I'm a Phd Candidate in the Department of Communication at Cornell University, and am expecting to graduate in August 2013. I'm currently on the market for postdoc and industry research positions.
My advisor is Jeremy Birnholtz and I work in Cornell and Northwestern's Social Media Lab(s).
The flood of interaction technologies available today means that people have more ways to communicate and coordinate – for both work and play – than ever before. This is exciting, but it also presents challenges. My research focuses on understanding how communication impacts aspects of both work and social collaboration in mediated contexts. In terms of collaborative group work, distance can complicate collaboration in these settings because not all the actions that group members perform are visible to others, and this can make it hard for group members to determine who is responsible for various elements of a task. My dissertation research aims to address this problem by investigating how the visual features of user interface designs can help make otherwise invisible actions visible, and thus reduce ambiguity surrounding group members' roles. Past research exploring role ambiguity has identified the importance of visibility in determining group members' roles, but this work explores how differences in how actions are displayed to group members may impact role ambiguity.
In terms of social collaboration, I've also been involved in several projects exploring "butler lies." Butler lies are a strategy for managing social availability (or lack thereof) and coordinating social interactions using mediated communication tools such as mobile phones or social media, which aims to address the problems and stresses created by an always-on world, such as feeling too accessible to others. This work has received attention in both academic and non-academic arenas, winning two honorable mention awards at CSCW and being featured in the New York Times.