Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an integral component of many companies especially technology companies. A huge percentage of technology companies want to engage their employees through corporate social responsibility as well; leading to the evolution of a new kind term- “Employee Community Engagement”. With 80% job seekers preferring to work for companies that are socially responsible and employee engagement reducing the staff turnover, CSR and employee engagement has become something not just preferable, but a need of the hour to affect the bottom line of companies.

The current method of doing CSR and employee engagement for companies is to manage the process manually, using spreadsheets, emails and calls. This process is extremely time consuming, allows companies no analytics and insights into their engagement process. My main contributions include interviewing five companies to find the problems, building a technical solution and implement it with users and finally recording the results and trends.

To create a technology solution for this problem, I interviewed the head of community and government relations for five different companies ranging for 50 to 10,000 employees & analyzed their requirements based on their answers. The top problems were analyzed to be too much work as overhead, no tracking of employee data, lack of employee engagement, less employee turn out and skill and cause matching.

I built an MVP in core PHP was build to solve these problems first for company heads, nonprofits as well as employee volunteers before moving on to solve for other issues to see if using a technology platform may help solve the problem. A smooth user registration and onboarding was created for each of the user types so that everyone in a company can be engaged easily on the platform, a twitter like networking community was created so that users can interact about their philanthropy, administrators were given traceability regarding the engagement levels of their employees, an opportunity to create events and send out invitations through the portal was allowed, the creation of specific events was allowed for a nonprofit and an opportunity for closed team events for employees was allowed after the creation of the proposal by a nonprofit.

Implementing this saw an increase in engagement of employees from 4% to an average of 25% with a shift in the usage of CSR for team and culture building by the company as well. With increase in usage, requirements for grant management and workplace donations surfaced as well which would be a future leap for the product to become an end to end corporate social responsibility solution.

Preadolescents with orofacial cleft lip and/or palate (CLP) will often require support in developing and strengthening psychosocial skills. As instances of peer rejection, bullying and low self-esteem are prevalent during this age, preadolescents with CLP may require psychosocial support in learning to accept their condition and effectively deal with difficult social situations. Accessing this type of support can be challenging, as clinicians and healthcare professionals may lack the experience and training necessary to provide adequate psychosocial support to preadolescents with CLP. Licensed psychologists with experience working with this population may be available, however it is noted that the costs associated with their support may cause increased financial strain on families and individuals with CLP. In this dissertation work, I aim to address some of these challenges through the design, development and evaluation of a serious virtual reality (VR) game in providing psychosocial support to preadolescents with CLP. In collaboration with global cleft organization, Smile Train, I designed this game with psychologists and patients from their partnering clinics and hospitals across the globe, and evaluated the use of the game as a supplement to existing psychosocial support sessions with a psychologist. Through this work, I examine the impact of co-designing a VR game for psychosocial support and the feasibility of VR games for providing psychosocial support to this population, discussing the implications of the findings towards future work in this field.

Physical rehabilitation is an intensive process that often holds many challenges for patients such as a lack of engagement, accessibility, and personalization. Immersive media systems enhanced with serious games afford an opportunity to address these challenges. In this dissertation work, we examine a series of case studies on the gamification of various physical therapy methods (Constraint Induced Movement Therapy and Mirror Visual Feedback Therapy) within immersive virtual environments. We also present novel systems towards personalizing immersive virtual reality experiences for greater emotional and physical intelligence. Through this work, we link immersive virtual reality with the concepts of therapy, human behavior theory, and biofeedback, towards the aim of achieving a high-level overview of serious applications with a particular emphasis on physical rehabilitation. We conclude with discussion on a series of large scale studies that uncover therapist needs and long-term usage of immersive virtual reality for physical therapy. The findings of this work contribute to future usages of immersive virtual reality for physical therapy that can assist both patients and therapists in overcoming barriers related to low engagement, lack of time, location inaccessibility, and success measure accuracy.

Amblyopia is one of the most common and treatable neurological eye conditions worldwide, affecting 1-5% of the population. This condition has been traditionally treated through occlusion therapy (patching the stronger eye) to help strengthen the visual pathways from the weaker eye to the brain. This treatment is vital in preventing potential vision loss and other visual problems that can arise if this condition is left untreated. It is usually most effective if the treatment is administered during childhood. However, due to the nature of occlusion therapy, which can be repetitive and uncomfortable since it requires wearing an eye patch for extended periods, it suffers from low compliance rates. This thesis covers developing and testing a Virtual Reality (VR) game designed in close collaboration with an ophthalmology clinic to make visual exercises that make this traditionally cumbersome therapy more enjoyable. Researchers met with a team of clinicians weekly to develop and iterate on this game, ensuring that we consider clinician feedback when making game design decisions. We conducted our research evaluating this game in two parts—the first aimed to test the game’s efficacy against a placebo in a clinical setting. In contrast, the second part aimed to introduce scent as feedback to the game, conduct interviews with clinicians to gleam insights abouttheir experience using the game, and survey participants who played the game. Through this work, we aim to examine how serious games might help make health therapeutics more enjoyable and engaging through technology, such as VR, along with understanding the role multimodal feedback can play in these severe games for health. This research aims to contribute to the field of serious games for healthcare, specifically for visual acuity-related conditions, and provide insights into the process of co-designing games with healthcare professionals. These studies showed promising results for the game’s use and some surprising findings about how adding multimodal feedback, such as scent, can augment the experience.

