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Background Developers, designers, and researchers use rapid prototyping methods to project the adoption and acceptability of their health intervention technology (HIT) before the technology becomes mature enough to be deployed. Although these methods are useful for gathering feedback that advances the development of HITs, they rarely provide usable evidence that can contribute to our broader understanding of HITs. Objective In this research, we aim to develop and demonstrate a variation of vignette testing that supports developers and designers in evaluating early-stage HIT designs while generating usable evidence for the broader research community. Methods We proposed a method called health concept surveying for untangling the causal relationships that people develop around conceptual HITs. In health concept surveying, investigators gather reactions to design concepts through a scenario-based survey instrument. As the investigator manipulates characteristics related to their HIT, the survey instrument also measures proximal cognitive factors according to a health behavior change model to project how HIT design decisions may affect the adoption and acceptability of an HIT. Responses to the survey instrument were analyzed using path analysis to untangle the causal effects of these factors on the outcome variables. Results We demonstrated health concept surveying in 3 case studies of sensor-based health-screening apps. Our first study (N=54) showed that a wait time incentive could influence more people to go see a dermatologist after a positive test for skin cancer. Our second study (N=54), evaluating a similar application design, showed that although visual explanations of algorithmic decisions could increase participant trust in negative test results, the trust would not have been enough to affect people’s decision-making. Our third study (N=263) showed that people might prioritize test specificity or sensitivity depending on the nature of the medical condition. Conclusions Beyond the findings from our 3 case studies, our research uses the framing of the Health Belief Model to elicit and understand the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that may affect the adoption and acceptability of an HIT without having to build a working prototype. We have made our survey instrument publicly available so that others can leverage it for their own investigations. 

The COVID-19 pandemic upended the lives of families with young children as school closures and social distancing requirements left caregivers struggling to facilitate educational experiences, maintain social connections, and ensure financial stability. Considering families' increased reliance on technology to survive, this research documents parents' lived experiences adapting to technology's outsized role alongside other shifts in family life associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we describe a 10-week study with 30 enrolled families with children aged 3 to 13 in the United States using the asynchronous remote communities (ARC) methodology to 1) understand the benefits and challenges faced by families as they adapted technology at home to navigate the pandemic, and 2) to ideate improvements to those experiences through co-design. We found that amidst gaps in infrastructural support from schools, workplaces, and communities, parents experienced deep anxiety and took on new roles, including tech support, school administrator, and curator of meaningful activities for their children. As parents shared bold and creative technology-based solutions for improving family well-being, schooling experiences, social life, and beyond, they demonstrated their capacity to contribute to new models of learning and family life. Our findings are a call to action for CSCW researchers, designers, and family-focused practitioners to work with learning communities that incorporate parent, teacher, and technology experiences in their academic and community planning. 

People often do not receive the reactions they desire when they use social networking sites to share data collected through personal tracking tools like Fitbit, Strava, and Swarm. Although some people have found success sharing with close connections or in finding online communities, most audiences express limited interest and rarely respond. We report on findings from a human-centered design process undertaken to examine how tracking tools can better support people in telling their story using their data. 23 formative interviews contribute design goals for telling stories of accomplishment, including a need to include relevant data. We implement these goals in Yarn, a mobile app that offers structure for telling stories of accomplishment around training for running races and completing Do-It-Yourself projects. 21 participants used Yarn for 4 weeks across two studies. Although Yarn’s structure led some participants to include more data or explanation in the moments they created, many felt like the structure prevented them from telling their stories in the way they desired. In light of participant use, we discuss additional challenges to using personal data to inform and target an interested audience 

Personal health and wellness technologies can improve people’s care at home, connect everyday activities to clinical settings, and allow more efficient use of clinical resources. Recently, the Human-Computer Interaction community has begun to develop tools to improve oral care. In this research, we investigate dental practices and information needs through surveys and interviews with a range of patients and oral health providers. We find that personal users want to track their progress—or lack thereof—between dental visits for feedback, so they can adjust their home care routines, or so they can seek an escalation in care if they identify a problem. Among providers and clinical health workers, there exists an opportunity for better screening and diagnostic tools to identify dental caries at early stages. Providers in rural areas desire better tools to communicate problem areas to patients and their caregivers to bridge oral health care disparities in areas with limited access to care. Our results can guide the development of dental technologies that can address currently unmet needs of patients and providers.