDE).

Implementing mental health strategies in everyday life

Winter 2019

Many people cope with mental health challenges. People develop strategies to cope with stressful situations and to improve outcomes for supporting mental health. In this DRG we seek to understand how people implement strategies to support mental health in their everyday life. Through a qualitative study, we will understand how people work with health providers to decide on goals to support mental health, how individuals implement solutions towards mental health goals, and how people update their goals and strategies as they try to implement them every day. 

Requirements: Students are expected to have taken HCDE 313/418/518, or have worked on projects related to mental health. 

Activities: During the DRG we will conduct an interview and diary study to understand how people implement mental health strategies in their everyday life. Students will be expected to participate in recruiting participants, conducting interviews, analyzing qualitative data, and writing up results. 

We will meet for 90 minutes weekly. The time and day of the DRG will be decided to accommodate the schedule of accepted students and research team. You can register for 1–3 credit hours in HCDE 496/596; for each credit you should expect to spend about three hours of work per week outside of meeting times.

We look forward to working with 2-3 students who have an interest in the topic who will work closely with PhD Student Elena Agapie, with guidance from Profs. Gary Hsieh and Sean Munson. Please contact Elena Agapie (eagapie@uw.edu) if you have questions.

How Do People Architect their Environment to Manage (Addictive) Smartphone Use?

Spring 2018

Many people express concern that smartphone use interferes with their productivity, physical and emotional health, and social relationships. Past work has focused on building new tools that support people to limit aspects of their use. Yet people are also the creative architects of their own behavior: they change their phone’s display to grayscale or leave their phone behind in the car when they go to the playground with their child. What other strategies do people use to manage their smartphone use?

In this DRG, we will interview and survey people who are concerned about and actively managing their smartphone use. We will analyze this data together as a small group using affinity diagramming and other methods. Our analysis will inform a system that recommends specific strategies to people who want to better manage their own use.

This research group will be led by PhD student Kai Lukoff, with guidance from Professors Sean Munson (HCDE) and Alexis Hiniker (Information School). Feel free to contact Kai Lukoff (kai1@uw.edu) if you have questions.

Design and Development for Crowdsourcing Physical Activity Advice

Spring 2018

In this DRG, we are looking for a few designers and developers to work on the design of CrowdFit. CrowdFit is a tool that leverages the potential of people who are remote from each other to provide help for physical activity. CrowdFit enables an online helper, such as a worker from a task marketplace like Mechanical Turk, to create an actionable plan that follows expert techniques and fits the needs of the person they are helping.  CrowdFit has a client interface for the person who receives the physical activity plan and a helper interface for the people who provide the help and support.

The students will work as a team on the website redesign. Students can choose to participate in one of the two roles below, or to work on both aspects.

(1) Design roles: As part of the website redesign, students will perform usability testing, design the brand for this application, create wireframes and assets for the visual and interaction design of the website. Students should have taken HCDE 308 or HCDE 508

(2) Developer roles: Students will develop new features into an existing tool. Students should have taken HCDE 310 or equivalent. Experience is desirable with back end: Python, or Django, and front-end: Javascript, JQuery.

To apply, submit a statement stating why you are interested in participating in this DRG, and your resume. Include a link to your portfolio if you are applying for a design position. Include a link to your github or share example of your development if you are applying for a developer position.  
 

Managing a field study of an app for telling stories with personal data

Winter 2017

In this research group, HCDE students will help to run a one-month evaluation of Yarn, a research iOS app for writing stories of accomplishment through personal data like running data, photos, videos, and text. Yarn uses a structured writing experience to help people create content which aligns with their goals for sharing that others would find interesting. Yarn was specifically designed to support two types of stories of personal accomplisment: training for a running race or working on Do-It-Yourself projects. The app design and implementation are complete, and we will begin the evaluation in early January. We are looking for students to help recruit participants, help them install the app, send out intermediate surveys, and interview them about their experiences at the end of the study. Helpful materials, experiences, and skills include:

• experience conducting qualitative semi-structured interviews
• strong organization and time management
• an iPhone and experience with TestFlight are a bonus but not required
• experience with or excitement about the domain areas (running races, Do-It-Yourself projects) is a plus

Exploring the Use of Wearables in College Athletics

Autumn 2017

Led by HCDE PhD student Sam Kolovson

How can wearable technology (Catapult Sports, Zephyr, Fitbit, Whoop, etc.) be used to improve athletic performance? Prevent injuries? What challenges do wearables and related technologies pose to college athletics? 

In this research group, HCDE students will work alongside “subject matter experts”, UW student-athletes who have experience with competitive athletics. We will learn and practice qualitative research methods (for example, interviewing, interpretive analysis, and value-sensitive design) to better understand the opportunities and challenges related to the use of wearable technologies within competitive athletics. Wearable technology, in this context, we define as any type of sensor worn on an athlete’s body—e.g. a watch, chest strap, sensor built into a shoe, or a screen worn on an athlete's shirt. 

This course can be taken for 2 credits (~2 hours of classroom meeting time + 4 hours of additional work each week). Meeting time TBD.

