This page contains an archive of the past five years of Directed Research Groups led by Professor Hsieh. View his currently offered DRGs »
- Designing for Healthcare Equity: Community-Led Research for UW Medicine
- AEDs (Automated External Defibrillators) Comparative Usability Study Data Analysis
- Designing a Breast Cancer Screening Outreach Tool for and with Black/African American women
- Designing a Repository for Displaying Academic Insights Transformed with Generative AI
- Analyzing the Adult Oncology Patient Experience through Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Engagement
- Designing Provider-Patient Messaging in Cancer and Depression Care
- Co-designing Breast Cancer Screening Outreach Tool for and with Black/African American women
- Evaluating Live Stream Chatbot
- Human-Centered Design to Eliminate Disparities in Breast Cancer Screening
Winter - Spring 2025
Designing for Healthcare Equity: Community-Led Research for UW Medicine
Instructors:
- Gary Hsieh (HCDE Faculty)
- Aric Ho (UW Medicine)
- Paula Houston (UW Medicine)
- Ruoxi Shang (HCDE PhD student)
UW Medicine is committed to becoming a leader in healthcare equity. We are embarking on a journey to develop our Healthcare Equity Blueprint 3.0, a strategic plan that will guide our efforts to eliminate health inequities and create a more just and inclusive healthcare system for all. To ensure this plan truly reflects the needs and experiences of our diverse community, we need your help! We are seeking talented and passionate Human-Centered Design students to join us in gathering crucial insights from a variety of impacted parties.
One of the guiding principles for inclusion is, “nothing about us without us”, and we believe that utilizing HCD techniques is a powerful way to ensure our key parties have a voice at the table.
Healthcare equity is a pressing issue of our time. In this DRG, you will have the opportunity to contribute to meaningful solutions that address systemic inequities and improve the health and well-being of our community. Your participation will help shape a more just and equitable future for all.
This project spans across Winter and Spring quarters to allow us time to do deep, meaningful research without feeling rushed. Here's how it breaks down:
- Winter quarter: We will focus on getting to know our stakeholders, developing study protocol, and conducting focus groups and interviews. This gives us time to really listen to diverse voices across UW Medicine and build relationships with our participants.
- Spring quarter: We will shift to making sense of all the rich insights we've gathered. We'll dive into analysis, identify key themes, and craft recommendations that could shape the future of healthcare equity at UW Medicine.
While we'd love to have you join us for the full journey, we understand if you can only commit to one quarter! The work naturally shifts between quarters - from data gathering to analysis - so you can still make meaningful contributions in either phase.
Your Responsibilities:
- Collaborate with students and faculty to develop focus group protocols and materials.
- Facilitate engaging and inclusive discussions with Focus Group members recruited by UW Medicine (including medical students, residents, faculty, staff, patients and families, EDI champions, and community members representing different lived experiences).
- Analyze qualitative data to identify key themes and insights.
- Synthesize findings into reports and presentations.
- Contribute to the development of recommendations for Blueprint 3.0.
AEDs (Automated External Defibrillators) Comparative Usability Study Data Analysis
Instructors: This DRG is led by Ruican Zhong, advised by Gary Hsieh and Beth Kolko, and will be in collaboration with Philips.
Public-access automated external defibrillators (AEDs) are critical, life-saving medical devices that broadly guide users through the steps to provide an electrical shock to the heart (i.e., defibrillation) to restore normal rhythm following sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in an emergency situation. They also provide varying levels of instruction for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Despite the usefulness of such devices, there has not been systematic in-situ usability testing of them, especially with people who have not been trained to use these devices. To address this, we conducted a comparative usability study of 4 on-market AED devices with around 60 people. In this DRG, students will closely engage with the study data and conduct mixed-method data analysis.
Students will:
- Review interview video transcripts, identify trends in participants’ behavior, and perform thematic analysis of their interviews
- Conduct quantitative analysis (e.g., task success/failure, time on task, measurements of pad placement, etc.) to understand how feature designs impacted participants’ engagement with the devices
Designing a Breast Cancer Screening Outreach Tool for and with Black/African American women
Inequities in breast cancer among Black women have been recognized for decades, and yet persist. In 2020, breast cancer screening rates in the UW health system were 61.5% among Black women compared to 73.3% among white women. In this project, we previously conducted qualitative research to understand barriers and facilitators to breast cancer screening, and how a chatbot outreach tool might spread awareness to facilitate early detection and improve breast cancer survival.
