JLW

*Orignal PhD Project - Post-poned due to COVID-19 pandemic - Dissertation Switched to No Child Alone Project*

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Goals​

Understanding unmet social and emotional needs of pediatric cancer patients throughout their cancer journey. Exploring design opportunities S/E needs and contextual requirements for home and hospital deployment environments.

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Motivation + Background

Children with cancer report feelings of social isolation, loneliness and loss of a normal childhood as their disease, treatment and environment keep them from peers and normal childhood activities. However, few studies explore how technology plays a role in the social lives of hospitalized children with cancer or how technology may be used to better support social well-being in children confined to hospital spaces. I will explore the opportunities and challenges for designing technology aimed at alleviating social well-being issues related to loneliness, isolation and loss of a normal childhood for child patients in the hospital environment.

 

Proposed Methods

To inform future design stuides I will examine how existing social supports are sufficient or not, how the physical and cultural environment of the hospital play a role in these feelings and influence support for technology usage, and how parental concerns influence the use of technology for social purposes. An exploratory qualitative study will be conducted that employs mixed methods for data collection. In-depth semi-structured interviews will be paired – for child participants – with a photo-based experience probe. These types of probes assist the researcher in understanding the children’s hospital experience from their point of view, as well as  promotes agency in the children as partners in the research. Parents and caregivers will also be interviewed, and observations will be done.

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Publications/Presentations

• Accepted as 1 of 20 PhD Candidates in group of 120 applicants for the CHI 2019 Doctoral Consortium in Glasgow UK, May 4-9, 2019. Download poster here.

• Accepted to the TEI 2019 Graduate Student Consortium in Tempe, AZ March 17-20, 2019

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