Mark W. Newman

Professor
School of Information
EECS Department
University of Michigan

Bio | CV | Photos

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Associations

Interaction Ecologies
UX R&D on Coursera
MISC
DoIIIT

About Me

I am an associate professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. I also have an appointment in the EECS Department. I conduct research in human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and health informatics. I teach courses on user experience research and design, programming, and application development. I have contributed to a number of curriculum design efforts, particularly relating to programming and user experience research & design. I have a mysterious past. I am not the other Mark Newman.

Research

My research seeks to develop principles, methods, and tools to guide the design of ubiquitous computing applications (i.e., applications and systems that incorporate mobile, IoT, and “smart” technology at their core). From early work in end-user configuration of complex environments to more recent work in smart home interaction and personal informatics for health, I have contributed over fifty peer-reviewed articles to the scientific literature in Human-Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, and Health Informatics. My work draws upon a variety of methods, most prominently featuring qualitative research for gaining a deep understanding of users in particular domains, design, prototyping, and software development for embodying novel design approaches, and small-to-medium-scale field deployments to evaluate novel designs in use. I also employ experimental methods, research through design, online ethnography, crowd-based approaches, and machine learning needed.

I have worked in a variety of application areas, including home entertainment, sustainable smart homes, accessible technology, and workplace collaboration. At present, my primary area of interest is mobile and smart health, where I am developing techniques to more effectively incorporate personal health data (a.k.a. patient-generated data) into both formal and informal health care settings. In this work, I am collaborating with researchers from a variety of disciplines, including medicine, engineering, and public health. For more information about my research, please see list of selected publications by topic area and/or my Google Scholar profile (for a mostly-complete list of my publications). If you are interested in a paper but aren’t able to access it through the publisher’s site or an academic article database, you can check Research Gate to see if a full-text is available there and request one if it’s not. I’ll try to respond to the request.

Work with me!

I am always looking for passionate, committed, insightful, talented, and inquisitive students to work with me on research. If you are a current University of Michigan student interested in getting involved in research, please feel free to get in touch.

If you are interested in pursuing a PhD under my supervision, you should apply to the PhD program in either the School of Information or Computer Science and Engineering (I have appointments in both units). Be sure to mention that you would like to work with me in your Statement of Purpose (and why!), and I will be sure to review your application. You are also welcome to send me an email introducing yourself, but be warned that I generally do not reply to introductions or questions from students who have not yet been admitted.

FAQ

Q: Are you admitting PhD students this year?
A: Yes.

Q: Will you review my CV/application and tell me my chances of getting accepted to the PhD program?
A: No.

Q: What are the requirements/thresholds for admission for <program I'm interested in>?
A: I don’t know.

Teaching

I have taught a number of courses within the School of Information. A full list is below. In addition, I have been deeply involved in several curriculum development efforts, including the overhaul of the HCI/UX curriculum for the MSI degree (2011-2012), the design of the Designing the User Experience track for the BSI degree (2012-2013), the transition of the MSI degree to a mastery-based curriculum (2015-2017), the initial design (2015-2016) and revision (2019) of the programming curriculum for the BSI, MSI, and MHI degrees, the launch of the User Experience Research & Design MicroMasters on edX (2016) (which has since re-launched as the User Experience Research & Design Specialization on Coursera (2019)), and the initiation of a Graduate Certificate in Augmented and Virtual Reality for the Rackham Graduate School at U-M (2017-2019).

Courses

SI 699-3: User-Centered Agile Development
Winter 2019
SI 669: Developing the Mobile Experience
Fall 2018
SI 507: Intermediate Programming
Winter 2018 | Winter 2017
SI 206: Data-Oriented Programming
Winter 2018
SI 110: Introduction to Information Studies
Fall 2017 | Fall 2016 | Fall 2015
SI 622 Needs Assessment and Usability Evaluation
Winter 2016 | Winter 2013 | Winter 2012 | Winter 2011 | Winter 2010 | Winter 2009
SI 710-4: Application-Oriented Research in HCI
Fall 2015
SI 588: Fundamentals of Human Behavior
Fall 2012 | Fall 2011 | Fall 2010 | Fall 2009
SI 612: Pervasive Interaction Design
Winter 2014 | Winter 2012 | Winter 2011

MOOCs

Introduction to User Experience Research and Design
in UX Research & Design MicroMasters on edX (no longer available)
Principles of Designing for Humans
in UX Research & Design MicroMasters on edX (no longer available)
Evaluating Designs with Users
in UX Research & Design MicroMasters on edX (no longer available)
User Experience Research & Design Capstone
in UX Research & Design MicroMasters on edX (no longer available)

Selected Publications

For a complete list of publications, see my Google Scholar Profile or my CV.
= publisher's URL = authors' version (full text pdf)

Personal Health Data and Health Care

"My blood sugar is higher on the weekends": Finding a Role for Context and Context-Awareness in the Design of Health Self-Management Technology. Shriti Raj, Kelsey Toporski, Ashley Garrity, Joyce M. Lee, Mark W. Newman. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2019). 2019.

