present :: recent :: past
multi-sited ethnography ::
smartphones and mobile technologies
I study the integration of mobile technologies – things like smartphones and tablets – in ordinary life. I am interested in how people make sense of and take advantage of the possibilities for connectivity, communication, and capture that these devices promise. Why are smartphones so desireable? How are they experienced in connection with ideals of freedom and flexibility? I am also interested in the ways that these devices can disappoint and are often linked to contemporary anxieties about pace of life, presence, or ‘work-life balance.’ Why (and for whom) are smartphones intrusive around the dinner table or in the bedroom? When and how are they figured in narratives of ‘addiction’ and prescriptions for ‘tech detoxes?’
My research explores the tensions that surround the smartphone in its materiality & meaning – a device that is seemingly natural, ordinary, familiar, and intimate; while at the same time is artificial, out of place, intrusive, and threatening to the purity or naturalness of one's experience of the world & and relationships with others. As these devices become increasingly “everyday,” “ordinary,” or “commonplace,” how are new norms and expectations of social etiquette established?
» smartphone narratives
In order to begin mapping the space of stories that animate the smartphone in American culture, I have been investigating the narratives told by advertisers about smartphones. I have collected a set of over 100 magazine advertisements spanning the last decade – from Palm and RIM's first combinations of a cell phone with PDA and email pager to to today's iPhone4 and BlackBerry Torch. I'm particularly interested in how mobile technologies are marketed as always new, while they also come to be seen as ‘everyday’ ... and what else becomes ‘naturalized’ alongside these processes of adoption, appropriation, and sense-making.
» smartphones in ordinary life : observing workplaces & families
I am in the early stages of a collaborative ethnographic project to study mobile communication technologies-in-practice. Melissa Mazmanian and Christine Beckman and I are conducting fieldwork with professionals in Southern California – both during work hours and personal time. We are especially interested in the ways that people make decisions about their smartphone use in the context of family life – at home, at a child’s sports game, out at dinner, or while on vacation – and while on the go – at lunch, in between meetings, while traveling for business. Our fieldwork focuses on the ways that people negotiate the demands for attention and accessibility that such technologies can introduce into personal and professional time.
» smartphones as tools of perfect capture : personal digital taxidermy
Equipped with cameras, keyboards, microphones, and internet connectivity, the smartphone is more than just a tool for phone calls and email. For many people, it also serves as a tool for capturing moments of ordinary life, curating them for personal archiving purposes, and sharing them with friends and family. In this exploratory project, I consider discourses of technologists about personal digital archiving with STS and feminist perspectives on archives, curation, and the ”capture“ of “nature”. This project was first inspired by a reading of Haraway’s “Teddy Bear Patriarchy” during the same week that scientists from Microsoft Research gave a talk at UCI about their MyLifeBits project. It is presently inspired by the continued proliferation of iPhone apps like GroupShot, Jawbone's UP accessory, and Windows 7, which – which, in case you didn't know, can give you the family nature never could.
Thanks to a 2011 4S panel organized by Nick Seaver and Beth Reddy, I have been inspired to reconsider these digital archives less as ‘file cabinets’ or ‘data stores’ and more as new kinds of time machines. My talk for this delightful 4S panel was titled “Personal-Digital Taxidermy: Imagining the Future-Past”.
» smartphones in the wilderness : connectivity & capture
Bringing together concerns about what it means to be 'always-on' or 'connected' with concerns about what it means to perfectly capture & archive/share one's life, I am in the planning stages of a new project about the ways that long-distance hikers negotiate and experience the use of mobile devices on multi-week and multi-month, excursions 'in nature' accompanied by varying degrees of 'disconnection' from the rest of the world.
qualitative HCI ::
volunteer coordination & technology practices
I worked with Amy Voida and Ban Al-Ani on a project studying the work of volunteer coordination within nonprofit organizations. We were interested in how technology is already a part of, and how technology might better support the work of nonprofit organizations and other individuals who want to work alongside non-profits in support of the causes that matter to them.
We first presented this work at CHI 2011 in Vancouver as Homebrew Databases: Complexities of Information Management in Nonprofit Organizations. This paper was recognized as a CHI Best Paper Honorable Mention.
