Avatar and notification research at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center
Helping Users Feel Invested in Their Quitting Tobacco Journey
At a glance
I supported UX research for LiFT (Living Free from Tobacco), a tobacco cessation app preparing for a clinical trial with young adults. I helped plan research, wrote interview materials, and co-facilitated six remote interviews exploring how avatar customization and notifications shape engagement, emotional connection, and trust.
The takeaway: people want their quitting journey to feel like them. Alex, the app's virtual guide, felt like a personal identity, not just a character to click past. Customization landed well overall, though some representation gaps stood out. Participants wanted a voice that sounded encouraging, not robotic, and real control over their notifications.
Overview
Fred Hutch builds digital interventions for cancer prevention and health behavior change in underserved communities. LiFT had already been tested with LGBTQ+ populations and was preparing for a larger trial with young adults who use tobacco or nicotine.
Alex, the app's virtual guide, isn't a real person, but is built from real lived experience. The team wanted to know whether young adults would connect with Alex and whether customization options supported that connection. As a research assistant, I helped shape the study, from proposing directions to drafting materials to synthesizing findings into recommendations that the product team could actually use.
My role
I led early research scoping, pushing us toward the two areas with the clearest path to actionable findings: avatar customization and notifications. I drafted and iterated on the interview guide and built the stimulus slides for the think-aloud portion. During sessions, I took notes, troubleshot tech issues, and flagged gaps for the lead researcher to follow up on live. Afterward, I helped identify patterns across interviews and turn them into specific, actionable recommendations.
I drafted rough research study plans and slides to help the team ideate on what data would be the most useful and most impactful in the short term to help inform the clinical trials
Research focus
Main Research Question
How does the design and customization of a virtual guide, alongside notification messaging, influence young adults' motivation, engagement, and trust in the LiFT app?
Sub-questions
• How does personalizing a virtual guide influence motivation and engagement?
• How do users perceive and navigate the avatar customization experience?
• What emotional responses does the guide evoke?
• What notification timing, content, and delivery methods do users prefer?
• How much control do users want over notifications and personalization features?
Method
Six one-hour remote interviews with tobacco/nicotine users aged 20-30. Each session covered quitting history, a think-aloud customization walkthrough, stimulus-based follow-ups, and a notification preferences discussion.
I created stimulus slides for after the think-aloud customization to elicit more thinking about the customization process and get more targeted feedback.
Findings
Avatars that felt like them. Participants consistently built avatars that reflected their own identity, some describing it as "talking to themselves." Customization boosted both emotional connection and accountability.
Inclusive, but not deep enough. The customization library felt like it had "something for everybody," but participants still wanted more darker skin tones, natural hair colors, cultural hairstyles like braids and afros, additional facial features, and more feminine clothing options. Broad inclusivity was appreciated, but people noticed what was missing.
Voice shaped trust. Voices that sounded robotic or obviously AI-generated undercut credibility. Since Alex is a supportive guide, voice quality was closely tied to how encouraging and trustworthy the experience felt.
Control over notifications. Participants wanted to set their own timing and frequency, especially around moments like mornings or lunch breaks when cravings hit hardest.
Final research report slides showing illustrations to help give faces to participants and allow for better tracking of data while reading the report, with also severity ratings of the suggested changes based on pain points
Reflection
The biggest lesson: impactful research happens before sessions even start. Understanding prior findings, stakeholder goals, and technical constraints mattered as much as the interviews themselves. Scoping was iterative; every idea got stress-tested against whether it was actionable, and the study was stronger for cutting the ones that weren't. Representation, too, turned out to be about small details, not just broad categories. Most of all, I saw how personalization itself can support behavior change: participants weren't just customizing an avatar, they were building a version of themselves to lean on.
