Tian Xu

Tian is a fourth-year Ph.D. student at CU Boulder, advised by Dr. Stephen Voida, a member of TMI (Too Much Information) lab, and a research affiliate of IRL (Internet Rules Lab) directed by Dr. Casey Fiesler.

Tian’s research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction, health informatics, and design, centering on understanding technology ecosystem and personal health infrastructure mediating mental and physical health management in people’s day-to-day life, designing novel context-aware health technology or systems (e.g., algorithm-enhanced health technology), and examining lived experiences with health technology, data, and AI from STS perspectives. She is also interested in studying privacy concerns over health technology use.

Before joining INFO at CU Boulder, she earned a M.S. in information management at Syracuse University.

news

Apr 18, 2024	I’m honored to have been awarded CARTSS and Beverly Sears research grants to study how future technology can better support situated self-management for people’s mental health and wellbeing!
Mar 17, 2023	Our paper, Technology-Mediated Strategies for Coping with Mental Health Challenges: Insights from People with Bipolar Disorder, has been accepted to CSCW2023!
Jan 13, 2023	Our paper, Examining Gender-oriented Design Features in Computational Toys and Kits for Young Children, has been accepted to CHI2023!
Nov 7, 2022	Awarded a special recognition for an outstanding CHI’23 paper review :).
Apr 30, 2022	Joined the Complex Health Needs and Technology Ecosystems workshop at CHI’22.

selected publications

CHI

"Obviously, Nothing’s Gonna Happen in Five Minutes" How Adolescents and Young Adults Infrastructure Resources to Learn Type 1 Diabetes Management

Xu, Tian, Jost, Emily, Messer, Laurel H. and 5 more authors

In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2024

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Learning personalized self-management routines is pivotal for people with type 1 diabetes (T1D), particularly early in diagnosis. Context-aware technologies, such as hybrid closed-loop (HCL) insulin pumps, are important tools for diabetes self-management. However, clinicians have observed that practices using these technologies involve significant individual differences. We conducted interviews with 20 adolescents and young adults who use HCL insulin pump systems for managing T1D, and we found that these individuals leverage both technological and non-technological means to maintain situational awareness about their condition. We discuss how these practices serve to infrastructure their selfmanagement routines, including medical treatment, diet, and glucose measurement-monitoring routines. Our study provides insights into adolescents’ and young adults’ lived experiences of using HCL systems and related technology to manage diabetes, and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how the HCI community can support the contextualized management of diabetes through technology design.
CSCW

Technology-Mediated Strategies for Coping with Mental Health Challenges Insights from People with Bipolar Disorder

Xu, Tian, Yu, Junnan, Doyle, Dylan and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing 2023

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CHI 🏆

Reflection in Theory and Reflection in Practice An Exploration of the Gaps in Reflection Support among Personal Informatics Apps

Cho, Janghee, Xu, Tian, Zimmermann-Niefield, Abigail and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2022

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Personal informatics (PI) systems have been developed to support reflection. While reflection is considered an indispensable activity in PI use, how and when reflection occurs is still under-studied. In this paper, we present an analysis of the interactive features of 123 commercial PI apps, revealing that reflective practices are unevenly supported. The lack of features that encourage user-driven reflection, scaffolding for setting goals and configuring data collection and presentation, and consideration of wider implications stand to limit meaning-making and frustrate nuanced insight generation based on lived experiences. Based on our findings, we discuss how reflection is currently misrepresented in personal informatics tools, identify and characterize the gaps between theoretical research on reflection and interface features in current apps, and offer suggestions about how reflection could be better supported.