In this DRG, students will build on results from our existing co-design sessions to develop a medium to high fidelity prototype of a breast cancer screening outreach tool with Black women between 40 to 74 years old. Students will prepare mockups, wireframes, and prototypes. This DRG will be done in collaboration with the Cierra Sisters, a breast cancer survivor and support organization, and UW Medicine.
This DRG will be run by Professor Gary Hsieh, Bridgette Hempstead, and Dr. Leah Marcotte.
Designing a Repository for Displaying Academic Insights Transformed with Generative AI
Organizer
Donghoon Shin
Faculty advisors
Gary Hsieh (HCDE), Lucy Lu Wang (iSchool)
Background
Many academic papers contain useful design guidelines and implications. However, they are rarely consumed and used by design practitioners, and designers often describe several issues, such as the difficulty of reading jargon-filled papers and not finding academic papers useful. To overcome this, we proposed a system that generates design cards using generative AI, which automatically transforms verbose design implications from the paper into concise card format (Paper2Card, to appear at the CHI conference).
Despite such support, however, many designers still lack awareness of the wealth of design cards that exist and their potential benefits. Thus, throughout this DRG, we aim to design and build a design card repository – where designers can easily navigate these AI-generated design cards and find relevant design cards. Then, what should the design card repository look like? A paper repository like Google Scholar? Or, a design repository like Pinterest? Answering this question and designing an initial prototype is the main goal of this DRG!
Expected takeaways from this DRG include: (i) designing a repository that contains design cards, (ii) showcasing them at the upcoming CHI conference (mid-May), and (iii) distributing it as a live website.
For questions, please contact Donghoon Shin at dhoon@uw.edu
Analyzing the Adult Oncology Patient Experience through Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Engagement
We are looking for up to 6 dedicated students to join our Fall 2023 quarter Patient Experience Adult Oncology EDI Research Group, through a partnered effort with UW Medicine and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. The research group will be engaging underrepresented groups to understand the adult oncology experience today and how it may be improved.
The findings from this study will influence future medical site planning, program design, and make improvements to current operations to improve equitable care for adult oncology patients. Students will:
- Design interview guides fit for interview coding and analysis.
- Conduct individual interviews with up to 40 different interviewees from 12 different underrepresented groups.
- Analyze the qualitative and quantitative results into a research paper.
This study serves as a foundational commitment to the practice of active community EDI engagement to improve the health of the public. This opportunity would be for students with interests in health equity, qualitative coding/analysis, and experience design.
This is a 2-credit DRG offered to undergraduate (HCDE 496) and graduate (HCDE 596) students. Students in this DRG will be required to attend 1 hour-long weekly meetings (TBD), and are expected to spend 3 to 5 additional hours weekly outside of meetings contributing to their work in the DRG.
This DRG is in collaboration with Gary Hsieh, Elizabeth Fleming, and Nida Shekhani (Chief Strategy Officers, UW Medicine and Fred Hutch Cancer Center) and will be advised by Paula Houston, Chief Equity Officer, UW Medicine and Dr. Leo Morales, Professor and Assistant Dean in the Office of Healthcare Equity, UW School of Medicine. This DRG is at capacity for Autumn 2023 and no longer accepting applications..
Designing Provider-Patient Messaging in Cancer and Depression Care
Depression is common but under-treated in patients with cancer. Although support for management of co-morbid cancer and depression has been proposed through integration of psychosocial care into cancer services and through technology to support such care models, challenges remain in designing appropriate and usable technology interventions that meet the needs of the patients and their care team. Because patients with co-morbid cancer and depression struggle to navigate between their cancer care and psychosocial care journeys, traditional psychosocial approaches and mental health technologies need to be adapted to these experiences.
The UW SCOPE study (Supporting Collaborative Care to Optimize Psychosocial Engagement in the Cancer Setting) is designing and developing a new web-based patient-provider platform for technology-enhanced Collaborative Care Management of depression in urban and rural cancer centers.
