Digital Support for Alzheimer’s Disease Caregivers
The number of informal caregivers who are caring for family members with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is rising dramatically. These caregivers have numerous mental and physical health problems associated with the burdens of care. In this project, we are developing a digital game to increase physical activity and social connections for the AD caregivers.
Experiential Learning Technologies for Family Fitness
We designed a sensor-based physical activity tracking tools to support healthy behaviors for children in low-income families. We work closely with families to target the application more directly at their needs while adding features to support “experiential learning”—the idea that reflecting on concrete past experiences can help people develop insights that guide their future behavior. This project received a 3-year grant from the National Science Foundation.
#MeToo: The Networked Disclosure Landscape of Twitter
Following a tweet from actress Alyssa Milano calling on women to share the phrase “me too” if they have been sexually harassed or assaulted, thousands of women disclosed experiences of sexual violence, sometimes for the first time, through the hashtag #MeToo. To understand the landscape painted by these disclosures and the effect of disclosing these experiences publicly, we study the conversational social network that emerged around the #MeToo.
Social Computing Supports for Youth Civic Engagement
This project is about designing technology tools with the aim of empowering teenagers to become health advocates to address health disparities in their communities. We have done participatory observations to understand the challenges that youth advocacy organizations face.
mHealth Systematic Review
There has been a proliferation of research examining how mobile health (mHealth) applications can encourage wellness. A growing focus of this work has been exploring how mHealth tools can promote healthy behaviors within vulnerable populations. We conducted a systematic review of such research, examining the design and impact of mHealth tools for low-socioeconomic individuals and racial/ethnic minority groups. Our findings highlight trends that can drive critically needed digital innovations in health promotion for populations that experience disproportionate barriers to wellness.
Community-Driven Technologies for Family Physical Activity Promotion
Sedentary living is one major contributing factor to childhood obesity; as such, interventions that help young children increase their physical activity levels are needed. Involving parents in these interventions is critical, given parents’ influence on children’s physical activity environments and the powerful impact they have as role models. The project seeks to increase physical activity within the family unit, that is, in both parents and young children.
Spaceship Launch: Designing a Collaborative Exergame for Families Saksono, H., Ranade, A., Kamarthi, G., Castaneda-Sceppa, C., Hoffman, J.A., Wirth, C. and Parker, A.G.. 2015. Spaceship Launch: Designing a Collaborative Exergame for Families. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, ACM (2015), 1776-1787.