Finding the Sweet Spot(s): Understanding Context to Support Physical Activity Plans. Gaurav Paruthi, Shriti Raj, Natalie Colabianchi, Predrag Klasnja, and Mark W. Newman. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT) 2:1. 2018.

Understanding Individual and Collaborative Problem-Solving with Patient-Generated Data: Challenges and Opportunities. Shriti Raj, Mark W Newman, Joyce M Lee, and Mark S Ackerman. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 1:CSCW. 2017.

Design considerations for semi-automated tracking: self-care plans in spinal cord injury. Ayşe G Büyüktür, Mark S Ackerman, Mark W Newman, Pei-Yao Hung. Proceedings of the 11th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth '17). 2017.

Fostering engagement with personal informatics systems. Rebecca Gulotta, Jodi Forlizzi, Rayoung Yang, Mark W. Newman. Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2016). 2016.

Smart Homes and Sustainability

Devices and Data and Agents, Oh My: How Smart Home Abstractions Prime End-User Mental Models. Meghan Clark, Mark W. Newman, and Prabal Dutta. Proceedings of ACM Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT). 2017.

Reef: Exploring the Design Opportunity of Comfort-Aware Eco-Coaching Thermostats. Chuan-Che Huang, Sheng-Yuan Liang, Bing-Hsun Wu, Mark W Newman. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2017). 2017.

How Does Eco-coaching Help to Save Energy? Assessing a Recommendation System for Energy-efficient Thermostat Scheduling. Rayoung Yang, Devika Pisharoty, Soodeh Montazeri, Kamin Whitehouse, and Mark W Newman. Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2016). 2016.

ThermoCoach: Reducing Home Energy Consumption with Personalized Thermostat Recommendations. Devika Pisharoty, Rayoung Yang, Mark W. Newman, and Kamin Whitehouse. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM International Conference on Embedded Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments (BuildSys 2015). 2015.

The Potential and Challenges of Inferring Thermal Comfort at Home Using Commodity Sensors,. Chuan-Che Huang, Rayoung Yang, and Mark W. Newman. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2015). 2015.

Making Sustainability Sustainable: Challenges in the Design of Eco-interaction Technologies. Rayoung Yang, Mark W. Newman, and Jodi Forlizzi. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2014.

Learning from a Learning Thermostat: Lessons for Intelligent Systems for the Home. Rayoung Yang and Mark W. Newman. Proceedings of the 2013 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. 2013.

Principles, Tools, and Techniques for Ubicomp Design

Heed: Exploring the Design of Situated Self-Reporting Devices. Gaurav Paruthi, Shriti Raj, Seungjoo Baek, Chuyao Wang, Chuan-Che Huang, Yung-Ju Chang, Mark W. Newman. Procesdings of the ACM on Intertactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT). 2018.

An investigation of using mobile and situated crowdsourcing to collect annotated travel activity data in real-word settings. Yung-Ju Chang, Gaurav Paruthi, Hsin-Ying Wu, Hsin-Yu Lin, and Mark W. Newman. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS). 2017.

A Field Study Comparing Approaches to Collecting Annotated Activity Data in Real-world Settings. Yung-Ju Chang, Gaurav Paruthi, and Mark W. Newman. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2015). 2015.

What Designers Talk About When They Talk About Context. Jared S. Bauer, Mark W. Newman, and Julie A. Kientz. Human–Computer Interaction. 2014.

TraceViz: ‘brushing’ for location based services. Yung-Ju Chang, Pei-Yao Hung, and Mark W. Newman. Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services companion. 2012.

Bringing the field into the lab: supporting capture and replay of contextual data for the design of context-aware applications. Mark W. Newman, Mark S. Ackerman, Jungwoo Kim, Atul Prakash, Zhenan Hong, Jacob Mandel, and Tao Dong. Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST 2010). 2010.