Technology Design & Development for Healthier Eating

Spring 2017

Healthy eating can be challenging for a number of reasons. Busy schedules, poor knowledge of healthy dieting, and temptation are just a few factors that contribute to an unhealthy diet. In order to better understand their eating habits and work towards a healthy goal, many people to turn technology to mediate their eating behaviors. This is helpful in promoting mindful eating, which subsequently leads to a healthier diet. However, many smartphone apps, such as MyFitnessPal, rely on meticulously detailed logs of a user’s diet and daily activity. We hope to mitigate this user burden by developing an app that introduces daily food challenges as a means of engaging the user and inviting them to be more mindful of their diet.

In this DRG, we are looking for two students interested in designing and developing an iOS app who have: 1) experience in visual/graphic design, and  2) programming experience with Ionic and/or Cordova (or willingness to learn Ionic quickly) and/or web backends. Students will also conduct user testing and assist in pilot studies for the project. The first half of the quarter will focus on design and development while the second half of the quarter will have a greater emphasis on user testing, piloting the app and study materials, and refining them in preparation for launching the study.

We expect students to register for 3 credits of HCDE 496/596.

Youth mental health: a family-oriented approach

Spring 2017

DRG led by Professors Julie Kientz and Sean Munson, and PhD student Arpita Bhattachary

Teenage years and young adulthood are significant stages of transitioning through rapidly changing social dynamics, career pathways, and exposure to unfamiliar circumstances. Reduction in stress has many benefits in social and mental well-being for thriving, as well as in improving treatment outcomes for physical and mental health challenges. What strategies can help youth to cope with stressful situations and start leveraging skills and resources for developing resilience towards stressful events?  

Family members and caregivers can be supportive social resources accessible to most (but not all) youth and may also be a source of interesting social tensions for youth seeking to become less dependent. Risk taking and learning are important aspects of development, and not all events are predictable, avoidable, or can be under control of a parent.  How can stress and mental health be approached from a family perspective?

In this project, we will involve youth and their families in design activities to understand what they think should be the role of technology in helping them manage and mediate support under stressful circumstances.

Activities: We expect to sketch and brainstorm design ideas, design and conduct focus group workshops and interviews with participants, and analyze qualitative data. Readings and discussions will be based on what will help the team learn related work and relevant skills. We look forward to working with 2-3 students who have interest in the topic, have prior experience in conducting focus groups and analyzing qualitative data such as HCDE 313/418/518, and/or have worked on projects in mental health. Depending on progress, students may have the option to continue on this project after the quarter ends.

Caution: We expect study participants to describe situations and emotions that they find stressful. Students in the team will be exposed to data which may also involve narratives on adverse events or trauma. We will work together to be supportive of one another, however, if you are negatively triggered by such content, we encourage you to take necessary measures for self-care while engaging in the project.

Time: We will decide a time based on the team’s availability. All students participating in the DRG, must attend weekly meetings for 90 minutes. Work outside of the meetings will include reading, contributing to design of study materials, conducting focus groups, interviews, analyzing survey and interview results, and writing results to share. You can register for 1–3 credit hours in HCDE 496/596; for each credit you should expect to spend about three hours of work per week outside of meeting times.

Epiphany moments: Understanding catalysts for health behavior change

Co-directed by Sean Munson, Julie Kientz

What can we learn from people who are working towards or have achieved changes in their health behavior? Are there specific moments of “epiphanies” that motivated them to take steps towards positive health outcomes? Theories of behavior change and prior work suggest that many factors come into play to catalyze an individual’s process of behavior change, such as social pressure, increased self-awareness or self-knowledge, and lifestyle changes. In this DRG, we will aim to gain in-depth empirical understanding of these factors and explore if we can design technology to catalyze such motivators of behavior change for those who are not yet motivated to change.

Activities: We expect to work together on to design and conduct interviews, surveys, qualitative analysis, and brainstorming design ideas. Readings and discussions will be based on what will help the team learn related work and relevant skills. We look forward to work with 3-4 students who have interest in the topic and/or have prior experience in conducting interviews and analyzing qualitative data such as HCDE 313/418/518. Depending on progress, students may have the option to continue on this project after the quarter ends.

• Continuing to develop and improve the Balancer extension based on what we have learned so far, and possibly releasing the extension for Firefox.
• Comparing and and improving algorithms that select diverse news content based on link, vote, or traffic data.
• Developing new tools.
• Studies of bias in search results.

• 3GT: We are preparing 3GT (Three Good Things), an online positive psychology application, to support two online field trials. There are some minor design refinements and implementation required to prepare the application for these studies. Experience with Python (specifically Django), JavaScript, and HTML is a plus for this work.
• A study of goal setting. Work on this project will involve supporting a laboratory study (recruiting, scheduling, and running participants) and an online field study (designing and piloting the study application), as well as analyzing and writing up the results. You may work on either the laboratory study, the online study, or both.
• An exploratory study of how to improve sharing features in life logs. This will include formative surveys, designing prototypes, and online and/or in person evaluations of these prototypes.

• Understanding people's preferences for accessing political news and opinion online
• The consequences of discovering friends' political preferences through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter
• Processes for correcting rumors or counterfactual political information when it appears online
• Design and deployment of new tools for political news access and/or discourse
• [your idea here]