About

Elena Agapie researches, designs and builds technologies that empower people to engage in positive behaviors through a human-centered approach. Her work draws on people’s lived experiences and practices from psychology, exercise science or mental health, to design collaborative tools that make it easier for people to pursue healthy behaviors. Agapie has worked on research teams at Microsoft Research, FXPAL, Intel Labs and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Engineering
• Psychotherapist
• Sociology
• Human–computer interaction
• Engineering ethics
• Clinical psychology
• Medical education
• Knowledge management
• Social psychology
• World Wide Web
• Medicine
• Process management
• Pedagogy
• Applied psychology

Selected publications

• Everyday Disruptions to Goals: Implications for Wellbeing Technology

  2026-04-13 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Health technologies tools provide support for behavioral goals but largely assume that people live a stable life routine and continuously engage with their goal. Despite barriers to behavior being discussed in literature, they are largely not at the center of design, and researchers lack a systematic understanding of the prevalence and burdens of disruptions. To characterize individuals’ disruptions to engaging in wellbeing goals, we surveyed 149 US adults. We identified eight types of disruptions, such as emotional/cognitive, physical/medical, financial and four resulting burdens (emotional, physical, logistical, and financial). The majority of participants experienced multiple disruptions, with over 40% of experiencing daily disruptions. Over half of participants experienced disruptions lasting over a month. We discuss how health and wellbeing technologies can support people’s goals through adaptation based on disruptions’ burden, temporality, relevance and scale of disruptions.

  PublisherDOI

• Clinician Data Needs for Uncontrolled Comorbidities of Metabolic Syndrome: Insights on Assumption Testing

  ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare · 2026-04-06

  articleSenior author

  To support patient care, providers need insights from patient-generated data (PGD) to help them make sense of a patient’s health condition and inform future decisions. Provider needs for PGD use vary based on the health condition being treated. Research has identified the types of insights that providers need for treating individual health conditions. However, we need further understanding of clinicians’ PGD needs for collection, interpretation, and decision-making for treating patients with comorbidities, particularly when some comorbidities are uncontrolled. We interviewed 11 providers from Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) treating patients with uncontrolled metabolic syndrome. We identify the types of clinical assessments that providers need to make based on PGD in order to treat patients, including assessing changes in the level of control of comorbidities, negative events related to control level and comorbidity type, and interference of factors across comorbidities. These needs influenced the types and frequency of PGD collection and the interpretation of trends or relations between specific types of data streams. Providers also interpreted data in light of the patient’s social determinants of health. We discuss how clinical dashboards can support providers in checking assumptions, data collection customization, and contextualization of data based on social determinants of health.

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond Quantitative Goals: Design for Qualitative Goals and their Quantitative Subgoals

  Electronic workshops in computing · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access

  <p xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="first" dir="auto" id="d313923e108">Goals, as key aspects of users’ motivation, have been much explored in personal informatics and behaviour change, albeit with an emphasis on single-domain, individual, and quantitative goals with limited account for users’ intrinsic motivation. This half-day workshop aims to address these gaps through six underexplored themes focusing on (i) designing for qualitative goals, (ii) extending theme asurement of quantitative goals beyond behavioural measures, (iii) accounting for and supporting users’ intrinsic motivation, (iv) critical approach to goalsetting, (v) supporting multiple-domain goals and social goals, and (vi) addressing the theoretical gap of technologies for behaviour change and their interventions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evaluation of Personas and Daily Activity Maps for Improved Clinical Care and Training Models for Effective Human-Robot Interaction for Persons with Dementia: A Qualitative Study (Preprint)

  2025-10-21

  preprintOpen access

  <sec> <title>BACKGROUND</title> With over 7.2 million persons with dementia needing healthcare, challenges faced by healthcare are growing. As Social Assistive Robots have been in existence for some time, utilizing realistic and comprehensive personas and their daily activity maps to inform robot designers, and in the long-term, nurse caregivers, about predicting agitation and fall risk is a significant undertaking. However, no studies to date have evaluated these personas and their daily activity maps with expert dementia stakeholders. </sec> <sec> <title>OBJECTIVE</title> The purpose of this mixed method study was to explore the perspectives of formal and informal dementia caregivers, and robot designers in the use of personas and their daily activity maps to support caregivers in a residential facility in monitoring for agitation and fall risk. </sec> <sec> <title>METHODS</title> In this study, 15 stakeholders were first administered survey questions for which they subsequently provided perspectives on how to improve their scores if warranted. </sec> <sec> <title>RESULTS</title> In the quantitative survey, using a modified Persona Perception Scale, the average score for the personas was 4.60 out of 5, while the daily activity maps received an average score of 4.54. Individual scores on the subscales of Credibility, Completeness, Clarity, Empathy, and Willingness to Use, for both personas and daily activity maps, ranged from 4.23 to 4.75. In the qualitative analysis, three major themes emerged: 1) Improving human-robot interaction training through greater knowledge of the personal context of persons with dementia; 2) Comprehensive assessment of clinical history and functional capacities as essential for provision of safe and effective interaction for persons with dementia; and 3) Recommendations for improving the clarity and usefulness of the design of personas and their daily activity maps. </sec> <sec> <title>CONCLUSIONS</title> The evaluation of personas and daily activity maps represents a promising avenue for improving the care of persons with dementia, particularly in relation to managing agitation and reducing fall risks. As the global burden of dementia continues to grow, innovative approaches like the use of personas and their daily activity maps may play an important role in enhancing the quality of care for individuals living with dementia. </sec> <sec> <title>CLINICALTRIAL</title> N/A </sec> <sec> <title>INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT</title> RR2-10.2196/55761 </sec>

