Health and Human-Computer Interaction Lab

Nonverbal cues such as eye contact, facial expressions, and head-nodding are crucial for conveying empathy in counseling. This project explores how AI avatars can express empathy nonverbally in real time, and whether that shapes how emotionally supported users feel in the peer support context. Long-term memory is crucial in supporting people's longitudinal interactions with chatbots. We study how we can better design long-term memory to improve interactions with LLM-driven chatbots. Exploring how technology could better support the health and wellbeing of socially isolated individuals. Combining low-effort technical interventions with mixed-methods analysis of extreme online discourse, this research works to safely transition reclusive and socially isolated youth into healthier support networks. This effort ranges from NLP-driven insights into how marginalized individuals express themselves in anonymous spaces to privacy-preserving check-in widgets that foster daily micro-connections. Socially isolated individuals often fall outside the reach of traditional support systems. We study how LLM-driven public health monitoring chatbots are perceived by different stakeholders, such as socially isolated individuals, frontline health workers, decision-makers, and developers. Designing health monitoring tools to help people interact with technology in a more mindful and meaningful way. Exploring self-control technologies that help people stay in charge of their own screen time. With a focus on infinite scrolling environments like short-form video, we investigate how to preserve human autonomy and prevent mindless scrolling through thoughtful technical interventions. Discontinuing psychiatric medication is a complex, long-term process that requires careful coordination between cl