The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) invited participation from social and behavioral scientists across the country to further develop an open-source digital platform that makes it easy for scientists to produce research-focused smart devices such as mobile apps and smart watches. The platform will empower social and behavioral scientists to collect rich and novel data about human behavior in natural settings with a wide array of research capacities.

On Sept. 8, the UIUC Center for Social and Behavioral Science hosted a virtual workshop on advancing social and behavioral science via an open-source infrastructure for research using smart devices. Researchers were given the opportunities to do the following:

Learn about the full power of smart device use for social-behavioral science research
Provide input on the features and functions of the open-source technology
Shape the future of social and behavioral science research via smart technology.

The workshop focused on developing a vision for an open-source platform that reflects the priorities, challenges, and needs of the social and behavioral science community for the research capacities of smart devices. To support this visioning, Jim Rehg, Director of the Health Care Engineering Systems Center and Founder Professor of Computer Science and Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at UIUC, gave a presentation on the promise and challenges of using smart devices in social and behavioral science.