Coming to America: Building An App for International Students

Co-directed by Gary Hsieh, Mia Suh

We are looking for interested, motivated and responsible students to join our research group to build an online community for international students. For the last quarters, we have built a web application to support international students, and it is almost getting there.

In this quarter, we plan to polish the application, and to test its usability. To continue our efforts, we are looking for students who have prior experiences with:

• Ruby on Rails
• Relational Database

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Coming to America: Building An App for International Students

We are looking for interested and motivated students to build an online community for international students.

Studying abroad is not easy. International students have to deal with the unfamiliar contexts such as new friends, new university, and new country. The process entails rapid changes and adjustments to new environments, which need much time and effort.

This quarter, we aim to build a web application for international students in UW. For the last quarters, we have been studying about the informational needs of international students and designing an online community to support them. To continue our efforts, we are looking for students who have prior experiences with:

- Ruby on Rails
- Front-end programming (e.g., Java Scripts, HTML, CSS)
- Relational Database

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Exploring Cues to Action in today’s Health & Wellbeing application market

The Mobile Health Market market is growing rapidly, in the last year it was worth $4 and is expected to reach $26 bln by 2017. Applications such as Google Fit, MyFitnessPal, Fitbit are designed to motivate exercising, healthy diet, or weight loss. Other applications offer motivational reminders about medication taking, or even try to help with breaking undesirable habits, such as smoking. Many of these applications use motivational messages, visual, audio or tactile feedback, or other means of encouraging people to take action, these are so called Cues to Action. Understanding the variety of such cues offers a useful summary of the current state-of-the-art practices in health & wellbeing mobile and online markets.

Our goal in this DRG is to explore the market of existing mobile and online health & wellbeing applications, specifically those that focus on eliciting behavior change. We aim to analyze and systematize the approaches used for motivating people to change their behavior and come up with a taxonomy of available Cues to Action. To scope the DRG for this quarter we will focus mainly on the text-based Cues to Action.

By the end of the quarter we expect to have a full taxonomy of the approaches for motivating action used in mobile health & wellbeing domain. The taxonomy is meant to reveal which strategies are most and least common, which strategies are most popular in which subdomain of the health & wellbeing market, and finally identify a number of possible underexplored design directions for creating new types of Cues to Action. We are looking for a small group of students to participate in the exploration of the current health & wellbeing application market, who are willing to commit up to 9 hours (3 credits) per week to the project. There are no specific skills required for participation in this DRG.

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Crowd and Friend-sourced Support for Behavior Change

People use online behavior change programs, such as diets, exercise programs, financial plans to better their behavior. These are often one size fits all programs, not tailored to a person's needs and context. At the same time, many people who have already tried such programs have acquired knowledge on what works or doesn’t for themselves.

Our goal is to leverage the expertise of other people with changing behavior to provide recommendations for improvement based on a person's goals, preferences, and habits. In this DRG we will develop a tool to support social recommendations for the creation of personalized step by step behavior change programs. The tool uses data that people track about their behavior, such as their food or physical activity. The tool facilitates requests and recommendations for daily improvement of behavior between an individual and their friends or strangers who are interested in helping.

By the end of the quarter we expect to have a full design of the system, and an early prototype built. We will draw on interview data from our initial prototype for this design, but may also continue iterative user-testing throughout the design process. We are looking for a small group of students to participate in the design and building of the tool, who are willing to commit at least 9 hours (3 credits) per week to the project. Skills required are: design experience (visual and interaction design) and/or programming experience (front and back end development using web frameworks such as Node.js or Django).

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Not only is the local economy an important component of a neighborhood’s health, autonomy and connectivity, local small businesses have also been referred to as the “lifeblood” of United States’ economy, responsible for jobs creation and the stability of our overall economy. Our goal is to explore the use of technologies to support the success of our local businesses to improve economic vitality. 

 

We are looking for interested and motivated students to join our research team. You will be iteratively designing and building an application to help local community members to welcome and support the businesses around them. If you are interested, please send an email to garyhs@uw.edu describing your interest in the project, your level in the program (e.g., BS, MS, PhD), relevant skills and experience, and the number of credits you are seeking. Meetings are mandatory for all registered students.

 

 

It’s not just Century Link Field that is loud when the Seahawks play, so is your local coffee shop and hair salon. Have you ever wondered how loud is too loud? Our research is directed at designing and developing a smartphone app that allows you to track and document noise levels in your everyday environment.  It will tell you if your listening habits are putting you at risk for hearing loss, or not. Through crowd sourcing and data sharing, this app will also enable us to gather noise levels, in different locations, so people with and without hearing loss can locate social settings (restaurants, fitness centers, coffee shops etc.) where they can hear what is being said. Being able to hear a business client sitting across from you at a restaurant table, and finding the quietist seating section in Century Link Field are only a few examples.

 

Motivation: Approximately 15 percent (26 million) of Americans between the ages of 20 and 69 have hearing loss because of exposure to loud sounds or noise at work or in leisure activities. Approximately one in three people in the United States between 65 and 74 has hearing loss, and nearly half of those older than 75 have difficulty hearing. Hearing loss makes it hard to enjoy talking with family and friends, especially in social settings, and often leads to feelings of isolation as well as social withdrawal.
What You'll Do:  As a team, we will design and prototype a location-review app that can be used by potential users to explore and assess noise information at various social settings.

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Coming to America: Designing an Online Community for Immigrants

 

The process of settling into a new country can be extremely challenging and stressful. It entails rapid changes and adjustments to a new environment. Not only do these immigrants need information to meet their immediate needs and solve their daily problems, they also seek social support and desire to be connected to their new environment.

 

We are looking for interested and motivated students to join our research team. You will be iteratively designing and building a website to facilitate the information and social needs of immigrants. If you are interested, please send an email to garyhs@uw.edu and miasuh@uw.edu  describing your interest in the project, your level in the program (e.g., BS, MS, PhD), relevant skills and experience, and the number of credits you are seeking. Meetings are mandatory for all registered students.

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Designing Digital Money

From poker chips in an online hold'em game, to copper/silve/gold pieces in World of Warcraft, to tokens in a new iPhone game, to the Bitcoin icon, there are many ways to visually represent digital money to the users. However, can the design of digital money influence how people use the money? Are there designs that are “better” or “worse”? In what ways?  

This research group will:

- Survey existing designs of digital money to determine the design dimensions.

- Review literature on money and the biases in decision making when money is involved.

- Conduct experiments to test how different designs may influence behavior.

- Write and submit a research paper on findings.

 

If you are interested, please email Gary Hsieh (garyhs@uw.edu) with a CV/resume, and a paragraph describing why this project interests you, how your background/experiences fits with the project and the number of credit hours you are seeking (0-3 credit hours).

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Developing Motivators to Encourage Neighborhood Activism

Our physical neighborhoods hold tremendous influence over our safety, education, health, and general well-being. However, many studies have shown that civic participation in local communities has been in decline for the past 50 years. How then, can we get more people involved in their neighborhoods? Are some strategies, or motivators, more effective in encouraging certain activities, in certain neighborhoods?

This research group will:

We are looking for motivated individuals to join our team. There are no prerequisites; we are looking for a group with a diverse set of skills and experiences at all levels. If you are interested, please email Gary Hsieh (garyhs@uw.edu) with a CV/resume, and a paragraph describing why this project interests you, and how your background/experiences fits with the project.