Modified constraint induced movement therapy is a focus of rehabilitation research for stroke survivors with hemiplegia that relies on physically constraining a patient's unaffected limb to modify a patient's behavior and force the use of the affected limb in a rehabilitation setting. In this study, we attempt to cognitively induce a constraint in patients engaging in virtual therapy via a Kinect and Unity based platform. The platform included four games that each utilized a different active range of motion (ROM) exercise for control of game objects.

Five stroke survivors with hemiparesis were recruited for a two week study consisting of five, 25-minute therapy sessions each. Users were allowed to use either their unaffected or affected limb to play each game at any time and allowed their choice of games during each session. For each game, the difficulty level remained at baseline while the user used their affected side to play but the difficulty was increased at varying rates when the user used their unaffected side to play. Results were evaluated for compliance to the therapy (usage rate of affected side), choice of games, performance, efficacy of therapy (ROM), and qualitative behavior of users.

Compliance during virtual mCIT seems to be higher than that of traditional mCIT but a more extensive user test is necessary to validate this result. ROM measurements did not provide a clear trend due to the small size and duration of the data set. Trends were found in several areas of user behavior: (1) users preferred games utilizing only one axis of control and not reliant on orientation of the limb, (2) users also tended to play games in a certain order, (3) user performance increased over time, and (4) users often incorrectly performed the desired active ROM exercise for each game which may indicate the necessity to observe and coach patients during virtual rehabilitation.

This is a therapeutic VR application, which allows the user to make an emotional journal of daily life while being placed in a relaxing natural scene with an empathetic chatbot. The users can interact with the chatbot through Speech-To-Text input while modifying, clearing, and sending the message using a controller with a simple action. The project is evaluated with log data, including user action records and conversation data, pre-survey and post-survey. The surveys include background information, mood improvement, application experience, and other feedback. There are related works focused on empathetic chatbots, while none of them is using a VR environment to conduct. After completed the study with 11 participants, the results showed the application could bring significant mood improvement.

Photography is a visual way to capture a moment in time, used for artistic expression, and to document significant events. Even though photography is an inherently visual endeavor, several studies, supported by our own investigations, have shown that many people in the blind community take pleasure and find use in photography.

Because taking, organizing and sharing photos traditionally requires visual information, people with no or limited sight can have problems with these activities. People without sight must process chunks of information sequentially as opposed to globally (as is the case with sighted people). This nuance in information process adds to the difficulty of processing a photo album for people without sight.

Previous work has made photo capturing without sight easier, such as Bigham’s work with VizWiz, and Jayant et al’s work with photography among people who are blind [12,23]. These researchers design systems to help someone who is blind aim a camera and capture a “good” photograph. But there is little work that makes photo browsing and sharing accessible for people who are blind. My dissertation research aims to facilitate independence for blind persons to locate and browse photos in a sequential manner, as opposed to global. This is done through user-centered development of a smartphone application that can be used without sight.

The work begins with an investigation of current practices of blind persons in these activities, by conducting an in-depth survey and interviews among people who are blind, investigating their current photography preferences and practices. The survey and interviews informed the design of an iPhone app, called VizSnap, which is a blind-friendly app to help photographers sequentially organize a photo album by attaching time, date, location, and audio to the photographs to enhance memory retrieval of the photographs.

VizSnap was distributed among 13 blind people for two months; their usage of VizSnap was monitored by gathering their photos and the photos’ accompanying metadata (time, date, location, audio recordings). A user study was also conducted every two weeks with each participant. The photos taken by the participants were analyzed for type of photo and quality of photo. The participants’ usage of VizSnap was also analyzed to determine the viability of attaching audio, time, date, and location to a photograph, in a sequentially organized photo album, to enhance memory retrieval of the moment in which the photograph was taken.

The ultimate goal of this research is to encourage and challenge modern developers to create their technology with Universal Access at the forefront of each stage of development. VizSnap attempts to achieve Universal Access by appealing to both people who are blind and sighted people. This will greatly improve the overall design and general enjoyment of the product by all members of the community. Not all people use technology in the same way, and without thoughtful design, certain groups may be excluded from using mainstream technology when their usage is not considered.

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) provide speech therapy services to children and adults, improving all characteristics related to speech and oral functioning. SLPs can correct the most severe of impairments in less than three years, assuming the patient is motivated. Unfortunately SLPs can only guarantee motivation during weekly meetings that last one-hour. Outside of the office patients increasingly depend on their friends and family for encouragement and support. As therapy slows due to factors outside the SLP's control, patients risk joining the two-thirds of people who drop out of speech therapy.

