I've come to realize that most of what I do are "side projects". Someday I'll stop and just actually call it work! This is a sampling of some of the projects I've worked on.
- The betacup. My involvement in this project spun out of the Overlap Conference in Monterey (July 2009). The betacup is one approach to solving the problem of non-recyclable paper cups. I've written about the issue here; we're collecting data about coffee drinking behaviors here; and the betacup can be found on Twitter and on the blog. A live demonstration of the problem and how the betacup may serve as a solution is available as a bodystorming exercise from Overlap.
- Search Failures (Spring/Summer 2009): This is a follow-up to our characterization study of social search from 2008. In that dataset, Ed Chi and I were surprised that nearly everyone reported successful search experiences. Why were there so few failures? To look specifically at the nature of search failures, we collected this complementary dataset, also from Mechanical Turk using a critical-incident questionnaire. We are trying to understand questions such as: what are the root causes of search failures? what types of queries are more likely to cause failures? when and how do social interactions play a role in difficult searches? (Preliminary data from the search failures analysis is available in Part 4 of the IP&M journal article here.)
- The Social Shirt: Memory On Your Sleeve (Spring/Summer 2009): We have all experienced it: we go to introduce ourselves to someone new, only to learn that the person remembers us quite distinctly! How embarrassing! Or its milder cousin: we recognize someone but fail to recall their name, occupation, or the context in which we originally met them. Do we go re-introduce ourselves? How do we overcome the awkwardness of this scenario?
We designed the "Social Shirt" to help with exactly these problems. It presents relevant information to the user through an LCD embedded in the fabric of a shirt near the wrist, which we found may be referenced with minimal interruption during a normal conversation. We describe our research and design process in this report.
- Exploring the Cognitive Consequences of Social Search (2008-2009): To what
extent can social interactions augment people's natural search experiences? What factors infuence the decision to turn to a friend for help? In collaboration with Peter Pirolli and Sanjay Kairam, we have been looking at the cognitive benefits of social search by analyzing the verbal protocols of 8 users as they performed two sensemaking tasks related to U.S. energy policy---in one condition being restricted to only social resources, in another to only web (information) resources. (CHI'09 paper).
- A NetLogo Model of Question-Answering (Winter 2009): This is a question-answering model. It tries to simulate the scenario where a user poses a question to his social network. Will the friends and online social networks available be able to answer his question? In the model, this will depend on who the user has access to face-to-face, how knowledgeable they are about your topic, the size and diversity of online social networks, how difficult the topic is to answer, and how knowledgeable the user is about the topic. In practice, there are many other factors that would also matter, such as the user's relationship with people in the network and the last time they interacted, which are not modeled here. (Written report; Keynote presentation)
- Exploring Information Sharing and Discovery on the Social Web (Winter/Spring 2008):
How do we find items of personal interest in the information-rich landscape of the web? Although there are a number of services and technologies that facilitate information access and sharing through connected social communities, the consequences of these new models of interaction are still unknown. In this project, I took an in-depth look at how three users engaged as participants of the social web services, Flickr, Ma.gnolia, and Twitter, and how, as a consequence, their behavior served to improve information discovery
for other users. (Paper available upon request.) (2nd year project committee: Jim Hollan, Ed Hutchins, and David Kirsh)
- Towards a Model of Understanding Social Search (2008): With Ed
Chi, we conducted a survey on Mechanical Turk asking 150 users to describe their most recent search act. By integrating our results with models from previous work in sensemaking and information seeking behavior, we present a canonical model of social search, suggesting where in the search process even implicitly shared information may be valuable to individual searchers. (Full paper).
- Augmented Information Assimilation: Social and Algorithmic Web Aids for the Information Long Tail (Summer 2007): Examined how early adopters made use of emerging information assimilation services on the web, such as social bookmarking, as part of their daily routine, including how they exploit online information environments to reduce the need for attention, organizational, and social sharing acts. In collaboration with Stu Card.