The following research group descriptions are archived because they are no longer offered, the researcher is on sabbatical, or the group is taking a break. Please contact the researcher or an advisor to learn more about these groups.
- Hearing Aid Simulator DRG
- Project CARES: Virtual Reality to Support Teen Mental Health
- Project EMAR
- Insomnia Chatbots
- Designing for an Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) tool to support adolescent depression treatment
- SCAN Research Group: Improving usability of a home-based respiratory virus sample collection process for community surveillance of SARS-CoV-2
- Project EMAR
- Project RESeT: Relaxation Environment for Stress in Teens
- Project EMAR: Hack-a-Bot for Evil
- Project RESeT: Relaxation Environment for Stress in Teens
- Project EMAR
- Project RESeT: Relaxation Environment for Stress in Teens
- Human-Robotic Interaction DRG Team
- Robot Designer (Virtual Reality Game) DRG Team
- Virtual Relaxation Environment for Teens
- VR Stress Reduction: Co-Designing a Virtual Environment to Reduce Teen Stress
- Project EMAR: Facilitating a High School Design Challenge
Autumn 2022 - Winter 2023
Hearing Aid Simulator DRG
Co-directed by Drs. Elin Björling and Daniella Kim
What would it be like to put yourself in the shoes of someone with hearing loss? One of the leading causes of kids' low hearing aid compliance is that sometimes grownups and other kids just don't understand what it's like to wear a hearing aid.
This DRG, a collaboration between Seattle Children's Hospital and HCDE, aims to build empathy for those who wear hearing aids by designing and early prototyping a VR hearing aid simulator for people that commonly interact with kids with hearing loss. This might include caregivers, the cafeteria lunch person, siblings, teachers, medical professionals, and sports coaches.
We'll find out what kids with hearing aids really want us to know, and using human-centered design methods, figure out what a helpful VR solution might look like.
Spring 2022
Project CARES: Virtual Reality to Support Teen Mental Health Facilitators
- Elin Björling, HCDE, bjorling@uw.edu
- Jin-Ha Lee, iSchool, jinhalee@uw.edu
Background
Last year, we conducted a virtual reality project with the Seattle Public Library to co-design virtual reality environments intended to support teen mental health. You can learn more about the project here.
Now that the project is over, we have lots of rich data from several design sessions with teens and artifacts from their designs. We are analyzing these qualitative data for themes in our attempt to best describe the process. We aim to answer the research question: What was the experience of teens engaged in co-design to develop a VR environment intended to support teen mental health?
Our Focus
During spring quarter, we are looking for students experienced or interested in qualitative analysis. We will be conducting a collaborative, rapid, qualitative analysis. We will then be writing a research paper to describe these data. Students are welcome to work on the analysis only or to also contribute to the research paper.
Spring 2022
Project EMAR
Adolescents are subject to high levels of stress in their lives, resulting from school, relationships, and family life. Not surprisingly, school stress is most commonly reported as the biggest source of stress for teens. Therefore, accurately measuring and intervening to reduce teen stress is imperative to support this vulnerable population.
Social robots are being used to help other populations, such as the elderly and young children. However, there is very little research on either the experience of stress in teens, or the interactions between teens and robots. This presents a unique research opportunity in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI).
Our interdisciplinary team is working on three projects for Fall quarter: (1) design and development of robotic movement and haptics interfaces, (2) implementation and testing of intuitive social robot programming tools, and (3) building out and launching a website for data collection from teens and visualization of collected data.
The team is led by Elin Björling (Human-Centered Design and Engineering) and Maya Cakmak, (Computer Science and Engineering). For more information about Project EMAR, see our blog at blogs.uw.edu/EMAR.
Insomnia Chatbots
Chatbots are being utilized in novel ways to reach people when traditional therapeutic treatments might be expensive or less accessible. Many breast cancer survivors suffer from insomnia, which can be effectively treated through a type of therapy called Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). This DRG will focus on helping researchers in the School of Nursing evaluate the usability of a SMS-based chatbot being developed to deliver CBT to breast cancer survivors with insomnia. Individuals with experience recruiting for and conducting usability studies are especially encouraged to apply.
Faculty and staff involved: Kerryn Reding, a nurse and epidemiologist at the University of Washington School of Nursing, conducts research on outcomes of morbidity and mortality in breast cancer survivors. This includes a focus on lifestyle interventions involving innovative technology to reduce morbidities related to cardiovascular disease, sleep dysfunction, and exercise intolerance in breast cancer survivors. Ava Sazanami is a content strategist and user researcher focusing on creating accessible healthcare technology at the University of Washington. Elin Björling HCDE senior research scientist is the faculty sponsor.
