Motivated by a desire to proactively support youth who are at especially high risk of experiencing mental health crises and are currently being underserved by the field of technology, I began my masters’ thesis project by working with direct-service organizations across the country (including JRI Foster Care, Friends of the Children Boston, Communities for People, Stepping Forward LA, and Think of Us’s Virtual Support Services team) to gather knowledge on how technology can provide foster-involved youth with missing social support. We first conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 current and former foster youth (age 14 and older), in which participants emphasized that youth do not receive enough social support while in foster care and expressed that there may be potential for peer-to-peer technology to bridge this gap and improve aspects of youths’ psychological well-being. Through prototyping and testing multiple possible interface designs with 24 current and former foster-involved youth, we determined that a system in which users can complete reflective check-ins in a community setting might provide youth with most types of social support (informational, emotional, social network, and esteem support). Finally, by conducting a mixed-methods study piloting this type of system with 15 youths (aged 17 to 24) for two weeks, we gathered preliminary evidence to suggest that this design is able to provide youth with emotional support, encouragement, and a sense of belonging and fosters a safe environment for youth to share these types of support. The study also highlighted areas for future growth, such as finding ways to help youth feel more comfortable interacting with one another and find the platform more exciting (for example, by drawing on art therapy and game design techniques to allow more creative/non-verbal forms of expression). 

Read about the findings from this project in my master’s thesis and this first-authored paper, which has been accepted for publication in CSCW 2025.