Join USC Annenberg for a conversation with faculty members Lynn Miller and Peter Clarke.

Professor Lynn Miller: Over decades, my students, collaborators, and I have designed virtual environments (VE) to: (1) representatively sample narrative sequences (e.g., in dating scenarios) leading to behaviors of interest (e.g., risky sex) for our population of interest (young MSM), thereby insuring generalizability to everyday life (GEL) and (2) embed interventions in these games.  We reduced risky behavior over 6 months, nationally. Leveraging our neural network models and enabling technologies, we suggest how today’s VE and AI afford amazing opportunities for assessing and changing within- and between-person behavioral variability (e.g., mental health) while insuring the capacity for causal inference, GEL and “bigger” science. 

Professor Peter Clarke: My research and social action have concentrated for decades on improving nutrition among low-income people. In our current phase, we have built and field-tested an innovative smartphone app, VeggieBook, designed to help household cooks use more vegetables when preparing meal and snacks.  Our tool is an example of a “just-in-the-moment, adaptive intervention.”

I will describe how VeggieBook was designed and tested, and the awards and commendations it has received.  Of equal interest, however, are our experiments with disseminating VeggieBook in collaboration with community-based groups.  These disseminations have underscored the fact that high-tech requires high-touch for successful implementation.