Leveraging Theory to Design Health and Wellness Systems

Leveraging Theory to Design Health and Wellness Systems in Human Centered ComputingPsycho-social theories can inform the design of mobile health technologies that require user interaction. I demonstrate how human centered computing can leverage theories in developmental psychology and behavior science to inform the treatment and palliative care of chronic diseases, developmental disorders, and mental illness. Each of these conditions has a set of challenges. For asthma, these include poor patient engagement and lack of continuity of care. Individuals with autism, on the other hand, require constant guidance on daily activities. In contrast, PTSD therapy is limited by the over-reliance on patient self-report and clinician intuition. In this talk I will discuss technology interventions that address these issues and provide personalized solutions. I will also discuss the underlying theories that power these systems and new projects that are in line with this HCI chronic care research agenda.
BIO
Dr. Arriaga is a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher in the School of Interactive Computing. Her emphasis is on using psychological theories and methods to address fundamental topics of HCI and Social Computing. Her current research is in the area of chronic care management where she designs technology to: increase patient engagement, support continuity of care, enhance clinical decision making and mediate patient-provider communication.
Dr. Arriaga received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University. She has been a research faculty in the College of Computing since 2007. She advises undergraduate and graduate students and teaches courses in HCI and Cognitive Science. She also teaches the User Experience Design MOOC for the Georgia Tech-Coursera partnership.