Overview
This Behavior sciences group researches and develops methods, tools, platforms and offerings to capture, analyze, and change human behavior in various contexts. The group uses a multi-disciplinary approach which lies at the intersection of the behavioral and social sciences, computer science, sensing, design and games.
Fields
The key sub-groups of this research area are:
Well-being: Wellbeing research works on examining the drivers of well-being (such as stress and emotion) as well as outcomes of well-being (such as productivity or resilience) in the workplace and other contexts. The focus is on both detection of wellbeing states and interventions to improve well-being. The work relies heavily on digital means to understand current state and the delivery of interventions to improve state. The group is led by Dr. Mayuri Duggirala.
Norm-compliance: Norms compliance research focuses on analyzing behaviors that do not conform to norms and designing interventions to promote compliance in a variety of identified contexts. Examples of the work the group is engaged in are Information security compliance in the workplace and mitigating conduct risk / promoting customer fair treatment while selling financial products. The group is led by Dr. Jayasree Raveendran.
Behavior modelling and simulation: The behaviour modelling and simulation work has 2 flavors.
One stream focuses on generating fine grained realistic models of human behavior in contexts such as behaviour within enterprises and behavior of consumers and the retail ecosystem. This stream is led by Vivek Balaraman.
The second stream focuses on behavioral modeling of data by using various tools like statistical analysis and graph theory, to model processes for application in retail, advertising, epidemics, human dynamics. This stream is led by Dr. Arnab Chakraborty.
Purposeful games and Learning: This team works on research, design and development of games and playful interfaces for specific purposes such as wellbeing, engagement and learning at workplace. The team is exploring strategies to integrate elements of purpose and fun, use of sensors as game controllers, as well as making games repurposable. The group is led by Dr. Sandeep Athavale.
Behavior informatics: This objective of this group is to develop technologies that help measure and analyze behaviors through multiple modalities be it speech, text, video and images. Applications of this work include measuring and improving well-being of associates, increasing user engagement levels in purposeful games, and improving the match between job-aspirants and jobs. The group is led by Sachin Patel and Gouri Deshpande.
Service design: This research group specializes in adopting designer-driven ways for more effective Interventions in a socio-technical environment. The group use the Research through Design method, to reflect on approaches and learnings to build tools, techniques and develop the process for Service Design to further the field and establish a distinct and effective way of doing Service Design. The group is led by Dr. Ravi Mahamuni.
The Behavior Business and Social Sciences is led by Vivek Balaraman.
Patents and publications (since 2016): This team has filed for / been granted over 13 patents and has published 59 papers in tiered conferences and journals.