Arpita Bhattacharya

I am a third year PhD student in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington, Seattle. I am passionate about learning how design of technology can foster social support and improve quality of life of people with mental health concerns and comorbid health concerns.

I am co-advised by Sean Munson and Julie Kientz. Briefly, my RA is on designing for individulized support using self-experimentation. My other projects center around understanding role of social support in mental health.

While I enjoy the highs and lows of research, I love to use my free time to volunteer and here are some ways I am involved in activities for mental health care in the community. I also love to sketch, sing, and am a fan of animated movies!

I completed my Master's in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology in May 2015, where I primarily worked on designing Kinect games for encouraging social interactions in classrooms for children with autism.

Publications

[4] Kiley Sobel, Arpita Bhattacharya, Alexis Hiniker, A., Jin H. Lee, Julie A. Kientz, & Jason C. Yip. “It wasn’t really about the Pokémon”: Parents’ perspectives on a location-based mobile game. To appear in CHI 2017. (pdf)

[3] Arpita Bhattacharya, Roger Vilardaga, Julie A. Kientz, Sean A. Munson. Lessons from Practice: Designing Tools to Facilitate Individualized Support for Quitting Smoking. CHI '17, Dever, Colorado. (pdf) (auxilary materials)

[2] Katie O'Leary, Arpita Bhattacharya, Sean A. Munson, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Wanda Pratt. 2017. Design Opportunities for Mental Health Peer Support Technologies. CSCW '17. (pdf)

[1] Arpita Bhattacharya, Mirko Gelsomini, Patricia Pérez-Fuster, Gregory D. Abowd, Agata Rozga. 2015. Designing motion-based activities to engage students with autism in classroom settings. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 69-78. DOI=10.1145/2771839.2771847 (pdf)





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