Momentary Stressor Logging and Reflective Visualizations: Implications for Stress Management with WearablesCommercial wearables from Fitbit, Garmin, and Whoop have recently introduced real-time notifications based on detecting changes in physiological responses indicating potential stress. In this paper, we investigate how these new capabilities can be leveraged to improve stress management. We developed a smartwatch app, a smartphone app, and a cloud service, and conducted a 100-day field study with 122 participants who received prompts triggered by physiological responses several times a day. They were asked whether they were stressed, and if so, to log the most likely stressor. Each week, participants received new visualizations of their data to self-reflect on patterns and trends. Participants reported better awareness of their stressors, and self-initiating fourteen kinds of behavioral changes to reduce stress in their daily lives. Repeated self-reports over 14 weeks showed reductions in both stress intensity (in 26,521 momentary ratings) and stress frequency (in 1,057 weekly surveys).2024SNSameer Neupane et al.University of MemphisMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesSleep & Stress MonitoringCHI
The "Conversation" about Loss: Understanding How Chatbot Technology was Used in Supporting People in Grief.While conversational agents have traditionally been used for simple tasks such as scheduling meetings and customer service support, recent advancements have led researchers to examine their use in complex social situations, such as to provide emotional support and companionship. For mourners who could be vulnerable to the sense of loneliness and disruption of self-identity, such technology offers a unique way to help them cope with grief. In this study, we explore the potential benefits and risks of such a practice, through semi-structured interviews with 10 mourners who actively used chatbots at different phases of their loss. Our findings indicated seven approaches in which chatbots were used to help people cope with grief, by taking the role of listener, acting as a simulation of the deceased, romantic partner, friend and emotion coach. We then highlight how interacting with the chatbots impacted mourners’ grief experience, and conclude the paper with further research opportunities.2023AXAnna Xygkou et al.University of KentConversational ChatbotsMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsCHI
Mapping Design Spaces for Teaching Audience Participation in Game Live StreamingLive streaming sites such as Twitch offer new ways for remote audiences to engage with and affect gameplay. While research has considered how audiences interact with games, HCI lacks clear demarcations of the potential design spaces for audience participation. This paper introduces and validates a theme map of audience participation in game live streaming for student designers. This map is a lens that reveals relationships among themes and sub-themes of Agency, Pacing, and Community---to explore, reflect upon, describe, and make sense of emerging, complex design spaces. We are the first to articulate such a lens, and to provide a reflective tool to support future research and education. To create the map, we perform a thematic analysis of design process documents of a course on audience participation for Twitch, using this analysis to visually coordinate relationships between important themes. To help student designers analyze and reflect on existing experiences, we supplement the theme map with a set of mapping procedures. We validate the applicability of our map with a second set of student designers, who found the map useful as a comparative and reflective tool.2021ASAlina Striner et al.Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)Multiplayer & Social GamesLive Streaming & Spectating ExperienceCHI
Designing Interactive Scaffolds to Encourage Reflection on Peer FeedbackFeedback is a key element of project-based learning, but only if students reflect on and learn from the feedback they receive. Students often struggle to deeply engage with feedback, whether due to lack of confidence, time, or skill. This work seeks to identify challenges that make reflecting on feedback difficult for students, and to design possible solutions for supporting reflection. Through observing two university game design courses, our research found that without concrete reflection strategies, students tended to be attracted to feedback that looks useful, but does not necessarily them move forward. When we introduced three different reflection scaffolds to support students, we found that the most effective approach promoted interactive learning by allowing time for self-reflection before team reflection, offering time limits, providing activities for feedback prioritization, helping teams align their goals, and equalizing team member participation. We present design guidelines for future systems to support reflection on feedback.2020ACAmy Cook et al.Collaborative Learning & Peer TeachingDIS
Assessing Severity of Pulmonary Obstruction from Respiration Phase-Based Wheeze-Sensing Using Mobile SensorsObstructive pulmonary diseases cause limited airflow from the lung and severely affect patients' quality of life. Wheeze is one of the most prominent symptoms for them. High requirements imposed by traditional diagnosis methods make regular monitoring of pulmonary obstruction challenging, which hinders the opportunity of early intervention and prevention of significant exacerbation. In this work, we explore the feasibility of developing a mobile sensor-based system as a convenient means of assessing the severity of pulmonary obstruction via respiration phase-based symptomatic wheeze sensing. We conduct a 131 subjects' (91 patients and 40 healthy) study for the detection (F1: 87.96%) and characterization (F1: 79.47%) of wheeze. Subsequently, we develop novel wheeze metrics, which show a significant correlation (Pearson's correlation: -0.22, p-value: 0.024) with standard spirometry measure of pulmonary obstruction severity. This work takes a principal step towards the unobtrusive assessment of pulmonary condition from mobile sensor interactions.2020SCSoujanya Chatterjee et al.University of MemphisTelemedicine & Remote Patient MonitoringBiosensors & Physiological MonitoringCHI
CFar: A Tool to Increase Communication, Productivity, and Review Quality in Collaborative Code ReviewCollaborative code review has become an integral part of the collaborative design process in the domain of software development. However, there are well-documented challenges and limitations to collaborative code review---for instance, high-quality code reviews may require significant time and effort for the programmers, whereas faster, lower-quality reviews may miss code defects. To address these challenges, we introduce CFar, a novel tool design for extending collaborative code review systems with an automated code reviewer whose feedback is based on program-analysis technologies. To validate this design, we implemented CFar as a production-quality tool and conducted a mixed-method empirical evaluation of the tool usage at Microsoft. Through the field deployment of our tool and a laboratory study of professional programmers using the tool, we produced several key findings showing that CFar enhances communication, productivity, and review quality in human--human collaborative code review.2018AHAustin Z Henley et al.University of MemphisOpen-Source Collaboration & Code ReviewPrototyping & User TestingCHI