My Research
Previously
Most recently, I worked on the Survey Interview Project where I studied how survey interviewers use non-verbal behavior to establish rapport with their respondents. The aim of that project was to create a detailed behavioral model of rapport that can be used to drive the behavior of virtual survey interviewers, like the one pictured to the right.
Currently
Currently, I am investigating how young people form friendships online. I’m using a combination of social network analysis and qualitative interviews to understand how young people make decisions about who would be a good online friend, and to see if young people and older people make these decisions differently.
In the Past
In the past, I have worked on a variety of ethnographic, experimental, and design research projects in industry and academia, including:
♦ Teens & Technology: Ethnographic and Social Network Analysis of how friendship patterns are
affected by communication technology use among teenagers.
♦ Junior Summit: Analysis of international online community for children.
♦ Sabbath Homes: Ethnographic exploration of home automation use among Modern Orthodox Jews.
♦ Life on the Go: Multi-sited international ethnography of mobile technology use among families in
Japan, Taiwan, Turkey and Italy.
♦ First Steps: Ethnographic exploration of changing technology needs among pregnant women and new
parents.
♦ China Home Learning PC: Development of educational PCs for Chinese families.
♦ Everyday Fitness: Ethnographic exploration of fitness and fitness activities in daily life.
♦ Aging in a New Place: Ethnographic exploration of life in retirement communities.
♦ OWL: Ethnographic and experimental exploration of children’s information search strategies online
and offline.
♦ Scaffold: Development of interactive interfaces to promote linguistic development.
♦ Sort Stories: Experimental analysis of cued storytelling around random visual stimuli.
♦ Muse: Development of systems to support family communication and relationship building in museum
spaces.
♦ GossipBot: Networked agent that uses gossip to promote sociability.
♦ HCInfo: Searchable online database of HCI history.
