Elin A. Björling

University of Washington | UW · Human Centered Design and Engineering

Reflection is commonly used in the classroom to encourage students to think about and articulate what they have learned. However, when students produce reflections they typically create a written text for the instructor, outside of the classroom and as a summative retrospective account of learning. In this paper, we present the details of how we im...

As part of a larger study on perceived stress and headaches in 2009, momentary perceived stress, head pain levels and stress-related symptom data were collected. This paper explores a temporal analysis of the patterns of stress, as well as an analysis of momentary and retrospective stress-related symptoms compared by level of headache activity. Ado...

Sexual assault (SA) is a pervasive societal issue, particularly affecting minors, women, and members of the TGQN (transgender, genderqueer, nonconforming) community. Widespread underreporting, fueled by a deep-seated mistrust of law enforcement, particularly among women, creates a formidable barrier, hindering survivors from seeking deserved justic...

Background Adolescent mental health is a national mental health emergency amid surging rates of anxiety and depression. Given the scarcity and lack of scalable mental health services, the use of self-administered, evidence-based technologies to support adolescent mental health is both timely and imperative. Objective The goal of this study was 2-f...

This work was motivated by a previous study that saw unintended behaviors from some participants in online survey interactions. We conducted a post-hoc analysis of the study's participant data, including an analytical retrospective of effectiveness of reactive process changes, qualitative analyses of user behaviors, and a quantitative analysis of u...

BACKGROUND Adolescent mental health is a national mental health emergency amidst surging rates of anxiety and depression. Given the scarcity and lack of scalability of mental health services available, the use of self-administered, evidence-based technologies to support adolescent mental health is both timely and imperative. OBJECTIVE The goal of...

Mobile devices offer a scalable opportunity to collect longitudinal data that facilitate advances in mental health treatment to address the burden of mental health conditions in young people. Sharing these data with the research community is critical to gaining maximal value from rich data of this nature. However, the highly personal nature of the...

Self-disclosure to a social robot is a mental health intervention that can decrease stress for adolescents. Online digital robots provide the potential to scale this intervention especially in COVID-19 social distancing situations. However, self-disclosure interactions with digital social robots remain relatively unexplored. We conducted two onlin...

Social robots have been used to assist with mental well-being in various ways, such as to help children with autism improve on their social skills and executive functioning (e.g., joint attention and bodily awareness). They are also used to help older adults by reducing feelings of isolation and loneliness, as well as supporting mental well-being o...

Mobile devices offer a scalable opportunity to collect longitudinal data that facilitate advances in mental health treatment to address the burden of mental health conditions in young people. Sharing these data with the research community is critical to gaining maximal value from rich data of this nature. However, the highly personal nature of the...

We present FLEX-SDK: an open-source software development kit that allows creating a social robot from two simple tablet screens. FLEX-SDK involves tools for designing the robot face and its facial expressions, creating screens for input/output interactions, controlling the robot through a Wizard-of-Oz interface, and scripting autonomous interaction...

Integrating cultural responsiveness into the educational setting is essential to the success of multilingual students. As social robots present the potential to support multilingual children, it is imperative that the design of social robot embodiments and interactions are culturally responsive. This paper summarizes the current literature on educa...

Adolescents isolated at home during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown are more likely to feel lonely and in need of social connection. Social robots may provide a much needed social interaction without the risk of contracting an infection. In this paper, we detail our co-design process used to engage adolescents in the design of a social robot prototy...

The intersection of data visualization and human-robot interaction (HRI) is a burgeoning field. Understanding, communicating, and processing different kinds of data for creating versatile visualizations can benefit HRI. Conversely, expressing different kinds of data generated from HRI through effective visualizations can provide interesting insight...

The intersection of data visualization and human-robot interaction (HRI) is a burgeoning field. Understanding, communicating, and processing different kinds of data for creating versatile visualizations can benefit HRI. Conversely, expressing different kinds of data generated from HRI through effective visualizations can provide interesting insight...

