Info Sci PhD candidate Jean M. Costa and his work in "mindless computing" get a nice, long write-up over at the Cornell Research webpage. Parsing research in psychology and technology, Costa aims to make self-monitoring tools less of a drain on a user's attention. 

“Studies have shown that if you ask people to constantly reflect on their own behavior or look at visualizations or really do anything routinely," Costa said, "they are less likely to engage in the self-monitoring process and change their behavior. With mindless computing, we hope to subtly change or improve behavior without asking too much of the user."

What follows is a deep-dive spanning Costa's interdisciplinary research, his EmotionCheck technology, which was the subject of his award-winning paper at UbiComp '16, and a snapshot of some of the industry-defining work coming out of the People Aware Computing lab. 

“We are building and evaluating novel technological solutions to help users manage their emotions and behaviors in subtle ways that are easy to integrate into daily routines.”