My research focuses on the areas of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Health Informatics, and Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW). I study how health technologies become part of ongoing care and everyday life. Through qualitative and human-centered design approaches, I examine (1) how caregiving relationships shape participation in technology use and design; and (2) how patients, clinicians, and technologies together shape understandings of symptoms, treatment, and health over time. My work aims to inform the design of technologies that better support ongoing care, care relationships, and everyday health management.
Why research/HCI? I grew up in a generation shaped by technology. While rapid technological development has made life easier in many ways, it has also created new challenges for some people. My ultimate goal is to use scientific methods and technical skills to explore how technology can better serve people, creating work that makes a real impact on the world.
Outside school, you’ll find me: Snowboarding. Playing video games, and Legos.
HCI research on goals and behavior change has significantly increased over the past decade. However, while emerging work has synthesized personal informatics goals, fewer efforts have focused on also integrating HCI research on behavior change to chart future research directions. We conducted a systematic review of 180 papers focused on goals and behavior change from over 10 years of SIGCHI journals and conference proceedings. We further analyzed 37 papers from the data set that included evaluations of interventions’ effectiveness in-the-wild. We also reported on the effectiveness of 76 of such technology-based interventions and the meta-analysis of 28 of these interventions. We find that most research has focused on goals in the health and wellbeing domains, centered on the individual, low intrinsic goals, and partial use of theoretical constructs in technology-based interventions. We highlight opportunities for supporting multiple-domain, social, high intrinsic, and qualitative goals in HCI research for behavior change, and for more effective technology-based interventions with stronger theoretical underpinning, supporting users’ awareness of deep motives for qualitative goals.
@inproceedings{zhu2025systematic,author={Zhu, Jun and Lolla, Sruzan and Agnihotri, Meeshu and Asgari Tappeh, Sahar and Guluzade, Lala and Agapie, Elena and Sas, Corina},title={A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Research on Goals for Behavior Change},pages={1--25},year={2025},publisher={Association for Computing Machinery},url={https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3706598.3714072},booktitle={Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},serise={CHI'25},}
CSCW’25
Living with Brain Data: Collaboration and Equity in Data-Intensive Brain Implants
Jun Zhu, and Megh Marathe
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2025
This paper examines the lived experience of implanted medical devices through the case of brain implants for epilepsy. These data-driven devices record brain signals to detect and interrupt seizures, introducing new forms of technology-mediated care. Drawing on interviews with 17 patients and caregivers, we examine how data-intensive implants reshape medical interactions and everyday life. Participants reported shifts in doctor-patient collaboration, including the integration of a new expert—an engineer responsible for device-related concerns—into clinical visits. The preparatory and ongoing work of data transfer posed challenges for participants who were low-income, aging, traveling, or busy. Participants expressed a strong desire to access implant data to better understand and manage their condition. They were satisfied with the device unless their medications and/or seizures increased. We discuss emerging considerations for collaborative care and design justice introduced by medical implants that, unlike wearables, deliver treatment and cannot be easily set aside.
@article{zhu2025living,author={Zhu, Jun and Marathe, Megh},title={Living with Brain Data: Collaboration and Equity in Data-Intensive Brain Implants},journal={Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction},volume={9},number={7},pages={1--26},year={2025},publisher={Association for Computing Machinery},url={https://doi.org/10.1145/3757625},series={CSCW'25},}
I was selected for a CRA scholarship to attend the 2026 CRA-WP Grad Cohort Workshop in Seattle! 
Our paper “Living with Brain Data: Collaboration and Equity in Data-Intensive Brain Implants” has been accepted to CSCW 2025. 
Officially graduated with a Master of Science in Informatics from UC Irvine. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. - Seneca.