We will be presenting a follow-up paper at CHI 2012, Bridging Between Organizations and the Public: Volunteer Coordinators' Uneasy Relationship with Social Computing.
present :: recent :: past
qualitative HCI ::
sustainability & social movements
In this project, we're interested in sustainable HCI research that scales up from a focus on individual consumers to the level of social movements. As a first step, we interviewed individuals engaged with issues of sustainability in some way about their own personal practices and the ways that they do (or don't) relate to ideas like "environmentalism," "sustainability," and being "green."
Collaborators: Jed Brubaker, Melissa Mazmanian and Paul Dourish
experimental fieldwork ::
maintaining public/private shared space
For a class project, I conducted fieldwork in a shared community space where ownership and responsibility are ambiguous. The space, which contains a small garden, had been neglected and abandoned for several months, when, recently, an individual decided to to re-create the space.
This project presented an opportunity to move beyond interviewing individuals, and to work with some of my participants in creating an intervention in the space. Selected quotes from the interviews I conducted were placed around the room in relevant locations, and I added sticky notes and markers to invite others to join in the conversations.
The notes have been used for communication among individuals about the garden, and, in particular, for recording the date when someone feeds the Beta fish who calls the garden home. An ad-hoc and unknown group of individuals has successfully kept the fish alive for several months!
present :: recent :: past
ethnography ::
cognitive partnerships on the benchtop
Working with an interdisciplinary team of researchers, I spent over two years as an ethnographer in a tissue engineering research laboratory studying the daily practices of the engineer-scientists. I won a President's Undergraduate Research Award at Georgia Tech for my early work on this project.
My work, in particular, focused on the co-evolution of technological devices and instruments alongside engineers' practices and research questions. Our deep ethnography provided insights into how some technologies can become more than simple 'tools' for the engineers. When technology lends itself to appropriation, it can become an integral part of the engineers' creative problem solving and inquiry practices.
Portions of this work were presented at DIS 2008 as Cognitive partnerships on the bench top: designing to support scientific researchers
Collaborators: Nancy Nersessian, Wendy Newstetter, Arvind Venkataramani, Chris Patton, Lisa Osbeck
qualitative research & HCI ::
presence & augmented reality, façade
I worked with another graduate student, Steven Dow, on this project studying augmented reality in the context of the “interactive drama,” Façade (interactivestory.net) I helped design qualitative interview questions and run a wizard-of-oz style evaluation of three different gameplay formats -- desktop with keyboard interaction, desktop with speech interaction, and augmented reality with speech interaction.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, we found that increased presence does not necessarily lead to greater engagement. See the CHI 2007 Paper for details.
Collaborators: Steven Dow
qualitative research & UCD ::
personal informatics, foto fit
I worked with Brandon Brown, Andrea Grimes, and Marshini Chetty to design a diet and exercise monitoring system for college students. The system centers on using a camera phone to help students build a visual journal.
We used an iterative design process, including semi-structured interviews, think-aloud prototype testing, and a diary study.
This project won 2nd Place in the CHI 2006 Student Design Competition. See the CHI 2006 note and poster for details.
Collaborators: Marshini Chetty and Andrea Grimes.
teaching ::
cs2340 - object oriented design
As an undergraduate student, I served as a teaching assistant for Computer Science 2340 for 7 semesters (5 semesters as Head TA) at Georgia Tech. As a graduate student, I had the opportunity to return to the class a couple of times to give guest lectures on User-Centered Design.
software development & education research ::
media computation
When I was a freshman at Georgia Tech, all students - regardless of major - had to take the same introductory Computer Science course. While I think that teaching CS to everyone is fantastic -- it is clearly as important to understand as Calculus or Physics -- the withdraw/fail rate was nothing less than atrocious.
Luckily, there are a few people at Georgia Tech who really care about education, and I had the opportunity to develop software for a new alternative CS1 course in Media Computation, as well as assess student motivation and learning after the university began offering multiple tracks of CS1 - specialized by students' majors.
video production & animation ::
work
This short film about a co-op student bored at his job was made for a Digital Video Special Effects course. My partner for this project, Ben Dines, moved on from DVFX to a job at Sony Pictures Imageworks as a "Senior Production Services Technician." He is now making much cooler movies without me, like Beowulf.
Storyboard: Page 1 & Page 2
Movie: High Res (6.2 MB) or Low Res (1.6 MB)
Making Of: Low Res (3.1 MB)