  PublisherDOI

• Preparing and Experiencing Food During Life Events: Implications for Technology Supporting Social and Value Changes

  2025-04-24 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Beyond Quantitative Goals : Design for Qualitative Goals and their Quantitative Subgoals

  Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University) · 2025-11-13

  articleOpen access

  Goals, as key aspects of users’ motivation, have been much explored in personal informatics and behaviour change, albeit with an emphasis on single-domain, individual, and quantitative goals with limited account for users’ intrinsic motivation. This half-day workshop aims to address these gaps through six underexplored themes focusing on (i) designing for qualitative goals, (ii) extending the measurement of quantitative goals beyond behavioural measures, (iii) accounting for and supporting users’ intrinsic motivation, (iv) critical approach to goal setting, (v) supporting multiple-domain goals and social goals, and (vi) addressing the theoretical gap of technologies for behaviour change and their interventions.

  OA PDF

• Clinical Researchers’ Perspectives on Engagement in Digital Mental Health Interventions: A Semi-Structured Interview Study (Preprint)

  2025-12-04

  articleOpen access

  <sec> <title>BACKGROUND</title> While technology can widen access to mental health treatments, digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) frequently have low engagement and high dropout rates. Better understanding user engagement with DMHIs can help researchers design technologies that users are more likely to benefit from. However, a major challenge is that the term “engagement” is very broad, not well-understood, and operationalized differently in different projects. Different communities, such as Behavioral Science and Human-Computer Interaction, have different perspectives on user engagement for DMHIs, which have led to challenges when designing for engagement. </sec> <sec> <title>OBJECTIVE</title> This study investigated clinical researchers’ views of user engagement when designing DMHIs. </sec> <sec> <title>METHODS</title> We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with 12 clinical mental health researchers who have developed DMHIs using Human-Centered Design (HCD) methods. </sec> <sec> <title>RESULTS</title> We identified different user engagement dimensions for DMHIs: digital mental health components (i.e., intervention, technology, and human support); levels of engagement (micro and macro); and visibility of the engagement (visible and invisible). We also describe the challenges of designing DMHIs for engagement. </sec> <sec> <title>CONCLUSIONS</title> Our study highlights how clinical researchers operationalize engagement by focusing on macro-engagement activities but, when measuring engagement, primarily measure micro-engagement activities. Furthermore, to appropriately capture engagement, we need to include more qualitative methods to complement other measurement methods. </sec>

  PublisherDOI

• A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Research on Goals for Behavior Change

  2025-04-24 · 7 citations

  reviewOpen access

  HCI research on goals and behavior change has significantly increased over the past decade.However, while emerging work has synthesized personal informatics goals, fewer efforts have focused on also integrating HCI research on behavior change to chart future research directions.We conducted a systematic review of 180 papers focused on goals and behavior change from over 10 years of SIGCHI journals and conference proceedings.We further analyzed 37 papers from the data set that included evaluations of interventions' effectiveness in-the-wild.We also reported on the effectiveness of 76 of such technology-based interventions and the meta-analysis of 28 of these interventions.We find that most research has focused on goals in the health and wellbeing domains, centered on the individual, low intrinsic goals, and partial use of theoretical constructs in technology-based interventions.We highlight opportunities for supporting multiple-domain, social, high intrinsic, and qualitative goals in HCI research for behavior change, and for more effective technology-based interventions with stronger theoretical underpinning, supporting users' awareness of deep motives for qualitative goals.

  PublisherDOI

• &lt;div&gt; Catalyzing Interdisciplinary&amp;nbsp;&lt;span&gt;Computing Research:&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;Best Practices for Researchers&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Unpacking the Lived Experience of Collaborative Pregnancy Tracking

  2024-05-11 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access

  Pregnancy brings physical, emotional, and economic challenges for expectant parent(s), close relatives, and friends. Existing technology support, including tracking technology, largely targets pregnant people and ignores other stakeholders. We therefore lack an understanding of how to approach designing collaborative pregnancy tracking technology. To understand how people collaborate around pregnancy tracking and wish to do so, we interviewed 13 pregnant people and 11 non-pregnant stakeholders in the U.S., including partners, friends, and grandparents-to-be. We find that people collaborate for goals like social bonding and jointly managing various pregnancy data. Stakeholders collaborated by either dividing up data types or collectively monitoring the same information. We also identify tensions and challenges, such as pregnant people’s privacy concerns and stakeholders’ varied levels of interest in tracking. In light of socio-cultural norms and stakeholders’ distinctive roles around pregnancy, we point to opportunities for designing collaborative technology that aligns with as well as challenges socio-cultural practices around pregnancy tracking.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sean A. Munson

  8 shared

• Daniel Avrahami

  FX Palo Alto Laboratory

  4 shared

• Gary Hsieh

  University of Washington

  4 shared

• Andrés Monroy‐Hernández

  Princeton University

  3 shared

• Pernilla Qvarfordt

  3 shared

• Patricia A. Areán

  University of Washington

  3 shared

• Stephen M. Schueller

  University of California, Irvine

  3 shared

• Gene Golovchinsky

  FX Palo Alto Laboratory

  3 shared

Education

• PhD, Human Centered Design and Engineering

  University of Washington

  2020

• MS, Computer Science

  Harvard University

  2012