This DRG will focus on designing and iterating a one way messaging feature for the SCOPE app. This DRG will be done in collaboration with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
We are looking for 3-4 students experienced in UI/UX design, familiarity with Figma or design application is recommended. DRG students will attend a 1 hour-long meeting weekly (date and time TBD) with additional work outside of scheduled meetings for 3 hours per credit. This will be a 2 credit DRG (e.g., 2 hours of meetings/co-design sessions + 4 hours of outside work = 2 CR).
This DRG will be facilitated by CSE PhD student Tae Jones with guidance from Associate Professor Gary Hsieh. For any questions, reach out to Tae at taejones@cse.washington.edu or on the DUB Slack.
Co-designing Breast Cancer Screening Outreach Tool for and with Black/African American women
Disparities in breast cancer among Black women have been recognized for decades, and yet persist. In 2020, breast cancer screening rates in the UW health system were 61.5% among Black women compared to 73.3% among white women. In this project, we previously conducted qualitative research to understand barriers and facilitators to breast cancer screening, and how a chatbot outreach tool might spread awareness to facilitate early detection and improve breast cancer survival.
In this DRG, students will engage in 5-6 co-design sessions to develop a medium to high fidelity prototype of a breast cancer screening outreach tool with Black women between 40 to 74 years old. In between these co-design sessions, students will prepare mockups, wireframes, and prototypes. This DRG will be done in collaboration with the Cierra Sisters, a breast cancer survivor and support organization, and UW Medicine.
We are looking for 3-4 students experienced in UI/UX design, familiarity with Figma prototyping is a plus. Students from all levels are invited to apply and participate in this project! DRG students will attend a 1 hour-long meeting weekly (date and time TBD) with additional work outside of scheduled meetings for 3 hours per credit. This will be a 2 credit DRG (e.g., 2 hours of meetings/co-design sessions + 4 hours of outside work = 2 CR).
This DRG will be run by HCDE PhD student Raina Langevin with guidance from Professor Gary Hsieh, Bridgette Hempstead, and Dr. Leah Marcotte.
Evaluating Live Stream Chatbot
Co-directed with HCDE PhD student Keri Mallari
Live Streaming platforms, such as Twitch, boasts millions of streamers and viewers across multiple categories, including games, education, and creative content. While these platforms have simplified the process of going live through their apps, these streamers do not always have all the necessary tools that they would need to succeed. Our prior work has shown that live streamers value feedback, and while they do receive analytics through Twitch and other platforms, there are often challenges with the receipt, storage, and recall of qualitative feedback. In our work, we seek to address this gap by facilitating qualitative feedback seeking between livestreamers and their viewers.
In this DRG, we will explore the use of chatbots to facilitate this data collection. Can this chatbot increase participation and solicit constructive responses? What are the tradeoffs between this approach, and the streamer soliciting these responses themselves?
This will be a 2-4 credit DRG. We will meet for 2-6 hours in-person or virtually each week, and students will be expected to spend about 4-8 hours working outside of that time per week. Time and location will be determined based on students’ available times.
Human-Centered Design to Eliminate Disparities in Breast Cancer Screening
Led by HCDE PhD student Raina Langevin, with advising support from Gary Hsieh
In this DRG, we will work with an interdisciplinary team of community leaders and medical practitioners to address racial health disparities in breast cancer screening. Building on prior interviews, the focus of the DRG will be to develop a web-based tool to improve breast cancer screening rates and facilitate outreach by health navigators to Black/African American women. We will engage in qualitative analysis and design activities to explore and address challenges faced by Black/African American women related to breast cancer screening.
The planned activities for the quarter include the following:
Interview coding and analysis
Prototype design and development informed by interviews with community members. Usability testing of the prototype (if time allows)
We are looking for two to three students with interests in health equity, UI/UX design, and experience in 1) qualitative coding/analysis and/or 2) front-end web development.
Participants in this research group will enroll (CR/NC) through HCDE 596/HCDE 496. This group will meet remotely on Zoom for 2 hours each week at a time based on participant availability. It is anticipated that 4-5 hours will be spent on the DRG activities outside of meeting times.