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
SCAN Research Group: Improving usability of a home-based respiratory virus sample collection process for community surveillance of SARS-CoV-2
The Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN) study is a research initiative focused on community-level surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 and the development of pandemic-preparedness infrastructure. SCAN’s use of self-collected nasal specimens and remote enrollment processes for monitoring the spread of Covid-19 is an innovative method for increasing disease surveillance and testing capacity in a pandemic setting, especially in populations underrepresented in traditional clinical surveillance.
SCAN is looking for 2-5 students to assist with improving the accessibility, usability, and optimization of the SCAN research participant end-to-end experience as well as increase overall lab testing capacity. Activities will include evaluating the usability of the current SCAN process and messaging, identifying key areas of improvement, and assisting with the design and implementation of process and user experience improvements. This DRG will be run by Lincoln Pothan at the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine, with guidance from Elin Bjorling in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering.
Requirements
Usability testing experience
User research / UI experience / design
The meeting day/time per week will be determined by the group. We will have twice weekly team meetings for 30 min and other meetings may be established for specific tasks.
Project EMAR
Adolescents are subject to high levels of stress in their lives, resulting from school, relationships, and family life. Not surprisingly, school stress is most commonly reported as the biggest source of stress for teens. Therefore, accurately measuring and intervening to reduce teen stress is imperative to support this vulnerable population.
Social robots are being used to help other populations, such as the elderly and young children. However, there is very little research on either the experience of stress in teens, or the interactions between teens and robots. This presents a unique research opportunity in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI).
Our interdisciplinary team is working on three projects for Fall quarter: (1) design and development of robotic movement and haptics interfaces, (2) implementation and testing of intuitive social robot programming tools, and (3) building out and launching a website for data collection from teens and visualization of collected data.
The team is led by Elin Björling (Human-Centered Design and Engineering) and Maya Cakmak, (Computer Science and Engineering). For more information about Project EMAR, see our blog at blogs.uw.edu/EMAR.
Project RESeT: Relaxation Environment for Stress in Teens
Facilitators
- Elin Björling, HCDE, bjorling@uw.edu
- Jennifer Sonney, Family and Child Nursing, jsonney@uw.edu
- Sofia Rodriguez, HCDE Master’s student
Background
Today’s teens are suffering from increased stress and depression, impacting their mental and physical health. A great deal of stress stems from school and academics, thus we are working to design a self-administered VR station aimed to reduce student stress.
Our Focus
In order to provide an intervention tool that is successful in reducing stress in teens, we first must engage teens in the design of such a tool. Therefore, we use a participatory approach to human-centered design, specifically co-design, working with teens and using evidenced-based data at each state of the design process. We are currently in year two of the project and have a workflow involving rapid cycles of research, design and development, testing, and implementation.
Project EMAR: Hack-a-Bot for Evil
Facilitators
Elin Björling, HCDE, bjorling@uw.edu
Maya Cakmak, CSE mcakmak@cs.washington.edu
Simran Bhatia, iSchool, simran18@uw.edu
Our Focus
Project EMAR has designed a social robot specifically to help teens with managing and measuring stress. We plan to implement our robot in a local area high school in the Fall of 2020. However, it is imperative that we explore the ways in which our social robot may be abused or misused in the wild in order to design for unintended consequences. For this reason, we are conducting a public half-day hackathon at the end of Spring quarter. The hackathon will include teams of UW students collaborating with high school students to design a dangerous or unethical hack of our social robot.
Participation
We are looking for dedicated and enthusiastic UW students at all levels (Bachelors to Doctoral) to help with this project. As a team we will conduct background research, design and organize the hackathon’s event, recruit participants, mentor teams during the hackathon event, and even analyze hackathon data. Experience working with youth, outreach, design sprints, or hackathons is ideal.
For more information about Project EMAR, see our blog at blogs.uw.edu/EMAR.
Project RESeT: Relaxation Environment for Stress in Teens
Facilitators
Elin Björling, HCDE, bjorling@uw.edu
Jennifer Sonney, Family and Child Nursing, jsonney@uw.edu
Sofia Rodriguez, HCDE Master’s student
Background
Today’s teens are suffering from increased stress and depression, impacting their mental and physical health. A great deal of stress stems from school and academics, thus we are working to design a self-administered VR station aimed to reduce student stress.
Our Focus
In order to provide an intervention tool that is successful in reducing stress in teens, we first must engage teens in the design of such a tool. Therefore, we use a participatory approach to human-centered design, specifically co-design, working with teens and using evidenced-based data at each state of the design process. We are currently in year two of the project and have a workflow involving rapid cycles of research, design and development, testing, and implementation.