This thesis discusses the development and evaluation of a suite of tools intended to address the dearth of technology plaguing modern speech therapy.

Applying a user-centered design approach I identify the primary stakeholders as the SLP and the patient, placing the support network of family and friends as secondary. Using this perspective I uncover the absent elements and develop tools to demonstrate both the value of each element along with the benefits of improved access. These tools introduce three novel technologies to speech therapy: accurate speech evaluation via automatic speech recognition (ASR), gamification of speech therapy exercises, and big data analysis for complex ASR output. When combined they tackle the primary bottleneck in speech therapy today: what occurs outside of the office.

In the first section, I collaborate with doctors at the University of California, Davis Medical Center. Together we identify the primary problem in speech therapy as progress outside of the office. We both agree that a properly calibrated ASR system would provide more consistent grading than support network members. Using this information I develop a speech recognition system on a mobile device that someone can tune to virtually any speech impairment. I tune the system for a lateral lisp and evaluate the system with an undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The system meets our gold standard by producing a 95% accuracy rate.

In the second section I embed the aforementioned ASR system into a game engine with the goal of producing motivating speech exercises. Through investigations with therapists and observations with children, I build a system that uses an interactive storybook game to automatically evaluate the speech characteristics of children with cleft palate. The system is successfully deployed in a clinical setting to children visiting a therapist for speech therapy evaluation. The system correctly evaluates 8 out of 9 children on par with a SLP, demonstrating ASR as a reliable speech evaluator. Interviews confirm that we have successfully created an experience that is as motivating as working with a live SLP in the short term.

In the third and final section I add big data analysis to the existing toolset in order to provide therapists effective feedback. I design with the goal of maximizing data visualization while minimizing mental and temporal demands. This results in a statistics engine that affords the therapist quantitative metrics at a glance. The speech recognition engine is modified to process speech mid-sentence, enabling real-time interactions. As this permits us to increase the rate of speech feedback, I adjust the game design from a storybook style game into a cycling series of mini-games in order to maximize speech rates in game. The system is distributed to therapists at UC Davis, and evaluated with various adult communities in Santa Cruz. We receive positive feedback from therapists on all aspects; with the tool providing both increased motivation in-office and increased visibility of tasks outside of the office. On the patient side of the work I effectively motivate 60% of adult speech therapy dropouts through the game environment. One participant demonstrates steady speech improvement through usage of the game. The SLP confirms that the improvement transfers to real speech scenarios, thus validating the design.

In this age of digital and remote learning, we cannot ignore the weight of educational technology (EdTech) in the classroom and beyond. Our understanding of ethical practices and concerns in EdTech lags far behind its quick adaptation in learning environments. This research consists of a literature review and web scraping of Reddit comments before June 10, 2022 to understand the ethical concerns within the EdTech industry, the creation of a website to sustain a responsible EdTech ecosystem, and the development of an automatic privacy policy analyzer for parents and educators. Instead of concentrating on the content of EdTech products, I focus on the structure of EdTech products and systems. Through this research, I intend to provide resources for EdTech developers to design more ethical and sustainable systems and help parents and educators make better informed decisions about the types of EdTech products they allow their children and students to use.

Games and play have the potential to offer people with disabilities a cost-effective, personalized, data-driven, connected, and motivating context for otherwise tedious and repetitive wellness routines. The paramount challenge in creating playful health structures and games is creating a motivating experience with mechanics that translate into improved health outcomes—a wicked problem. To this end, I use Research through Design to explore multiple approaches to the co-creation of games and play with various populations, including children with speech impairments, adults with developmental disabilities, stroke survivors, and children with Sensory-Based Motor Disorder. I have initiated and developed three health applications, which serve as case studies where I explore identifying best practices, unique insights, and suggestions for future creators. Specifically, I discuss game-first versus therapy-first approaches and closed-game systems versus more open-ended playful systems. Through this work, I have co-created two design methods for creating playful technology drawing inspiration from social media and from content creators with disabilities. The first, Situated Play Design, is a novel approach to uncovering contextual manifestations of play as design material for everyday technology. The second, DREEM (Disability-Related Empathy from Existing Media) leverages the rich cultural labor from content creators with disabilities as an entry point for developing an authentic, empathy-based assistive technology research agenda. For both of these design methods, I have employed a series of design strategies resulting in the co-creation of speculative design catalogs that serve as case studies to exemplify the value of these methods.

The contributions of this dissertation are two-fold. The first dimension is applied: I build well-informed systems that provide a motivating context for various forms of therapy for multiple populations of people with disabilities. The second dimension is methodological: I propose Situated Play Design and DREEM as novel approaches to creating playful technology rooted in perspectives of disability social justice. Overall, my work hopes to inspire, provoke, and empower designers to co-create innovative technology that improves the condition of some of today’s toughest Wicked Problems through play and disability advocacy.