PeDEL

Personal Data and Empowerment Lab
The Personal Data and Empowerment Lab is a Human-Centered Computing research lab in the Kahlert School of Computing at the University of Utah. When designing technologies, many developers fail to fully represent their users, creating technology that is not equally accessible for all members of society. Our research focuses on addressing this issue by analyzing ways to ensure that technology is more inclusive and equally accessible for all. The majority of our research explores the topics of healthcare, accessibility, and personal informatics with the end goal of empowering users.
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End of semester lab froyo!
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Lab photo at CHI 2022 in New Orleans!

Recent Publications


Opportunities for Technology to Facilitate Treatment for People with Disorders of Consciousness


Thomas Kauffman, Rebecca Moore, Jason Wiese

CHI '26: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 13--17, 2026, Barcelona, ESP, CHI


Envisioning the Future of Interactive Health


Ignacio Avellino, Pei-Yi (Patricia) Kuo, Pin Sym Foong, Jason Wiese, Helena M. Mentis, Sean A. Munson, James R. Wallace, Aneesha Singh, Andrew D. Miller, Daniel A. Epstein, Francisco Nunes

CHI EA '25, Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2025


Characterizing Smart Home Technology Usage Among Users with Disabilities through Reddit


Rebecca Moore, Jason Wiese

ASSETS '25, Proceedings of the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2025


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News


Oct 27, 2025

🏅Best paper honorable mention at ASSETS 2025!

Our paper "Characterizing Smart Home Technology Usage Among Users with Disabilities through Reddit" received a best paper honorable mention award from ASSETS 2025!


Apr 14, 2025

🏅Best paper honorable mention at CHI 2025!

Our paper "Understanding the Training Experiences of Competitive Skiers with Tetraplegia" received a best paper honorable mention award from CHI 2025!


Jun 18, 2024

🏅Best paper honorable mention at DIS 2024!

Our DIS '24 paper "Toward Building Design Empathy for People with Disabilities Using Social Media Data: A New Approach for Novice Designers" received an Honorable Mention Award!


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Projects


Making Smart Hospitals Useful


Smart hospitals are arriving, driven by the vision to enhance the patient experience, reduce operational burden, and improve hospital workflow. We explore how the technology employed in patient rooms better supports patients' and employees' needs.


Designing Technology for Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury to Facilitate Self-care Adherence


Individuals with spinal cord injuries often have to perform numerous self-care activities. Performing pressure reliefs is one such behavior to prevent pressure ulcers. We investigate technological solutions to increase pressure relief adherence.


Advancing the Path for a More Human-centered Design of Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs)


This project focuses on advancing the path for designing more user-centered JITAIs. Specifically, this work will provide guidelines for designing JITAIs that account for the diverse ways users interact with technology for supporting health and well-being.


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Contact


Personal Data and Empowerment Lab


pedel@cs.utah.edu


Kahlert School of Computing

University of Utah

50 Central Campus Drive Rm. 3190
Salt Lake City, UT 84112


Curriculum vitae