Social robots have been used to assist with mental well-being in various ways such as to help children with autism improve on their social skills and executive functioning such as joint attention and bodily awareness. They are also used to help older adults by reducing feelings of isolation and loneliness, as well as supporting mental well-being of...

Evidence-based therapies have proven effective in treating the mental health of adolescents. However, these interventions are not without shortcomings: therapies are costly and not accessible for everyone who needs them; psychologists are scarce, with more adolescents needing support than therapists available. We contribute to mental health support...

Despite promises about the near-term potential of social robots to share our daily lives, they remain unable to form autonomous, lasting, and engaging relationships with humans. Many companies are deploying social robots into the consumer and commercial market; however, both the companies and their products are relatively short lived for many reaso...

Social robots have been used to support mental health. In this work, we explored their potential as community-based tools. Visualizing mood data patterns of a community with a social robot might help the community raise awareness about the emotions people feel and affecting factors from life events. This could potentially lead to adaptation of suit...

Adolescent mental health is a growing public health issue, with 30% of teens reporting increased stress and 20% of adolescents suffering from depression. Given the scarcity and lack of scalability of mental health services available, the use of self-administered, evidence-based technologies to support adolescent mental health is both timely and imp...

Virtual reality (VR) offers potential as a collaborative tool for both technology design and human-robot interaction. We utilized a participatory, human-centered design (HCD) methodology to develop a collaborative, asymmetric VR game to explore teens’ perceptions of, and interactions with, social robots. Our paper illustrates three stages of our de...

Currently there are 4.9 million English Language Learners (ELLs) in the United States, however, only 2% of educators are trained to support these vulnerable students. Educational robots show promise for language acquisition and may provide valuable support for ELLs, yet, little is known about social robots for this population. Inviting participants...

Background: There are 4.9 million English Language Learners (ELLs) in the United States. Only 2% of educators are trained to support these vulnerable students. Social robots show promise for language acquisition and may provide valuable support for students, especially as we return to needing smaller classes due to COVID-19. While cultural responsi...

To address the unprecedented levels of stress among adolescents in the United States, our team planned a home study to pilot a self-administered virtual reality (VR) environment for stress reduction. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a swift pivot to a “no contact” protocol. The purpose of this manuscript is to describe this protocol, including pa...

Social robots may be an effective and appropriate technology to help reduce stress in adolescents, thereby improving mental health. Designing appropriate and engaging human–robot interactions must take into consideration the effect of the robot embodiment. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory, within-person, study with 66 US adolescents (ages 14-...

Social robots hold the potential to be an effective and appropriate technology in reducing stress and improving the mental health of adolescents. In order to understand the effect of adolescent-to-robot disclosure on momentary stress, we conducted an exploratory, mixed-methods study with sixty-nine US adolescents (ages 14–21) in school settings. We...

Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) have been shown to be successful in treating mood disorders in adolescents. However, the application of MBI treatments for non-clinical populations may be a missed opportunity. Globally, headache affects 54 percent of school-age girls, and headaches are often correlated with poor mental health. In order to bet...

As social robots continue to show promise as assistive technologies, the exploration of appropriate and impactful robot behaviors is key to their eventual success. Teens are a unique population given their vulnerability to stress leading to both mental and physical illness. Much of teen stress stems from school, making the school environment an ide...

With the prevalence of mental health problems today, designing human-robot interaction for mental health intervention is not only possible, but critical. The current experiment examined how three types of robot disclosure (emotional, technical, and by-proxy) affect robot perception and human disclosure behavior during a stress-sharing activity. Emo...

Today’s teens will most likely be the first generation to spend a lifetime living and interacting with both mechanical and social robots. Although human–robot interaction has been explored in children, adults, and seniors, examination of teen–robot interaction has been limited. In this paper, we provide evidence that teen–robot interaction is a uni...

Understanding people's attitudes towards robots and how those attitudes are affected by exposure to robots is essential to the effective design and development of social robots. Although researchers have been studying attitudes towards robots among adults and even children for more than a decade, little has been explored assessing attitudes among t...

Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) is an increasingly popular approach in substance use research for capturing reliable, in-situ, self-reported information about fluctuating variables, such as mood, over time. Current EMA guidelines do not sufficiently address the reporting of assessment periods (e.g., right now, past 30 min). Given the importan...

Design requirements can be gathered through a variety of ways; however, engaging teen audiences in design process can be challenging. We present a novel method for engaging teens in design through a social robot design challenge. Groups of teens participated in the challenge to prototype a social robot that would live in their high school and help...

Virtual reality (VR) offers potential as a prototyping tool for human-robot interaction. We explored a way to utilize human-centered design (HCD) methodology to develop a collaborative VR game for understanding teens' perceptions of, and interactions with, social robots. Our paper features three stages of the design process for teen-robot interacti...

Repeated stress during adolescence has been shown to decrease cognitive function while increasing rates of anxiety and depression. Eighty-one percent of teens report stress stemming from their school environment and yet, schools are struggling to manage the increase of teen mental health needs. Virtual-reality (VR) has been shown effective at treat...

A participatory pilot study researched mindfulness sessions informed by art therapy for adolescent girls suffering from headaches. Researchers worked closely with 8 participants to customize and implement an appropriate mindfulness-based art intervention. Program evaluation included both quantitative and qualitative outcomes, including pre- and pos...

Social robots are emerging as an important intervention for a variety of vulnerable populations. However, engaging participants in the design of social robots in a way that is ethical, meaningful, and rigorous can be challenging. Many current methods in human–robotic interaction rely on laboratory practices, often experimental, and many times invol...

This article reports on a mixed-methods study of Washington state principal professional development (PD) needs focused on supporting English learner (EL) students. With a growing number of EL students, a heterogeneous group that represents a variety of language, cultures, and experiences, it is imperative to understand what principals need as they...

Teens are a unique population with needs and communication styles that differ from adults and children. Methods in human-centered design were initially conceptualized with adults in mind, but these methods should be reexamined to include the needs of teens. In this experience report, we reflect on a project introducing teens to human-centered desig...

Today's teens will most likely be the first generation to spend a lifetime living and interacting with both mechanical and social robots. Although human-robot interaction has been explored in children, adults, and seniors, examination of teen-robot interaction has been minimal. Using human-centered design, our team is developing a social robot to g...

Although a great deal of research has measured stressful life events and stressrelated symptoms in adolescents, little research has qualitatively examined the experience of stress in teens. The purpose of this study was to utilize thematic analysis to explore how teen girls described their experiences of stress. Thirtyone girls, ages 14-18, were re...

While scholars in technical communication have examined on theoretical concerns of post humanism, less work has focused on designing for engaging experiences between humans and nonhuman agents like robots. In this research article, we present findings from a project investigating the possibility of designing a social robot to help measure teen stre...

Background: Intensive summer camps are a strategy to recruit diverse youth grades 9-12 into nursing and health professions and meet future workforce needs. A Pacific Northwest health system has offered a nurse camp since 2004. The week-long camp is free and builds upon strong partnerships with high schools, local colleges, and universities. Activit...

Political astuteness, including awareness, knowledge, and involvement, is necessary if nurses are to engage in policy advocacy-a vital aspect of the nursing profession. However, little is known about the effects of learning activities, such as legislative days, on political astuteness. The purpose of this research was to determine if political astu...

The objective of this study was to compare the relationship between repeated momentary reports of stress and headaches in female adolescents with varying degrees of headache frequency. Headaches are the most common form of pain reported by adolescents affecting more than a third of all adolescents. High levels of stress during adolescence may predi...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. Objective. This study of adolescent females investigated the meanings of stress, compared baseline and temporal patterns of stress in teens with varying degrees of headache, and explored the relationship between stress and headaches across time.Background. Headaches are the most common form of pain,...

This study examined the first scholarly projects/theses of 112 graduates of a newly formed Master of Nursing (MN) program. The purpose of the analysis was to determine whether MN graduates' scholarly projects/theses addressed the American Association Colleges of Nursing's (1996) Essentials of Master's Education for Advanced Practice Nursing, met pr...