My research in Human–Computer Interaction explores how technology can support people in their everyday lives. Through qualitative and quantitative studies, prototyping, and field interventions, I design and evaluate technologies that respond to people’s needs and circumstances. My research to date has focused on health and wellbeing, particularly among older adults.
Designing for Social Interactions to Support Adherence to Walking Routines among Indian Older Adults
My doctoral research investigated how technology-supported social interactions can help older adults sustain walking routines. It examined the challenges of maintaining these routines and explored how familiar groups, shared activity feedback, and human facilitation can support participation within everyday circumstances.
The research combined exploratory studies, a systematic literature review, framework development, social prototyping, application design, and an eight-week field intervention with 30 older adults across six walking groups.
Key Contributions
Empirical: A context-specific understanding of health, fitness, and walking adherence among Indian older adults.
Conceptual: The H&F Adherence Framework, explaining adherence through contextual, informational, and temporal dimensions.
Design: Group Activity Metrics (GAMs), design principles, and a technology-supported community-based walking intervention.
Methodological: Adaptation of social prototyping to explore group-based activity feedback and social responses before application development.
Designing and Scaling AI-Supported Community-Based Interventions for Fitness Adherence Among Older Adults
Building on my doctoral research, I am exploring how community-based approaches to health and fitness can be adapted to different local settings and sustained over time. Current directions include localising activity feedback and interventions, exploring food practices and ways to support reflection on everyday eating, and investigating AI assistance for human facilitators.
Research support: My doctoral research and its ongoing extensions have received funding support from Google.
Web Search, Health Information Seeking, and E-Health Adoption
During my time at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, I investigated how people search for health information online and adopt e-health services. This work explored users’ search behaviours and emotional experiences, including young adults’ health information seeking and theoretical perspectives on problematic search engine use.
My research interests include digital health and wellbeing, ageing, designing technology solutions that account for contextual factors, and technology adoption and use. I am also interested in exploring education and learning, and designing interactive technologies for children.
I welcome opportunities to collaborate with researchers in technology and design. Please email me if you would like to know more about my work or explore opportunities to collaborate.
View my Google Scholar profile
[1] Pallavi Rao Gadahad, Anirudha Joshi, and Riddhi Pramod Dumre. Designing Group Activity Metrics for Social Interaction and Walking Adherence: A Social Prototyping Study Among Indian Older Adults. Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–15, 2026.
[2] Pallavi Rao Gadahad and Anirudha Joshi. Beyond Streaks and Leaderboards: Designing Collaborative and Comparative Group Activity Visualisations in Mobile Fitness Apps. 28th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (MobileHCI ’26), 2026.
[3] Pallavi Rao, Anirudha Joshi, and Nicole D’Souza. Investigating Contextual Factors in Technology-Based Solutions Designed to Support Health and Fitness Routines for Older Adults: A Systematic Review. Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction Design and Research, pp. 161–192, 2025.
[4] Pallavi Rao Gadahad and Anirudha Joshi. “So, Should I Walk Today or Not?” Understanding Concerns and Queries on Health and Fitness Among Indian Older Adults. Proceedings of the 14th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (IndiaHCI 2023), vol. 1162, pp. 23–49, 2024.
[5] Pallavi Rao Gadahad and Anirudha Joshi. Wearable activity trackers in managing routine health and fitness of Indian older adults: exploring barriers to usage. Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference, pp. 1–11, 2022.
[6] Pallavi Rao and Anirudha Joshi. Design opportunities for supporting elderly in India in managing their health and fitness post-COVID-19. Proceedings of the 11th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 34–41, 2020.
[7] Aditi Nettar, Nishita Chowdhari, Roxan Karanjia, Pallavi Rao Gadahad, and Sneha Deshmukh. Design and Development of a Location-Based Social Networking Mobile Application. IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 344–347, 2017.
[8] Pallavi Rao. Wired and Worried: Understanding Users’ Emotions while Web Searching for Health Information. Procedia Computer Science, vol. 86, pp. 132–136, 2016.
[9] Pallavi Rao Gadahad, Yin-Leng Theng, Joanna Sin Sie Ching, and Natalie Pang. Web searching for health information: an observational study to explore users’ emotions. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 181–188, 2013.
[10] Pallavi Rao. Assessing Young Adults’ Web Searching for Health Information: An Exploratory Study in Singapore. Medicine 2.0 Conference, 2012.
[11] Pallavi Rao, Shalini Chandra, and Yin-Leng Theng. Adoption and Usage of Healthcare Portals: Examining the Factors Influencing Consumers’ Decisions. International Journal of Organizational and Collective Intelligence (IJOCI), vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 50–73, 2011.
[12] Pallavi Rao and Marko M Skoric. Web searching for health: theoretical foundations for analyzing problematic search engine use. International Conference on Social Informatics, pp. 59–66, 2011.
[13] Yin-Leng Theng, L Wanzhen, L Zhiqiang, C Robert, and Pallavi Rao. Investigation of the antecedents and consequences of gamer satisfaction: An individual perspective. Computers in Entertainment, vol. 9, no. 3, 2011.
[14] Pallavi Rao, Shalini Chandra, and Yin-Leng Theng. Usage of E-Health services: Examining the age differences in individual decisions. IADIS – International Association for development of the information society, 2010.
[15] Pallavi Rao, Shalini Chandra, and Yin-Leng Theng. Determinants of Healthcare Web Portals’ Continued Usage: An Empirical Examination with Satisfaction and Trust. International Communication Association, 2009.