Julie Kientz Research Group

Designing Computing Technology for Tracking Children's Developmental Progress

For Winter and Spring 2013 quarters, my directed research group will be working on prototyping and running a study of a system that uses social media to encourage developmental milestone tracking by parents of young children. This work will build upon user research already conducted by the Baby Steps project, funded by the National Science Foundation. We will use Twitter and/or Facebook to proactively prompt parents to track and respond to their young child's milestones such as taking their first steps, responding to verbal communication, and making eye contact. After designing a system for supporting prompting and data collection, we will the conduct a research study evaluating its effectiveness.

Research activities for each quarter will include:

Spring 2013—Meetings on Thursdays from 2:30–4:00

  • Design a mechanism for using Twitter and/or Facebook to prompt on developmental milestones and collect and store parent responses
  • Develop a functional prototype of social media application
  • Debug and do usability testing on a functional prototype
  • Design a field study for evaluating the prototype

Spring 2013—Meetings on Wednesdays from 2:00–3:30

  • Execute on the study designed during Winter 2013 quarter
  • Recruit participants and conduct interviews/study procedures
  • Collect and analyze data
  • Write up study results and submit for publication

If you are interested in participating, please complete the Catalyst survey by December 3. I will notify participants and provide add codes by December 7. If there are more people interested in participating than we have room to accommodate, I will prioritize based on relevant skill sets (or a willingness to learn) and the ability to commit for both quarters. Students with Python, web programming, and/or database skills are especially needed for Winter 2013 quarter. Students with experience working with user populations, conducting user testing, and doing data analysis are especially needed for Spring 2013 quarter.