Conducting Research at the Intersection of HCI and Health: Building and Supporting Teams with Diverse Expertise to Increase Public Health Impact
Research at the intersection of human-computer interaction/human-centered design (HCI/HCD) and health is increasingly done by collaborative cross-disciplinary teams. The need for cross-disciplinary teams arises from the interdisciplinary nature of the work itself—with the need for expertise in a health discipline, experimental design, statistics, and computer science, in addition to HCI/HCD. This work can also increase innovation, transfer of knowledge across fields, and have a higher impact on communities. To succeed at a collaborative project, researchers must effectively form and maintain a team that has the right expertise, integrate research perspectives and work practices, align individual and team goals, and secure funding to support the research. However, successfully operating as a team has been challenging for HCI/HCD and health researchers, and can be limited due to a lack of training, shared vocabularies, lack of institutional incentives, support from funding agencies, and more; which significantly inhibits their impact.
This workshop aims to draw on the wealth of individual experiences in health project team collaboration across the CHI community and beyond. By bringing together different stakeholders involved in HCI health research, together, we will identify needs experienced during interdisciplinary HCI and health collaborations. We will identify existing practices and success stories for supporting team collaboration and increasing HCI capacity in health research. We aim for participants to leave our workshop with a toolbox of methods to tackle future team challenges, a community of peers who can strive for more effective teamwork, and feeling positioned to make the health impact they wish to see through their work.
Read the full workshop proposal.
Call for participation
Researchers have started to identify challenges and gaps in developing research programs and projects at the intersection of human computer interaction/human centered design (HCI/HCD) and health. This workshop aims to bring together stakeholders in this research space to articulate a research agenda to enhance practices for addressing such gaps. We invite position papers that address prompts such as:
- What challenges have you encountered while working in cross-disciplinary multi-stakeholder teams on projects at the intersection of HCI/HCD and health? What strategies have you discovered that have been effective at dealing with these challenges (e.g., in building, starting, or maintaining collaborations)?
- What experiences do you have developing cross-disciplinary research team capabilities for engaging in HCI/HCD, as they plan, launch, or work to sustain projects?
- How do you navigate forming a cross-disciplinary partnership involving both HCI/HCD and health scholars, versus when do you try to increase the capability of a team in the other field?
If you are a scholar at the beginning of your work at the intersection of HCI/HCD and health, we invite you to describe the questions you have, as well as incentives and barriers to have encountered, as you plan or begin work at the intersection of HCI/HCD.
Submissions
Position papers should be submitted though this form, be written in language approachable to people working across fields, follow guidelines for accessible PDFs, and be under 1,000 words (any format). Selected participants will be a diverse group including faculty, students, practitioners, researchers from relevant fields, and those who have done substantial work in the field, alongside those interested in becoming involved but who have not yet made a significant contribution. Accepted submissions will be shared with other workshop attendees. At least one author must participate in 1. the remote workshop (date TBD, expected around last week of April ) and/or 2. the in-person workshop, and must register for at least one day of the conference. The date of the remote workshop will be chosen to support the attendance of the accepted submissions for remote participation.
If guidance regarding the format or scope of a submission would be helpful, please reach out to Elena Agapie (eagapie@uci.edu), Tricia Aung (taung@uw.edu) or any of the organizers.
Important Dates
Deadline to submit: February 5 anywhere on Earth, priority deadline, with applications received after this deadline reviewed on a space-available basis. (reviewing in 2 weeks after)
Virtual workshop: Date TBD, expected around last week of April, will be chosen to support the attendance of the accepted submissions for remote participation.
In-person workshop at CHI: Sunday, May 12th.
Organizers
Elena Agapie, PhD – Assistant Professor, UC Irvine. She studies and designs technologies that draw on health evidence-based interventions in ways that fit with people’s lived experiences. Her research also identifies challenges and opportunities for collaboration at the intersection of HCI and Health
Ravi Karkar, PhD – Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research focuses on designing, developing, and evaluating tools that can enable people to gather data and interpret personal aspects of their medical
condition in the context of their day-to-day lives.
Tricia Aung, MSPH, MS – PhD student, University of Washington. Cultural and contextual adaptations to design methods for improving public health in low- and middle-income countries, and advancing the intersection of implementation science and HCD/HCI.
Aaron Lyon, PhD – Professor, University of Washington. Improving the accessibility and effectiveness of community-based health services, redesigning mental health interventions (e.g., psychotherapies) to improve their adoption potential, and developing implementation strategies to support innovation adoption and use.
Sean Munson, PhD – Professor, University of Washington. Designing and evaluating health interventions, with a focus on using personal data to understand one’s health, individually and in collaborations with family, peers, and experts.
Katie Osterhage, MMS – Research Scientist at the University of Washington’s ALACRITY Center. She began her career in global health; recent areas of work include health information management among older adults and access
to medication treatment for Opioid Use Disorder.
Eleanor Burgess, PhD – Service Design Researcher, Chief Experience Office, Elevance Health. Digital mental health and usage of AI tools including how people use technology to self-manage and maintain wellness and how people
make sense of health information, make decisions, and track their health and well-being.
Munya Joel Chinguwa – Senior HCD Designer, HCDExchange. Leads and implements design work within the Global South focused on Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health (AYSRH), currently pivoting to
Global Health.
Andrea Graham, PhD – Assistant Professor & Co-Director, Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Designing, optimizing, and implementing digital mental and behavioral health interventions.
Pedja Klasnja, PhD – Associate Professor, University of Michigan. His research focuses on the development and evaluation of technologies for health behavior change and maintenance. In recent years, he has been focusing on
just-in-time adaptive interventions, digital interventions that use AI algorithms to personalize intervention provision to maximize intended health outcomes and minimize user burden.
Terika McCall, PhD, MPH, MBA– Assistant Professor, Yale University. Inclusive design and usability testing of digital health tools for diverse populations. Understanding the acceptability of accessing mental health services and
resources through use of digital mental health tools.
Francisco Nunes, PhD – Senior Researcher at Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, concerned with understanding self-care and designing self-care technologies. He has led four consortia, of research and industry partners, to create healthcare technologies that would align with existing practices and appropriately address existing needs
For more information, contact Elena Agapie, eagapie@uci.edu, or any of the workshop organizers.