2020 Year In Review: The Health and Happiness Design Lab

I started this lab in 2019 with Diva Smriti (my first PhD student at Drexel) as I started my position with Drexel. The reason why I named our lab Health and Happiness was to convey that ultimately the goal of improving health, or anything in life, is to be happy. We may hyperfocus on improving health outcomes, which potentially can result in overlooking losing other important things, such as happiness. Happiness is an ambitiously broad concept, however. Instead of trying to define it and use it as an outcome, we just started doing things that are small steps instead, while keeping in mind that our ultimate goal should not be defined by an outcome metric that only reflects one side of the party. So here it goes, the small steps. And old steps that made it into the first finish line.

Here, I celebrate our accomplishments (a.k.a. “Small Steps”). And most importantly, I celebrate working with people who have engaged with our lab and contributed their time and effort into building small steps together.

In 2020, we had 6 journal publications, 2 full conference papers with one receiving an honorable mention award, 2 perspective articles, and 3 work-in-progress abstracts. We submitted 2 large grants to NSF and NIH ($1.5M, multi-million), 1 industry grant ($150K), and 4 pilot research grants. I am excited to see where they will *all* end up.

Of the published papers, the most recent one that just went under the submission of final proof discusses how researchers can use the opportunity of research ethics regulation process and go beyond ‘paperwork’ to assess risks of technology design (j23). This article was a follow-up to an interview study with Emilee Rader on U.S. universities’ IRB members on their risk perceptions on using digital technologies (c21). This work also led me to be connected with the Human Research Committee at APA, and eventually joining them as of January, 2020. We are now putting together a grant to educate university students in conducting human research.

Laurie Buis, a current JMIR mHealth and uHealth editor, myself, and Gabriela Marcu wrote a perspective piece on the common shortcomings in conducting user-centered design by distilling years of our experiences in designing and evaluating technologies using user-centered design and reviewing grants and papers (j22). This work was born over lunch with Laurie, while we were serving on an NSF panel some years ago. While we reflected on the common features that may get researchers to be ‘dinged’ while being reviewed for their grant proposal, this article was born.

The work that was done around 2015 that continued to be “in progress” mainly due to my family and work transitions over those years have finally published (j17, j21, j20). This was possible thanks to the people who stuck around with me during those hard transitions: Bum Chul Kwon, who gladly took the lead in bringing the paper back to life; Lisa Kopf, who also went through a similar trajectory as mine as a female academic dealing with two-body problems; Sun Young Park, one of the most responsible and dedicated researchers I’ve known; and Sid Ambulkar, an amazing undergraduate student researcher I’ve ever met at UCSD who is now at Northwestern as a medical student. Sid is also working on another paper with Diva.

Minjin Rheu and Ji Youn Shin from Michigan State helped to put the foundation to building my new research trajectory in conversational agents through their systematic reviews of the literature, which identified various design requirements of conversational agents (j18). Ji Youn examined user reviews of Amazon Alexa Skills to identify a design heuristics framework for conversational agents (c20), which won an honorable mention. The framework applies and expands on Nielsen and Norman’s Ten Usability Heuristics, which has been mainly developed and used for more traditional user interfaces, such as interfaces that depend on clicks and touches, to suggest design heuristics for voice user interfaces. Diva is continuing to use this heuristic framework to evaluate conversational agent apps in dementia that are on the market (p14).

We also had three work-in-progress posters on developing and user-testing a conversational agent that supports healthy eating (TAMICA), reviewing conversational agent skills in dementia, and reviewing technology use papers’ reporting of older adult participants’ age groups. We organized a symposium at the Gerontological Society of America, presented a workshop paper, and published one book chapter on designing healthcare workflow. And for work-in-progress, you may see frequent names that started to appear — Rose Ann DiMaria-Ghalili, an Associate Dean of Interprofessional Research and Development at the College of Nursing and Health Professions (CNHP) at Drexel University, Laura Gitlin, the Dean of CNHP, and Justine Sefcik, a rising star and an NIH K award recipient at Drexel who also worked with George Demiris as a postdoctoral mentor when she was at U Penn. You will continue to see their names in perhaps next year or the years after in this lab’s future Year In Reviews.

