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Founding Assistant Professor
Department of Information Science
College of Media, Communication, and Information
University of Colorado Boulder
UCB 315
Boulder, CO 80309-0315 USA
Contact me via email:
svoida@acm.org (research)
svoida@colorado.edu (CU)
stephen@voida.com (personal)
I conduct research in human–computer interaction, at the intersection of personal information management, user interface design, ubiquitous computing, and computer-supported cooperative work. My work focuses on helping people to overcome the day-to-day challenges of information overload.
As computing has become an increasingly pervasive part of our lives, people now have access to their electronic information across a larger variety of networked devices, in more places, among different groups of friends or co-workers, and while participating in a broader range of activities than ever before. And as access to information increases, so does the amount of information that people create, receive, share...and have to manage. Most of the computing interfaces that people use on a daily basis simply weren't designed to help us make sense of information at this scale. In my research, I aim to address this problem—I study how people manage their information in the real world, and I design new interfaces and computing systems to minimize the impact of information overload.
I'm particularly interested in re-examining the interfaces that we use every day—file browsers, the desktop, our smartphone home screens—and the ways that electronic information is represented within our computing systems in order to help make the next generation of computers more responsive to the ways that people naturally organize and manage their projects, collaborations, and everyday lives. In my previous jobs, I've taught various programming and ubiquitous computing courses, and I at least try to keep up with a few hobbies to stay balanced.
I'm always interested in working with motivated students! If you are currently enrolled at CU, please email me for more information about signing up for independent study course credits. If not, please take a look at the information for prospective students on the CU-Boulder admissions web pages, as well as the specific PhD applications requirements for information and computer science.
Current and Featured Research Projects
 Temporality in Information Work (2013–Present) |  Technology to Support Individuals with Bipolar (2012–Present) |  Multitasking & Email Study |  Giornata (Activity-Based Computing) |
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Recent Articles, Papers, and Presentations
- Bardram, J.E., Jeuris, S., Tell, P., Houben, S., & Voida, S. (2019, August). Activity-centric computing systems. Communications of the ACM 62(8), 72–81.
- Snyder, J., Murnane, E., Lustig, C., & Voida, S. (2019, May). Visually encoding the lived experience of bipolar disorder. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 133:1–133:14), Glasgow, Soctland, UK. ACM.
- Murnane, E.L., Walker, T.G., Tench, B., Voida, S., & Snyder, J. (2018, November). Personal informatics in interpersonal contexts: Towards the design of technology that supports the social ecologies of long-term mental health management. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction—CSCW 2(CSCW), 127:1–127:27. CSCW 2018 Best Paper Honorable Mention (among the top 5% of all submissions).
- Kelly, A., Whitlock, M., Nickoloff, B., Lam, A., Szafir, D.A., & Voida, S. (2017). Becoming butterflies: Interactive embodiment of the butterfly lifecycle. Poster presented at the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2017), Maui, Hawaii, September 11–15.
- Koushik, V., Gendreau, A., Ho, E., Wilson, S., & Voida, S. (2017). Snappable sensors: Empowering future scientists. Poster presented at the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2017), Maui, Hawaii, September 11–15.
- Norris, W., & Voida, S. (2017). Models and metaphors of temporality: Supporting individual- and group-based time-management and coordination work. Position paper for the symposium on HCI Across Borders, held in conjunction with the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2017), Denver, Colorado, May 6–7.
- Norris, W., & Voida, S. (2017). Temporality in Crisis Informatics: Representations and integrations of time in humanitarian crowd work. Position paper for the graduate student workshop on Grand Challenges for Crisis Informatics researchers, Boulder, Colorado, May 6.
- Norris, W., & Voida, S. (2017). Temporality in Crisis Informatics: Representations of time in digital humanitarian systems. Position paper for the Theory Transfers? Social Theory and CSCW Research workshop, held in conjunction with the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2017), Portland, Oregon, February 25–March 1.
- Cornet, V., Voida, S., & Holden, R.J. (2017). Activity Theory analysis of heart failure self-care. Mind, Culture, and Activity 25(1), 22–39.
- Jia, Y., Liu, L., Yu, X., & Voida, S. (2017). Designing leaderboards for gamification: Considering perceived differences based on user ranking, application domain, and personality traits. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2017, pp. 1949–1960), Denver, Colorado, May 6–11. ACM Press.
- Matthews, M., Abdullah, S., Murnane, E., Voida, S., Choudhury, T., Gay, G., & Frank, E. (2016, August). Development and evaluation of a smartphone-based measure of social rhythms for bipolar disorder. Assessment 23(4), 472–483.
- Jia, Y., Xu, B., Karanam, Y., & Voida, S. (2016). Personality targeted gamification: A survey study on personality traits and motivational affordances. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2016, pp. 2001–2013), San Jose, California, May 7–12. ACM Press.
- Holden, R.J., Voida, S., Savoy, A., Jones, J.F., & Kulanthaivel, A. (2016). Human factors engineering and human–computer interaction: Supporting user performance and experience. In Fennell, J.T., & Dixon, B.E. (Eds.), Clinical Informatics Study Guide: Text and Review (pp. 287–307). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International.
- Voida, S., Jia, Y., Karanam, Y., Chambers, A., Dara, J., Alderhami, A., Bodke, K., Shrikhande, D., & Despard, J. (2015). Challenges, feedback & notifications: Empirical explorations to inform the design of interfaces to motivate and encourage long-term personal informatics use. Position paper for the UbiComp 2015 workshop on New Frontiers of Quantified Self: Finding New Ways for Engaging Users in Collecting and Using Personal Data, Osaka, Japan, September 7.
- Matthews, M., Voida, S., Abdullah, S., Doherty, G., Choudhury, T., Im, S., & Gay, G. (2015). In situ design for mental illness: Considering the pathology of bipolar disorder in mHealth design. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human–Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2015, pp. 86–97), Copenhagen, Denmark, August 24–7. ACM Press.