How you can participate
We are looking for those interested in VR/XR technical development - particularly with an interest or experience in the Unreal Engine gaming platform.
Project EMAR
Adolescents are subject to high levels of stress in their lives, resulting from school, relationships, and family life. Not surprisingly, school stress is most commonly reported as the biggest source of stress for teens. Therefore, accurately measuring and intervening to reduce teen stress is imperative to support this vulnerable population.
Social robots are being used to help other populations, such as the elderly and young children. However, there is very little research on either the experience of stress in teens, or the interactions between teens and robots. This presents a unique research opportunity in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI).
Our interdisciplinary team is working on three projects for Fall quarter: (1) design and development of robotic movement and haptics interfaces, (2) implementation and testing of intuitive social robot programming tools, and (3) building out and launching a website for data collection from teens and visualization of collected data.
For more information, see our blog at blogs.uw.edu/EMAR.
The team is led by Elin Björling (Human-Centered Design and Engineering) and Maya Cakmak, (Computer Science and Engineering).
Project RESeT: Relaxation Environment for Stress in Teens
Facilitators
Elin Björling, HCDE, bjorling@uw.edu
Jennifer Sonney, Family and Child Nursing, jsonney@uw.edu
Rachael Cicero, HCDE Master’s student rcicero@uw.edu
Background
Today’s teens are suffering from increased stress and depression, impacting their mental and physical health. A great deal of stress stems from school and academics, thus we are working to design a self-administered VR station aimed to reduce student stress.
Our Focus
In order to provide an intervention tool that is successful in reducing stress in teens, we first must engage teens in the design of such a tool. Therefore, we use a participatory approach to human-centered design, specifically co-design, working with teens and using evidenced-based data at each state of the design process. We are currently in year two of the project and have a workflow involving rapid cycles of research, design and development, testing, and implementation.
Human-Robotic Interaction DRG Team
Spring 2018
Adolescents are subject to high levels of stress in their lives, resulting from school, relationships, and family life. Not surprisingly, school stress is most commonly reported as the biggest source of stress for teens. Therefore, accurately measuring and intervening to reduce teen stress is imperative to support this vulnerable population.
Social robots are being used to help other populations, such as the elderly and young children. However, there is very little research on either the experience of stress in teens, or the interactions between teens and robots. This presents a unique research opportunity in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI).
Our interdisciplinary team has three DRGs for Spring, 2018. We are using participatory, human-centered design to: (1) continue in the development of our social robot, EMAR (2) conduct usability tests on our virtual reality robot designer game, and (3) begin initial design of a virtual reality environment to reduce teen stress. For more information, see our blog at www.blogs.uw.edu/EMAR.
The team is led by Elin Björling (Human-Centered Design and Engineering), Maya Cakmak, (Computer Science and Engineering), and Graduate Research Assistant, Alisa Kalagina (Computer Science and Engineering).
During Spring quarter, we are offering an interdisciplinary DRG to further develop two aspects of EMAR (1) customization of EMAR’s face to elicit the attribute of “calm” 2) social robot movements (using the robot Blossom from Cornell) to elicit a feeling of “calm.”
Interested students:
We currently have no openings for Spring quarter, but interested students should watch for openings for Fall, 2018.
Robot Designer (Virtual Reality Game) DRG Team
Spring 2018
Adolescents are subject to high levels of stress in their lives, resulting from school, relationships, and family life. Not surprisingly, school stress is most commonly reported as the biggest source of stress for teens. Therefore, accurately measuring and intervening to reduce teen stress is imperative to support this vulnerable population.
Social robots are being used to help other populations, such as the elderly and young children. However, there is very little research on either the experience of stress in teens, or the interactions between teens and robots. This presents a unique research opportunity in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI).
Our interdisciplinary team has three DRGs for Spring, 2018. We are using participatory, human-centered design to: (1) continue in the development of our social robot, EMAR (2) conduct usability tests on our virtual reality robot designer game, and (3) begin initial design of a virtual reality environment to reduce teen stress. For more information, see our blog at www.blogs.uw.edu/EMAR.
The team is led by Elin Björling (Human-Centered Design and Engineering) and Graduate Research Assistant, Ada Kim (iSchool).
During spring quarter, we will be conducting usability tests in the field (local high schools) to see how teens use our collaborative VR game to design robots. From that testing we will be continually iterating on the current VR game to improve engagement and performance.
Interested students
The DRG participants will meet weekly, on Fridays, 1:00-2:00pm. In addition, UW students will be expected to be available to conduct field work at local high schools, which typically occurs after school at 3:30-5pm. Days vary depending upon the school.
