Family informatics often uses shared data dashboards to promote awareness of each other’s health-related behaviors. However, these interfaces often stop short of providing families with needed guidance around how to improve family functioning and health behaviors. We consider the needs of family co-regulation with ADHD children to understand how in-home displays can support family well-being. We conducted three co-design sessions with each of eight families with ADHD children who had used a smartwatch for self-tracking. Results indicate that situated displays could nudge families to jointly use their data for learning and skill-building. Accommodating individual needs and preferences when family members are alone is also important, particularly to support parents exploring their co-regulation role, and assisting children with data interpretation and guidance on self and co-regulation. We discuss opportunities for displays to nurture multiple intents of use, such as joint or independent use, while potentially connecting with external expertise.

Challenges associated with ADHD affect children’s daily routines and response to environmental stimuli, and support from parents is helpful in managing and overcoming behavior regulation challenges. Positive reinforcement is increasingly integrated into family technologies for teaching regulation skills, but typically support specific co-located activities. To better understand how technology can support co-regulation within families with ADHD children, we deployed CoolTaco, a smartwatch and phone system to support collaboration in creating tasks, gaining points for achieving them, and redeeming rewards. Ten families with ADHD children used CoolTaco in their daily routines. By qualitatively analyzing family interviews and usage logs, we find that smartwatches can help provide pervasive regulation support to children, but the division across devices and parent-child roles interfere with developing independence. We discuss how technology should support co-regulation while also fostering future self-regulation, such as by guiding children in goal setting and helping them reflect on progress and achievements.

Access to and understanding one's medical history is crucial to maintaining long-term care. As adolescents and young adults childhood cancer survivors age, they must transition and transfer their health care from their pediatric to an adult care institution. In this study, we provide empirical evidence reporting on the after-cancer treatment experiences of childhood cancer survivors through their transition. We report findings from 24 semi-structured interviews with adolescent and young adult cancer survivors participating in a childhood cancer survivorship program that prepares them for adult care. Our findings reveal three parts of their after-cancer treatment experience: the assumption of responsibility for their complex care needs and medical information and the overall transfer and maintenance of the continuity of their care to an adult clinician. Our findings suggest that survivors may play an essential yet unrecognized role in the patient hand-off. Thus, we introduce patient-mediate handoffs and suggest design opportunities.

Adolescent and young adult childhood cancer survivors experience health complications, late or long-term biomedical complications, as well as economic and psychosocial challenges that can have a lifelong impact on their quality-of-life. As childhood cancer survivors transition into adulthood, they must learn to balance their identity development with demands of everyday life and the near- and long-term consequences of their cancer experience, all of which have implications for the ways they use existing technologies and the design of novel technologies. In this study, we interviewed 24 childhood cancer survivors and six caregivers about their cancer survivorship experiences. The results of our analysis indicate that the challenges of transitioning to adulthood as a cancer survivor necessitate the development and management of multiple societal, relational, and personal boundaries, processes that social computing technologies can help or hinder. This paper contributes to the empirical understanding of adolescent and young adult cancer survivors’ social experiences. We further contribute sociotechnical design provocations for researchers, designers, and community members to support survivors.

Play is an essential part of the human experience and can be found throughout the lifespan. While play has long been of interest to the HCI community, research has often focused on the technologies supporting game play, the potential outcomes of play (e.g., skill-building, health improvements), or play among children. This paper explores what play looks like in online communities that are not specifically game-based and consist primarily of adults. From online ethnographic work of the ARMY (i.e., Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth), fandom of the South Korean musical group BTS, we explore how BTS and ARMY collaboratively construct a playful social environment using various social media platforms. A contribution of this work is to expand our conceptualization of how adults create playful places that are not specifically game-based and highlights the role of socio-technical systems in their community building.

The video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons (AC:NH) launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and families turned to it as a game to play together during isolation. This interview study of 27 families considered how families used AC:NH for Joint Media Engagement (JME), where family members engage with media content together, interacting with each other and bringing additional meaning to the experience. We find that the design of AC:NH well facilitates Takeuchi and Stevens's six conditions for productive JME. Furthermore, we identify and discuss additional conditions that contribute to productive JME: variety and flexibility in play styles that amplify mutual engagement, support for disentrained play that enables new forms of "joint" engagement, and scaffolding for affective interactions. This is followed by an exploration of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected JME. We conclude with design implications for building games to support productive JME for families through design for persistent shared spaces, flexible in-game progress, and social life simulation.

