Hello!
I am a HCI researcher and 3rd year Ph.D. student at Northwestern University, advised by Maia Jacobs in the Personalized & Adaptive Technology for Health (NU-PATH) Lab.

I am a human-computer interaction(HCI) researcher whose work applies participatory and community-based research methods to co-design technologies that support care work and provide equitable health outcomes for marginalized communities.

My research interests include

đź’­ the design of mental & physical health technologies
🌱 burnout interventions for people who support people (like therapists, social workers, and nonprofit advocates)
🌼 socio-technical opportunities to facilitate healing & resilience for survivors of trauma (especially those impacted by gender-based/domestic violence)

Email at: [ conniewchau@u.northwestern.edu ] / conniewchau [@] u [dot] northwestern [dot] edu

Updates & News

February 2024 - Facilitated 2 workshops on wellness for graduate students (a follow-up to my last presentation on burnout back in May 2023) & passed my first Communications qualifying exam!

January 2024 - Presented at The Network’s bi-monthly membership meeting (with representatives from 40+ agencies in domestic violence) & facilitated another training on Technology-Facilitated Abuse (75+ attendees).

October 2023 - Attended CSCW 2023 in-person with 2 accepted workshop submissions in (1) community-collaborative research approaches in HCI and (2) trauma-informed online platforms. The accepted workshop paper was “Towards trauma-informed interventions with & for secondary traumatic stress (STS) for advocates in gender-based violence”.

September 2023 - I presented my research to undergraduates at Northwestern’s Introduction to Graduate Education (IGEN) program that aims to support & diversify undergraduates interested in doctoral studies.

August 2023 - I was awarded the Northwestern Tech Ethics Fellowship (Faculty Liaison) and will be supporting faculty in integrating ethics into their computer science courses & research labs.

July 2023 - I passed my Computer Science qualifying exam!

 
A portrait from the mid-torso up, of an East Asian woman with long, dark brown hair smiling and wearing a dark dress shirt.

Publications

Connie W. Chau, Hannah Studd, Stefany Cruz, Denise Huang, Colleen Norton, Kaylee Kruzan, Maia Jacobs. “Burnout, trauma, and support: Outlining design needs of burnout interventions with, and for, for advocates in gender-based violence service provision”. [under review]

Connie W. Chau, Hannah Studd, Denise Huang, Colleen Norton, Kaylee Kruzan, Maia Jacobs. “Envisioning the future of burnout support: Understanding frontline workers' experiences in nonprofit gender-based violence organizations”. [conditionally accepted]

Connie W. Chau and Elizabeth M. Gerber. “On Hackathons: A Multi
disciplinary Literature Review”. CHI 2023. [PDF]

Stefany Cruz, Alexander Redding, Connie W. Chau, Claire Lu, Josiah Hester, Maia Jacobs. “Equityware: Co-designing with and for low-SES communities.” CHI 2023. [PDF]

Connie W. Chau, Kenneth Holstein, and Michael Madaio. “Part of the Conversation: Workforce Professionals’ Perspectives on the Roles and Impacts of Workforce Technologies”. CSCW 2022. [PDF]