I’ve also had the opportunity to work with several amazing students over the summer. Emily Schramm, a medical student at Drexel, with Kristine Mulhorn (Department Chair of Health Administration at CNHP), Chris Yang (Director of the Masters Program in Data Science), and Shushi Yoshinaga (the founder and creative director of Y Design) studied the prevalence of ageism on Twitter and how we may educate the public on the rising ageist messages on social media. Nishtha Gupta, another medical student at Drexel, with George Demiris conducted content analysis to identify how laugh and humor was used in therapist-patient conversations, so we can gain lessons on how to design effective therapeutic chatbots. One undergraduate student Elizabeth Ominsky from Cornell University’s Information Science worked to identify personalization design features in conversational agent applications on the market. Bogeum Choi at UNC-Chapel Hill, joined us with Heejun Kim now at the University of North Texas, to analyze Youtube videos on college students and mental health to understand how videos can be used as a support mechanism. This work built on Eugenia Chan’s independent study project for her Masters in health informatics program at Drexel.

Rahil Rathod, a Masters student in the Information Management program in our college, joined our lab and contributed to redesigning the outer piece of TAMICA, a conversational agent that Mujib Munif (a PhD student working with Jake Williams) built using open-source software, and to investigating how privacy controls are set up in chatbot development platforms. Nadien Zerban, an excelling undergraduate student at Drexel, has assisted Diva on reviewing dementia skills and analyzed pilot data for understanding how researchers have reported age groups of older adults. Nadien is an example of the reward that faculty often talks about — where you teach a course, and there is this one student who is inspired by the course and joins your lab and does amazing work.

Before we end, I am excited to introduce my new PhD student, Lu Wang, an applied psychology trained researcher from Beijing Normal University interested in weaving natural language processing with user experience research. Lu joined Drexel this fall of 2020, virtually from China, due to the pandemic. But Lu already has contributed to the grants we are writing and submitted a workshop position paper and is working on several journal articles. We meet weekly at 7am eastern time over Zoom, because that’s the earliest I can meet and the latest she can meet. It takes a village, and timezone match, to make work happen.

Like we witnessed from this year’s accomplishments, much of our work takes years to be published, recognized, or applied. You will see names that have not appeared on this year’s publications that suddenly appear in next year’s accomplishments. That’s not because we somehow magically publish together that year, but because there are many names I have not mentioned here whom I’m working with to make the small steps together:

Girijia Kaimal, Arun Ramakrishnan, Wei Peng, Annie Kao, Melody Schiaffino, Zhan Zhang, Jade Jackson, Jana Hirsch, Sangy Panicker, the Human Research Committee of APA, Alex Poole, Mat Kelly, Erjia Yan, Aleksandra Sarcevic, Kapil Dandekar, Elizabeth Hassrick, Anup Das, and the community leaders of Philadelphia: Reverend Mary Moore, Pastor Paul Thomas, and Reverend Elisa King.

I can’t wait to show the world what an amazing effort we have been putting together in the past year and a half since the lab started.

Here’s a toast to everyone for muddling through 2020, finding our own ways to seek health and happiness, whether it is through friends, family, work, or small steps.

