Right now, I’m working hard trying to be productive as a Assistant Professor at Michigan State University. I work in the Department of Telecommunications, Inforamtion Studies, and Media (Whew. Long name) and in the School of Journalism. I completed my PhD in the School of Information at the University of Michigan working under Jeff MacKie-Mason in 2009.
I recently concluded a search for a tenure-track faculty position. For those interested, my job application package can be found here.
Recent News
- My Paper “Folk Models of Home Computer Security” was accepted at SOUPS.
- I was just hired as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Michigan State University. My appointment is joint between the Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media (TISM) and the School of Journalism.
- I walked at the University of Michigan commencement on December 20. I am now officially done with everything for my PhD: defense, bound and printed document, and reception of degree.
- My Paper “Motivations for Contribution to Online Community” was accepted at CHI. This is joint work with Cliff Lampe, Alcides Velasquez, and Elif Ozkaya.
- I was an Associate Chair for CHI 2010 in the Interaction Beyond the Individual subcommittee.
Interests
I study the way the design of technologies influences the resulting user behavior in social computing and social media systems. I often see people discussing how to build social media systems; indeed, many classes are taught on the subject. Most of these discussions focus on technical features: database design, REST APIs, explicit social networks, tags, etc. But building a social media system also means designing the desired social behaviors: contributing articles, updating statuses, rating posts, and commenting. Facebook wouldn’t be interesting without regular ‘status updates’ from a wide variety of people. In my research, I identify incentive mechanisms: technological design patterns that lead to predictable, desirable behavior. Having a toolbox of incentive mechanisms allows us to move from building technical systems to engineering socio-technical systems. Identifying these causal relationships also allows us to better understand the use of these systems, and the effects these systems have on their users.
To identify and characterize incentive mechanisms, I draw on theories of motivation and incentives from human-computer interaction, economics, communications, and social psychology to understand, explain, and then predict behavior of users. I combine these theories with my computer science background to identify and design technical features that can reliably induce desired behaviors across a wide variety of computer systems. I use this interdisciplinary approach because these systems are inherently socio-technical; their effectiveness depends critically on both the social behavior and the technical design of the system. I use a variety of approaches to study incentive mechanisms in social media; my research includes economic modeling, quantitative server log analysis, both lab and field experiments, and qualitative inquiry.