Mainstream location-based games (LBGs) highlight three foundations-exercise, exploration, and social interaction-which were hugely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This genre has already had access issues depending on the player's region, identity, ability, and technology, which the pandemic also amplified. Thus, the pandemic provided a unique opportunity to re-imagine the design of LBGs to preserve player benefits while challenging these foundations. We conducted a two-week diary study with 11 LBG players coping with difficult life circumstances, followed by remote co-design sessions. Participants continued to play primarily to maintain community connection while adjusting the mode of socialization, finding meaning through virtual exploration, and support mental health and personal growth. Participants discussed ways to enhance the experience by expanding the range of physical activities during social distancing, reimagining proximity-based social interactions, and exploring via social construction of places while expanding beyond how the three foundations are currently supported in LBGs.

Leveraging existing popular games such as Pokémon GO to promote health can engage people in healthy activities without sacrificing gaming appeal. However, little is known about what potential tensions arise from incorporating new health-related features to already existing and popular games and how to resolve those tensions from players' perspectives. In this paper, we identify design tensions surrounding the appeals of Pokémon GO, perspectives on different health needs, and mobile health technologies. By conducting surveys and design workshops with 20 avid Pokémon GO players, we demonstrate four design tensions: (1) diverse goals and rewards vs. data accuracy, (2) strong bonds between players and characters vs. gaming obsession, (3) collaborative play vs. social anxiety, and (4) connection of in-real-life experiences with the game vs. different individual contexts. We provide design implications to resolve these tensions in Pokémon GO and discuss how to extend our findings to the broader context of health promotion in location-based games.

The majority of teenagers experience high levels of stress and technology can help increase access and engagement for mental health support. While it is important to incorporate teens' input in designing for their mental health, it is challenging to involve teens in design research due to constraints in access and time burden on teens. Researchers have feasibly used the method of Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) to involve adults in design research on private online groups. In my dissertation, I aim to use the ARC method to (1) understand the design needs of teens and clinicians to support stress management and (2) develop and evaluate technology probes based on evidence-based support for stress management. My work will contribute to the research and design of future technologies to scaffold teens in learning healthy coping strategies for their mental wellbeing.

Teenagers have unique needs for mental wellbeing that can be supported by interactive technologies. Teens also have valuable input in the design of technology, so designers and researchers must seek new methods for involving them in the design process. We enrolled 23 unacquainted teenagers in an Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) study consisting of two private online groups. Teens participated in 10 weekly design activities on stress management across three months. We found that teens sought support from technology tailored to their perception of control in stressful contexts, developing sense of self, and varying social needs, including asking for no intervention from others. Teens appreciated that the ARC design experience allowed for flexibility in participation and supported selective disclosure. However, there were limited interactions between teenagers online. Reflecting on our study, we provide design implications for tools to support teenager mental health and discuss how the ARC method can be adapted for designing with teenagers.

Raiding is a format in digital gaming that requires groups of people to collaborate and/or compete for a common goal. In 2017, the raiding format was introduced in the location-based mobile game Pokémon GO, which offers a mixed reality experience to friends and strangers coordinating for in-person raids. To understand this technology-mediated social phenomenon, we conducted over a year of participant observations, surveys with 510 players, and interviews with 25 players who raid in Pokémon GO. Using the analytical lens of Arrow, McGrath, and Berdahl's theory of small groups as complex systems, we identify global, local, and contextual dynamics in location-based raiding that support and challenge ad-hoc group formation in real life. Based on this empirical and theoretical understanding, we discuss implications to design for transparency, social affordances, and bridging gaps between global and contextual dynamics for increased positive and inclusive community interactions.

Historically, tattoos have been perceived as a mark of deviant behavior from the perspective of Western medicine. However, cancer survivor tattoos are one of many strategies used to recover from the trauma of cancer diagnosis and treatment. In this study, we seek to understand the significance of these tattoos in the context of survivorship. We interviewed 19 cancer survivors about their survivor tattoos, exploring the benefits of designing, discussing, and displaying these tattoos as elements of emotional recovery post-cancer. We found that the act of designing a survivor tattoo facilitated all three elements of post-traumatic growth processes, including: (1) changed self-perception; (2) changed sense of relationships with others; and (3) changed philosophy of life. Through participants' lived experiences, we discuss information about emotions, health, and recovery encoded in tattoos, and provide implications for tools to help future cancer survivors recover from the trauma of diagnosis and treatment.