References

j23. Huh-Yoo, J., Kadri, R. & Buis, L.R. (2020). IRBs and Ethics Reviews in Research: Go-ing Beyond the Paperwork. IEEE Pervasive Computing, In Press

j22. Buis, L.R., Huh-Yoo, J., & Marcu, G. (2020). Common Shortcomings in Applying User-Centered Design for Digital Health. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 19, 45–49.

j21. Kwon BC, VanDam C, Chiuve SE, Choi HW, Entler P, Tan PN, Huh-Yoo J. Improving Heart Disease Risk Through Quality-Focused Diet Logging: Pre-Post Study of a Diet Quality Tracking App. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2020;8(12):e21733

j20. L. Kopf* and J. Huh-Yoo A User-Centered Design Approach to Developing a Voice Monitoring System for Disorder Prevention. J Voice. 2020 Nov 11:S0892–1997(20)30406–9. doi: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2020.10.015. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33189486.

j19. E. Chiauzzi, A. Clayton, J. Huh-Yoo. Videoconferencing-Based Telemental Health: Important Questions for the COVID-19 Era from Clinical and Patient-Centered Perspectives. JMIR Ment Health. Theme Issue 2020: COVID-19 and Mental Health: Impact and Interventions. 2020 Dec 8;7(12):e24021. doi: 10.2196/24021. PMID: 33180739.

j18. MJ Rheu, J Shin, W Peng, J Huh-Yoo. (2021) Systematic Review: Trust-Building Factors and Implications for Conversational Agent Design, International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 37:1, 81–96,DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2020.1807710

j17. S. Park, N. Andalibi, Y. Zou, S. Ambulkar, J. Huh-Yoo. Understanding Students’ Mental Wellbeing Challenges on University Campus: An Interview Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research Formative Research. 2020 Mar 5;4(3):e15962. doi: 10.2196/15962. PubMed PMID: 32134393; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7082737.

j16. Bi C, Xing G, Hao T, Hao T, Huh-Yoo J, Peng W, Ma M, Chang X. FamilyLog: Monitoring Family Mealtime Activities by Mobile Devices. IEEE Trans Mob Comput. 2020;19(8):1818-1830.doi:10.1109/TMC.2019.2916357

c21. J. Huh-Yoo, E. Rader. It’s the Wild, Wild West: Lessons Learned From IRB Members’ Risk Perceptions Toward Digital Research Data. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 2020 May 28;4(CSCW1):1–22.

c20. JY. Shin, J. Huh-Yoo, Designing Everyday Conversational Agents for Managing Health and Wellness: A Study of Alexa Skills Review, in: EAI Pervasive Health, 2020. In Press. Honorable Mention.

p14. Smriti, D., DiMaria-Ghalili, R.A., Gitlin, L.N., Sarcevic, A., Yan, E., Huh-Yoo, J. (2020) Information Quality Assessment Framework for Online Dementia Care Resources. Symposium presentation. Innov Aging. 2020 Dec 16;4(Suppl 1):823. doi: 10.1093/geroni/igaa057.3003. PMCID: PMC7742543.

p13. Choi, H., DiMaria-Ghalili, R., Kelly, M., Poole, A., Yan, E., Huh-Yoo, J. (2020) Older Adults and Technology Use: A Systematic Literature Review. Innov Aging. 2020 Dec 16;4(Suppl 1):823. doi: 10.1093/geroni/igaa057.3004. PMCID: PMC7743231.

W06. Sefcik, J. S. & Huh-Yoo, J. (2020) Technology Use of Older Adults and Caregivers: Discoveries and Opportunities for Improvement. (Symposium Chair: Sefcik, J. S., Discussant: Huh-Yoo, J.) Innov Aging. 2020 Dec 16;4(Suppl 1):822. doi: 10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2999. PMCID: PMC7743550.

rw12. D. Smriti, Huh-Yoo, J. (2020, April 25–30). TAMICA: Tailorable Motivational Interviewing Conversational Agent. ACM CHI Workshop on Conversational AI in Healthcare. Hawaii, United States. https://chi2020.acm.org

b02. M. Ozkaynak, B. Reeder, S.Y. Park, J. Huh-Yoo. (2020) Design for Improved Workflow in Healthcare. Eds. Arathi Sethumadhavan and Farzan Sasangohar. In Design for Health: Applications of Human Factors. Elsevier. 251–276.