Michael Hoefer
Welcome
My name is Michael, I study computer science and cognitive science at CU Boulder, and work in the TMI lab advised by Professor Stephen Voida. I have a broad interest in complex systems, and in particular, social systems. I’m currently exploring personal informatics as a leverage point for supporting organic change in social systems, focusing on individual personal development at scale through new patterns of directing attention. My work is motivated by the environmental and mental health crises, which may actually have similar underlying causes.
I’m exploring this space broadly, with projects on dreaming, mental health, sustainable consumption corridors, and spirituality. Methodologically, I draw on the fields of human-computer interaction, data science, network science, psychology, and applied machine learning.
News
2023
July
- Published a paper (LINK) at Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2023
June
- Attended the Human Computer Interaction Consortium (HCIC) and briefly presented my work titled Personal Informatics as a Multi-Scale Mirror: Aligning Lifestyles with Human Values
May
- Proposed my dissertation work about Personal Informatics for Personal Development.
April
- Published a late-breaking work at CHI 2023, titled *Tracking the Experience of Self in Everyday Life
January
- Teaching CSCI 1300 again this spring.
2022
August
- Excited to teach CSCI 1300 again this fall, this time with 360 students!
July
- Published an interactions article about Faith Informatics
May
- Attending CHI 2022 in person – email me if you’re going and would like to meet up!
- Full paper: Personal Dream Informatics: A Self-Information Systems Model of Dream Engagement
- Short paper + poster (late breaking work): Visualizing Uncertainty in Multi-Source Mental Health Data
- Workshop paper for Integrating Faith, Religion, and Spirituality in HCI: Faith Informatics: Computing for Development Through Stages of Faith
- Workshop paper for Self-Determination Theory in HCI: Shaping a Research Agenda: Interfacing with Representations of the Self and Needs
2021
- 8/26 - Presented a poster, A Network Visualization of Sustainable Consumption Corridors at IEEE VIS 2021. Extended Abstract
- 8/25 - Gave a lightning talk, Representing Systems of Need and Satisfaction at the Vis4Good workshop at IEEE VIS 2021.
- 7/23 - Finished teaching my first course, CSCI 1300: Introduction to Programming, a hybrid online/in-person course covering the basics of computational thinking and C++.
- 7/7 - Attended Networks 2021 and:
- 6/28 - Presented our paper, The Multiplicative Patient and the Clinical Workflow: Clinician Perspectives on Social Interfaces for Self-Tracking and Managing Bipolar Disorder at DIS 2021.
- 4/30 - Presented a lightning talk to ICS, Assessing Human Need at Scale.
- 4/8 - Awarded a seed grant from the Institue of Cognitive Science (ICS) for my project Exploring a Participatory Network Methodology for Assessing Human Need.
- 3/5 - Presented a poster at the CU Boulder Computer Science Annual Research Expo, A Census of Human Need: Developing a Comunity Informatics Platform to Systematically Assess Human Need and Satisfaction.
- 1/7 - Honored to be awarded a Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant for my project Toward Personal Dream Informatics: Exploring the Self-Tracking of Dreams
2020
- 9/20 - My hackathon project, Empowering Interpersonal Informatics won the Social Impact Track at CU’s Hack4Impact Hackathon.
- 7/19 - Presented Networks for Understanding Human Need @ IC2S2
- 5/6 - Finished my first year!
2019
- 8/26 - I began a PhD program at The University of Colorado Boulder
Research Interests
- Problem solving and measurement in social systems
- Systematic assessment of human need and satisfaction
- Personal, interpersonal, and community informatics
- Technologies for supporting serious mental illness, especially bipolar disorder and PTSD
- Dream science and technology for supporting dream engagement
- Meta-science and the quantification of scientific contribution
- Emotional technologies and processes for emotional education
- Organizational culture and intra-organizational mobility
As evidenced by the diversity of research interests above, I’m currently exploring a variety of approaches to problem solving in social systems. I’m most inspired by the ongoing work of Jack Harich at thwink.org as well as that of Joe Edelman at Human Systems.
Methodological Interests
- Natural Language Processing
- Human Centered Computering / Human Computer Interaction
- Network Science
- System Dynamics Modeling
- Data Science and Computational Social Science