Publications & Talks

I love sharing more about my thoughts about research! As of summer 2024, I have:

Below is a series of my UX conference talks and presentations, UX think pieces, and academic publications in cognitive neuroscience, computer science, and human-computer interaction. I cover a bevy of topics, including UX research practices, UX Research team management within a Lean SaaS company, UX research assessing the efficacy of robotic and virtual health assistive technologies, and neural substrates and cognitive processes that facilitate support associative memory and learning.

Check out our collaborative Medium page and my UX Blog for more thoughts on all things UX, and check out my Google Scholar and ResearchGate pages for more on my academic publications!

Conference talks and presentations

5 fundamentals of In-Depth Interviews: How the Best User Research is User Therapy

Communicating Business Impact with Dovetail

In this talk, Iris Barrera and I discuss how we leverage the research repository tool Dovetail to share UX Research insights throughout our company!

How Verizon Connect built a winning culture of UX research and insights

In this talk, Iris Barrera and I chat about how we elevated the impact of research and insights with Dovetail! Our team is now experimenting with how to connect insights to the rest of our organization, including forging strong working relationships with other customer-facing roles that do their own subject matter research, as well as sharing customer clips with leaders!

Selected UX Thinkpieces
also, check out my UX Blog and our COLLABORATIVE UX RESEARCHERS MEDIUM PAGE!

Who are the Best UX Researchers? Turns Out, it’s 1st Graders!

We researchers often get so in the weeds of our projects that we need reminders to take a breath and get perspective on the bigger picture. What better way to do that than to figure out how to explain your day-to-day to a 1st grader in an engaging way? Read on...

FigJam and Warm Fuzzies: How Our FigJam Board Helps Our UX Research Team Connect and Celebrate Each Week

While gaining more on-the-job training in my manager position, I've also read up on many frameworks for 1:1s, team meetings, and project kick-offs. There's so much info out there! And the more info that I took in, the more questions buzzed around in my head. What structures work best for our team? What tools should we be using? How do we track success? Read on…

Keeping Everyone in the Research Loop

Packaging and showcasing our work creatively and constructively helps to ensure that our findings actually make their way into our products, leading to positive impacts on our users’ experiences. So, it seems like now would be a good time for us to share some methods that we’ve been using to communicate our progress and results to our broader and cross-functional teams! Here are three techniques that we use across Verizon Connect’s Experience Team to keep everyone informed about our research findings! Read on…

Dissertation

Rewind-Remind: Investigating How Gamification of Memory Tasks Can Evaluate Associative Memory Performance in Healthy, Older Adults

Associative memory, the type of memory that allows us to relate information together (e.g., a person’s face and name), is particularly susceptible to age-related deterioration. Older adults tend to engage in retrieval shift. This means they rely less on their memory, and more on visual search strategies, to remember information. Rewind-Remind is a proposed online cognitive training tool designed with memory research and human factors in mind. Users’ memory was tested before and after playing Rewind-Remind. Results suggest that the current version of Rewind-Remind may be able to help screen people for instances of retrieval shift. Future research is aimed at enhancing Rewind-Remind as a research-backed, user-friendly cognitive training tool.

Thesis

The Investigation Of Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) Activity In Item And Associative Memory Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS)

Though the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been shown to be important for working and item memory, recent neuroimaging research has suggested that the DLPFC is more important in relational processing for associative memory than initially thought. It has been found that individuals with depressive symptoms often have less activity in the DLPFC; it has also been found that these individuals experience associative memory deficits. However, it remains unclear if associative memory deficits in depression are related to DLPFC activity. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can modify cortical excitability and has thus been used in the examination of brain regions and their related functions. The present study used tDCS in individuals with depression to investigate if associative memory deficits were related to DLPFC activity. Only the High Depression group showed a selective enhancement of associative memory after tDCS, whereas the Low Depression group received no benefits from tDCS. The present study suggests that DLPFC activity is related to associative memory deficits in depression. This adds further evidence to the existing body of literature on the DLPFC’s function in associative memory.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Rewind/Remind - a cognitive tool for people with associative memory deficits.

Toutountzi, T., Abellanoza, C., Garg, A., Ebert, D., & Makedon, F. (2017). Rewind/Remind - A cognitive tool for people with associative memory deficits. Proceedings of the 10th ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA) 2017, Rhodes, Greece. 

Towards designing a socially assistive robot for adaptive and personalized cognitive training.

Tsiakas, K., Abellanoza, C., Abujelala, M., & Makedon, F. (2017). Towards designing a socially assistive robot for adaptive and personalized cognitive training. Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Robot Interaction 2017, Vienna, Austria.

Enhancing memory retention by increasing alpha and decreasing beta brainwaves using music.

Makada, T., Ozair, D., Mohammed, M., & Abellanoza, C. (2016). Enhancing memory retention by increasing alpha and decreasing beta brainwaves using music. Proceedings of the 9th ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA) 2016, Corfu, Greece.

Interactive learning and adaptation for robot assisted therapy for people with dementia.

Tsiakas, K., Abellanoza, C., & Makedon, F. (2016). Interactive learning and adaptation for robot assisted therapy for people with dementia. Proceedings of the 9th ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA) 2016, Corfu, Greece.

Brain-EE: Brain enjoyment evaluation using commercial EEG headband.

Abujelala, M., Abellanoza, C., & Sharma, A. (2016). Brain-EE: Brain Enjoyment Evaluation using Commercial EEG Headband. Proceedings of the 9th ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA) 2016, Corfu, Greece.

Comparison of associative recognition versus source recognition.

Park, H. Abellanoza, C., Schaeffer, J. (2014). Comparison of associative recognition versus source recognition. Neuroscience Letters, 581, 52-56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2014.08.024

Source recognition by stimulus content in the MTL.

Park, H., Abellanoza, C., Schaeffer, J., & Gandy, K. (2014). Source recognition by stimulus content in the MTL. Brain Research, 1553, 59-68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2014.01.029

The effect of object processing in content-dependent source memory.

Park, H., Leal, F., Spann, C., & Abellanoza, C. (2013). The effect of object processing in content-dependent source memory. BMC Neuroscience, 17, 71.

Conference Poster Presentations

Transcranial direct current stimulation improves associative memory in individuals with depression.

Abellanoza, C., Schaeffer, J., & Park, H. (2015). Presented at the 22nd annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. San Francisco, CA.

Hippocampal involvement in retrieval of associative and source memory.

Abellanoza, C., & Park, H. (2014). Presented at the 21st annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. Boston, MA.

Distractors modulate different neural correlates for item versus source recognition.

Abellanoza, C., & Park, H. (2013). Presented at Society for Neuroscience, 2013. San Diego, CA.

The demand for cognitive control in the formation of source memory: A role of the hippocampus.

Abellanoza, C., Leal, F., Garrett, K., & Park, H. (2013). Presented at the 20th annual meeting of Cognitive Neuroscience Society. San Francisco, CA.

Identifying neural bases of source memory in the dual-process model of recognition.

Abellanoza, C., Leal, F., & Park, H. Presented at Metroplex Day 2013. Dallas, TX.

Summary

My publications include a variety of formats, like academic peer-reviewed articles in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, works describing UX Research applications in health assistive technology assessment, and think pieces on creating and managing a UX Research team for a SaaS company in telecommunications and fleet management. I’m always bursting with new ideas and observations, so please reach out if you’d like a chat or collab!