Current Projects
Collective privacy strategies in and around virtual worlds
As web applications collect increasing amounts of people's personal and collaborative content, we need to understand people's online collective information practices, which include issues of privacy, trust, intimacy, and sharing. I am beginning a study of online activist groups that use a combination of virtual environments, social networking services, email, and blogs to stay connected. By studying individuals who have a heightened need for intimacy, coordination, and information sharing, I hope to render visible tensions, needs, and strategies that may also exist more subtly in broader populations. I am collaborating with Gillian Hayes and Paul Dourish.
Postcolonial Computing
I am investigating new frameworks for thinking about issues in cross-cultural design methods and ICT4D discourse, drawing from postcolonial theory, feminist studies, and science technology studies.
See workshop position paper on Portability of Design Methods, accepted at CHI 2008 Workshop on ICT4D
I undertake this project with Paul Dourish.
Past projects
Investigation attrition in undergraduate computer science
I spent a year and a half designing and conducting a longintudinal mixed-methods study of students in Stanford's introductory computer science sequence. By following a cohort of 30 students with quarterly interviews, we found aspects of course experience that affected confidence, motivation, and interest in the major. Through surveys of a broader population and analysis of course performance by gender, we set qualitative findings against measures of confidence and motivation in the broader course population. The research was awarded Stanford's Firestone Medal for Undergraduate Research (top 10% of theses).