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

For my dissertation, I am investigating how teenagers and adults form friendships online. I’m using a combination of social network analysis and qualitative interviews to understand how people choose online friends, and to see if young people and older people make these decisions differently.

I am also a member of the Virtual Worlds Observatory, an interdisciplinary, multi-sited research team that examines various forms of communication in virtual worlds and online games. I lead a team that investigates how online game play and communication patterns differ by age, with the goal of predicting real-world age based on observations of online behavior.

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.