Projects

You will be required to complete a project for the course.

  • We expect you to form teams of two or three for this project; exceptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

  • We will provide a shortlist of project suggestions. You are also welcome to propose your own projects!

  • In past years, students have worked on a variety of exciting and innovative projects, including interventions that help people to take more healthy breaks (e.g., to help with zoom fatigue), chatbots that guide people to reflect and express gratitude, and machine learning methods that improve the accuracy of depression assessments using wearable data.

  • Our class is very collaborative and our staff will work with you closely to help you and your project succeed.

  • First and foremost, your project should help you meet your learning goals and be fun and meaningful to you. However, if you're also interested in presenting your work at conferences, our class projects can be structured to help support that too. Many top venues are interested in digital mental health and Professor Picard and TA Rob have experience publishing them, and can help you shape your work for such a goal.

    • Examples include the CHI main conference and workshops, UbiComp main conference and workshops (e.g., annual workshop), ICML workshops (e.g., 2021 workshop), ACII (if it involves affective states like anxiety or depression), and many HCI venues (e.g., HCII/MobileHCI/ICMI, etc.)

If your project involves human participants, then you are REQUIRED by MIT to obtain PRIOR approval of COUHES before you do any work with the human participants.


What is COUHES?

All projects that involve research on human participants must have the prior approval of the MIT Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (COUHES).

  • If you can piggyback on a current COUHES protocol, that is fastest/easiest. For example, our group has project you may wish to join.

  • If not, you need to MOVE FAST to submit a COUHES application before the Spring COUHES meeting dates. Note that before you submit it you need to get two other people to sign off on it first: (1) PI sign off: Either your research advisor or Picard can sign off. (2) Department sign off: If in the Media Lab, then Mahy can sign off. If your PI is in another department, then the department head there can sign off.

  • COUHES should be signed off by the department by Mon Mar 14 latest for arrival to COUHES by Tues Mar 15 ahead of their April 14 decision/meeting

  • COUHES has "drop in zoom" info sessions to ask your questions on March 7, 2022, 10am – 12pm and March 8, 2022, 1pm – 3pm


IMPORTANT, before your COUHES application is approved you must pass your "CITI certification"

If you've never done a COUHES application, you should start this more than two weeks before the deadline.

Please plan to meet w/Roz or Rob (or both of us!) to brainstorm project ideas as soon as possible. We will have several office hours before COUHES forms and project plans are due. Let's work together to help you have a positive experience and a successful project!