To successfully function within a team, students must develop a range of skills for communication, organization, and conflict resolution. For students on the autism spectrum, these skills mirror the social, communicative, and cognitive experiences that can often be challenging for these learners. Since instructors and students collaborate using a mix of technology, we investigated the technology needs of neurodiverse teams comprised of autistic and non-autistic students. We interviewed seven autistic students and five employees of disability services in higher education. Our analysis focused on technology stakeholder values, stages of small-group development, and Social Translucence -- a model for online collaboration highlighting principles of visibility, awareness, and accountability. Despite motivation to succeed, neurodiverse students have difficulty expressing individual differences and addressing team conflict. To support future design of technology for neurodiverse teams, we propose: (1) a design space and design concepts including collaborative and affective computing tools, and (2) extending Social Translucence to account for student and group identities.

In a neurodiverse team, such as one comprised of students with autism and neurotypical students, social interaction and cognitive styles differ. We used a Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) approach to explore the role of technology in supporting the diverse values of neurodiverse teams. We conducted interviews with higher education disability services staff, followed by interviews with students with autism. We analyzed the students' values using the Q-Methodology. We found that key values of students with autism are: freedom from stigma, individual comfort, social comfort, social connection, and team cohesion. Through a VSD technical investigation, we found that current collaboration and affective technologies focus on supporting social connection and team cohesion. However, these technologies tend to not enable tailoring the user experience for the individual comfort that can benefit autistic users.

Many health care providers, with a variety of trainings, counsel clients on quitting smoking on a day-to-day basis. In their clinical practice, they draw from and adapt guidelines and research-based strategies to fit individual client situations and challenges. Designers of technologies to support quitting smoking can learn from these real world practices to create tools that better adapt to individual differences. We present findings from interviews with 28 providers with diverse experiences in smoking cessation counselling. Through analysis of their individualization strategies, challenges, and perceptions of technology, we find that providers: (1) individualize context appropriate coping strategies by involving clients in brainstorming, (2) emphasize the need to support nicotine withdrawal in clients, (3) mitigate social triggers and mediate social support for clients, and (4) need to navigate dependencies with other providers for managing medications and comorbid health conditions of clients. With this empirical understanding, we extend the discussion on the design of technology to support quitting smoking, highlight current barriers to individualization, and suggest future opportunities to address these barriers.

Though prior work shows parents worry about screen media experiences displacing physical activity and time outdoors, this research does not account for location-based mobile games like Pokémon GO, which specifically facilitate outdoor activity. To fill this gap in the research, we surveyed and interviewed parents to understand (1) their values and perceptions of this type of gameplay and (2) how they co-play Pokémon GO with their children. Our findings provide empirical evidence that, in addition to appreciating the increased exercise and time outdoors, parents valued how play led to family bonding experiences. Furthermore, some traditional concerns about screen time persisted in this context, and new concerns about safety in real-world environments emerged. Parents mitigated these concerns with rules and gameplay choices, such as maintaining control of the mobile device, to ensure children were safe. This work contributes an empirical understanding of families as co-users of technology and offers a generative lens to study and design for joint media engagement among family members where gameplay differs from normative notions of screen time.

Barriers to accessing mental health care leave the majority of people with mental illnesses without professional care. Peer support has been shown to address gaps in care, and could scale to wider audiences through technology. But technology design for mental health peer support lags far behind tools for individuals and clinicians. To identify opportunities for design, we interviewed 18 people with a diverse range of mental illnesses about their use of technology for peer support, and invited them to design technologies that could improve their experience of peer support. We found that technology could enhance peer support for mental health by: (1) matching peers on similarities beyond diagnosis; (2) enhancing accessibility; and (3) proactively mitigating risk through training and intervention. We discuss these findings in the context of the broad peer support literature, and present design opportunities for making mental health peer support tools empowering, accessible, and safe.

We report on a nine-month-long observational study with teachers and students with autism in a classroom setting. We explore the impact of motion-based activities on students' behavior. In particular, we examine how the playful gaming activity impacted students' engagement, peer-directed social behaviors, and motor skills. We document the effectiveness of a collaborative game in supporting initiation of social activities between peers, and in eliciting novel body movements that students were not observed to produce outside of game play. We further identify the positive impact of game play on overall classroom engagement. This includes an "audience effect" whereby non-playing peers direct initiations to those playing the game and vice versa, and a positive "spillover" effect of the activity on students' social behavior outside of game play. We identify key considerations for designing and deploying motion-based activities for children with autism in a classroom setting.