Virtual Relaxation Environment for Teens
Spring 2018
Adolescents are subject to high levels of stress in their lives, resulting from school, relationships, and family life. Not surprisingly, school stress is most commonly reported as the biggest source of stress for teens. Therefore, accurately measuring and intervening to reduce teen stress is imperative to support this vulnerable population.
Social robots are being used to help other populations, such as the elderly and young children. However, there is very little research on either the experience of stress in teens, or the interactions between teens and robots. This presents a unique research opportunity in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI).
Our interdisciplinary team has three DRGs for Spring, 2018. We are using participatory, human-centered design to: (1) continue in the development of our social robot, EMAR (2) conduct usability tests on our virtual reality robot designer game, and (3) begin initial design of a virtual reality environment to reduce teen stress. For more information, see our blog at www.blogs.uw.edu/EMAR.
The team is led by Elin Björling (Human-Centered Design and Engineering) and Jennifer Sonney (Department of Family and Child Nursing).
Spring quarter we will be conducting co-design sessions with teens and prototyping environments and activities in VR.
VR Stress Reduction: Co-Designing a Virtual Environment to Reduce Teen Stress
Winter 2018
Enrollment in this research group is at capacity.
Facilitators
Elin Björling, HCDE, bjorling@uw.edu
Jennifer Sonney, Family and Child Nursing, jsonney@uw.edu
Background
Today’s teens are suffering from increased stress and depression, impacting their mental and physical health. A great deal of stress stems from school and academics, thus we are working to design a self-serve VR station to reduce student stress.
Our Focus
In order to provide an intervention tool that is successful in reducing stress in teens, we first must engage teens in the design of such a tool. Therefore we will be using the methodology of human-centered design, specifically co-design, working with teens and using evidenced-based data at each state of the design process.
Our team
The team is led by Dr. Elin Björling (HCDE) a stress researcher who studies adolescents and Dr. Jennifer Sonney, (Family and Child Nursing) who studies health promotion interventions for children and teens.
Interested students
We are looking for a small number of dedicated, enthusiastic UW students at any levels (undergrad to doctoral) to join us to work with teens to design this virtual reality tool.
The DRG participants will meet weekly at a time that works for the team. In addition, design sessions with teens maybe be scheduled outside of our weekly meeting time.
You should apply if you are interested in design pedagogy, psychology, UX design, working with teens, and virtual reality.
Specifically, we are looking for students who have a combination of the following skills:
Deep understanding of the HCD design process
Outreach and/or co-design with teens
Educational design
Virtual reality experience and/or development
Project EMAR: Facilitating a High School Design Challenge
Winter 2018
Facilitators
Elin Björling, HCDE, bjorling@uw.edu
Emma Rose, UW Tacoma, ejrose@uw.edu
Background
Today’s teens will most likely be the first generation to spend a lifetime living and interacting with robots. Although there is a great deal of research in human-robot interaction, including focusing on specific age groups such as children and seniors, little work directly looks at teen-robot interaction.
Project EMAR is an NSF funded project using a human-centered approach to design and deploy an autonomous social robot to live in a high school. The focus of the robot is to help teens and schools understand and manage teen stress. Learn more about Project EMAR.
Our focus: Facilitating a design challenge
Building on our previous quarter where we designed a series of instructional videos on human-centered design, we are now launching the high school design challenge. This is a participatory design project where teens will prototype a robot to live in their school.
In Winter quarter, the DRG will conduct outreach education and support for 6 local high schools as their teams follow the HCD process in designing a robot prototype. DRG students will provide support to teams as they navigate the HCD process: developing prototypes, evaluating the emerging designs with users, and iterating based on their feedback.
The design challenge culminates in a showcase at UW on March 24, 2018 (3–5pm) where the student teams will present their designs to the public and a team of experts from academia and industry.
Our team
The team is led by Dr. Elin Björling, HCDE a stress researcher who studies adolescents and Dr. Emma Rose, UW Tacoma Assistant Professor in Writing Studies and UX researcher.
Interested students
Although we have students continuing from the Fall quarter DRG, we are looking for a small number of dedicated, enthusiastic UW students at any levels (undergrad to doctoral) to join us to help support the student teams. This project is open to students from both UW Seattle and UW Tacoma campuses.
The DRG participants will meet weekly. Seattle and Tacoma teams will meet on their respective campuses and participate in a weekly teleconference. In addition to the weekly meeting, DRG participants should anticipate going to visit local high schools 2-4 times during the quarter and spend time connecting with schools online (via email) when necessary.
You should apply if you are interested in design pedagogy, psychology, UX design, working with teens, and social robots.
Specifically, we are looking for students who have a combination of the following skills:
Deep understanding of the HCD design process
Outreach with teens
Educational design