Strategies for engagement in conversational agents

We review existing Alexa Skills to understand strategies of user engagement in conversational agents. Elizabeth Ominski, Cornell University View work-in-progress:

Featured papers

Common Shortcomings in Applying User-Centered Design for Digital Health August 30, 2020

We discuss lessons learned on common shortcomings in applying user-centered design for digital health. Published in the July-September 2020 issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing.

Symposium accepted to Gerontological Society of America July 22, 2020

The symposium, as part of GSA 2020, presents four projects on technology use of older adults and caregivers. Abstract. Innovative technology can improve the lives of older adults, including those diagnosed with dementia, and their caregivers. Yet a lack of careful attention to preferences and needs of end-users and continuous updates to resources could leave […]

EAI Pervasive Health paper on design requirements for conversational agents March 13, 2020

We reviewed Amazon Skill user reviews to understand usability and design requirements for designing health-supporting conversational agents. The paper will be published at EAI Pervasive Health 2020. Here’s a link to the paper–due to COVID-19, the conference has been postponed, and the organizers allowed us to publish our camera ready version without the copyright block […]

CSCW 2020 paper on IRB members’ perception of risk towards digital research data March 13, 2020

In this paper, we discuss our interview results with Institutional Review Board (IRB) members in the U.S. on their perceptions on risks towards digital research data. The paper has been accepted with minor revision for ACM CSCW 2020 to be held this September. More detail will follow later. J. Huh-Yoo, E. Rader, It’s the Wild, Wild, […]

FamilyLog: Monitoring Family Mealtime Activities by Mobile Devices July 12, 2019

Paper Presents empirical evaluation of using lightweight signal features from a set of complex activities during the meal (e.g., clattering sound, arm gestures of eating, human voice, TV sound) and fusing built-in sensor data of multiple mobile devices available in a family with a CRFs-based classifier. Abstract. Monitoring the family mealtime activities enables the analysis […]

Featured Projects

Evaluating support mechanisms of video-based social media on mental health challenges among college students

We evaluate support types and mechanisms of video-based social media on mental health challenges among college students. Bogeum Choi, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Heejun Kim, University of North Texas. Acknowledgement to Sunyoung Park, Eugenia Chan, and Nadien Zerban. View work-in-progress:

Usability assessment of conversational agents on dementia

We assess usability of Google Assistants and Alexa Skills on dementia using the Design Heuristics for Conversational Agents. Diva Smriti, Nadien Zerban, Drexel University College of Computing and Informatics. With Rose Ann DiMaria-Ghalili, Aleks Sarcevic, and Erjia Yan. View work-in-progress:

Strategies for engagement in conversational agents

We review existing Alexa Skills to understand strategies of user engagement in conversational agents. Elizabeth Ominski, Cornell University View work-in-progress:

Tailorable Autonomous Motivational Interviewing Conversational Agent (TAMICA)

We develop and evaluate usability and feasibility of TAMICA, which integrates motivational interviewing technique to improve parenting in healthy eating. We explore the feasibility of tailoring conversational agent by users. Diva Smriti, Drexel University College of Computing and Informatics. With Annie Kao, Wei Peng, Jiyoun Shin. Also acknowledgement to Jake Williams, Munif Mujib, and Megan […]

Evaluation of Open AI GPT-2 as a health chatbot

We explore Open AI GPT-2 as a potential solution to generative chatbot model supporting therapist-patient interaction. Lu Wang, Drexel University College of Computing and Informatics. With George Demiris. View work-in-progress:

Privacy control in conversational agent development

We investigate existing conversational agent development platforms to understand the level of privacy control over user data available to the developers. Rahil Rathod and Diva Smriti, Drexel University College of Computing and Information Science. View work-in-progress:

Ageism on Twitter

We investigate how ageism is exercised or called out in Twitter data with COVID19 related hashtags between 3/1-6/30/2020. Funded by 2020 STAR Scholar Program; Emily Schramm, Drexel University College of Medicine. With: Chris Yang, Kristine Mulhorn, and Shushi Yoshinaga. View work-in-progress:

Investigating the role of laugh and humor in chatbots

The goal of this project is to understand the role of laugh and humor in chatbots to provide implications for designing health chatbots. Funded by 2020 STAR Scholar Program. Nishtha Gupta, Drexel University College of Medicine. With George Demiris. View work-in-progress:

Travel and meetings

Mar 20-21, 2020. American Psychological Association Committee Meeting on Human Research. Washington D.C.

Jan 6-7, 2020. NSF SCH PI meeting. Alexandria, VA

Nov 20, 2019. PRVACI Research Group, NYU Information Law Institute. NYC, NY

Nov 10-13, 2019. CSCW 2019. Austin, TX

Aug 19-20, 2019. PRVACI Symposium 2019. Berkeley, CA

June 23-28, 2019. HCIC 2019. Parajo Dunes, Watsonville, CA

February 27, 2019. NYU Langone Medical Center, Healthcare Innovation Bridging Research, Informatics, and Design Lab (HiBRID Lab). Research talk

February 20-22, 2019. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. Department of Media and Information.

February 7, 2019. Drexel University, College of Computing and Informatics.

January 31, 2019. New Jersey Institute of Technology, Department of Informatics. Newark, NJ.

January 28, 2019. Montclair State University, Department of Computer Science. Montclair, NJ.

January 22-23, 2019. Michigan State University, MI845 class lecture.

January 11, 2019. Columbia University, External committee, Dissertation Defense--Drashko Nakikj.

December 17, 2018. Dataminr, Inc. NYC, NY. Research talk: "People, processes, and design"

September 17-18, 2018. NSF Smart and Connected Health PI meeting

May 15, 2018. Washington DC. National Science Foundation. CISE CAREER Workshop

March 21-22, 2017. Boston, MA. NSF Smart and Connected Health meeting.

March 20, 2017. Boston, MA. "Closing the methodological loop in biomedical informatics research." Special seminar talk. Harvard Medical School Division of Preventive Medicine.