Dissertation

D. Bailey (Chair), J. Streeck, J. Howison, and Patricia Galloway

Hetero-Technic Cooperation with Computing and Non-Computing Technologies

A Study of the Transmodal Capacity of Prosodic Cues to Alleviate Asymmetric Access to Tactile Phenomena

My dissertation investigated a specific kind of technology mediated work called Hetero-Technic Cooperation with computing and non-computing technologies (HTC (C-NC)) to understand the verbal communication of parties who pursue a shared technical goal by taking complementary roles using different technologies.

Hetero-Technic Cooperation

In HTC (C-NC) work settings face-to-face communication is rare and mediated communication is common, as exemplified in the setting of cardiac electrophysiology (cardiac EP) surgery suites.

In these settings workers face, and must overcome, significant asymmetries in access to visual and tactile information implicit in cooperative work with computing and non-computing technologies.

Microethnographic Analysis

To address this topic, I tailored microethnographic methods to analyze speech in cooperative work. Data collection entailed:

Ethnographic observations of 29 cardiac EP procedures in two US hospitals
Recording of 5 procedures using multi-camera film production techniques
Transcription of all recorded procedures using conversation analytic techniques

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Investigation into HTC (C-NC) reveals....

My findings address the role of verbal communication in highly contingent, interdependent, and delicate social interactivity. I identified a new category of cooperative mechanisms, the use of prosodic cues (i.e., the rhythmic and intonational aspect of spoken language) to overcome significant asymmetries in access to information.

Take aways...

This research lends insights into the role of the body in cooperative work that inform the design of technologies. This research also illustrates my approach to the study of technology use as a full body experience.

Multi-Camera Recording Strategy

To understand the cooperative work simultaneously carried out in multiple rooms of the cardiac EP surgery suite I employed a multi-camera recording strategy.

Crowdsourcing e-Commerce Taxonomies

Grainger, UX Researcher Taxonomy Division, May 2015 – June 2016

In order to optimize the shopping experience on Grainger.com, the taxonomy team needed to account for customers’ differing understandings of the online catalog of 1.6 million products.

Industrial supplies are numerous and varied and this makes exceptional product findability a considerable challenge when customers lack on the job know-how.

A typical problem...

The company’s pair of heavily-gendered and otherwise over-simplified customer personas masked a true understanding of customers across multiple demographic, attitudinal, and knowledge-based measures, making these personas unsuitable for evaluating customers’ understanding of Grainger’s taxonomy. Ultimately, this demanded our team perform customer segmentation.

Further complicating matters...

The team needed to develop a strict hierarchical design because the e-commerce platform only allowed products to appear within a single category. Ultimately, this demanded that the taxonomy team thoroughly validate product “findability” against verified customer segments.

To meet these demands...

The team used two complementary approaches: one traditional and qualitative the other novel and quantitative.

A traditional qualitative approach: The team segmented Grainger’s customer base drawing on multiple qualitative methodologies including remote customer interviews and focus group discussions.

Across these qualitative methodologies, I took pains to evaluate customer’s knowledge regarding industrial materials and equipment, which sharply impacted customer's ability to find products. For instance traditional phone interview and observational studies offered opportunities to assess customer knowledge of industrial supplies and re-cast company personas based on knowledge and experience

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A novel quantitative approach: I led the implementation of this later approach drawing on previous academic work on crowdsourcing platforms, which offered huge possibilities to make quantitative UX research cost-effective. For Grainger, crowdsourcing platforms offered the ability to assess customer product knowledge and performance of product findability in aggregate. To accomplish this I leveraged a reverse card-sort method for crowd-sourced evaluations of product findability, using the eight step research process diagrammed below.

This diagram describes the research process I developed to leverage off-the-shelf crowdsourcing technologies in a cost-efficient way.

As part of this research process, I managed Grainger’s engagement with the MTurk community and tested the efficacy of existing pricing models for micro-work tasks. By experimenting with pricing models to improve task performance, I accelerated task completion without unduly sacrificing worker satisfaction.

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Data-driven design outcomes...

Testing existing taxonomies with their designed alternatives on a crowdsourcing platform enabled the taxonomy team to make measurable enhancements to the online shopping experience across all customer segments.

In sum, using a combination of research approaches further increased the scope and efficiency of our taxonomy research and ultimately boot-strapped a data driven redesign of major product categories.

In addition, the team was able to approximate, qualify, and quantify the needs of five distinct user groups through a thoroughly mixed methods approach.

On top of all that...

Working at Grainger I aslo cultivated skills in division building, and in-person and remote collaboration. For example, in my capacity as UX researcher I also trained junior researchers on rigorous qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, including experimental design.

Driving Camera Innovation

Intel Labs, User Experience Intern, August – December 2012

Intel Labs needed to assess the viability of a camera-array technology as part of product concept development within a hardware engineering and design team. To address this need the team sought speculative user research insights to inform this technology’s feature offering.

A camera array relies on multiple micro-lenses placed in front of an otherwise conventional image sensor to sense intensity, color, and directional information

To address this need...

I planned a multi-population qualitative user research study to evaluate the camera-array features and use cases and a hi-fidelity prototype.

As frequently occurs this study required specialized recruiting, which proved especially challenging for this project.

To recruit for the study, I synthesized market research reports to identify potential users and served as a liaison with external market research agencies tasked with finding participants.

My analysis uncovered...

Drawing on focus group input, my analysis uncovered that professional and amateur photographers have differing values regarding imaging gimmicks, the viewer’s trust, and the photographer’s reputation.

Based on this input I developed requirements for camera technology by customer population type.

Ultimately my contributions informed user experience design of the RealSense™ imaging technology.

Shaping Cloud "Ownership"

Microsoft Research, User Experience Intern, August – December 2011

As part of a multi-year research initiative, the Microsoft Research's Files 2020 project needed to explore the social implications of file ownership in cloud-based storage.

Social media enthusiasts sometimes remove content from cloud platforms, but what if they could retain the content but change its access.

To address this need...

I devised, recruited, and conducted interview study to examine Facebook users’ recollections of and attitudes around content deletion.

My analysis uncovered...

Based on themes drawn from my interview transcripts I proposed a new file-level interaction called “withdraw.”

The withdraw interaction augmented privacy settings to remove but not destroy social media content at users’ request.

Shaping the cloud debate on "ownership"...

My participation on this and other Files 2020 projects provided an opportunity to share our work on the new age of cloud-based file ownership in with multiple HCI communities through conference publications (CHI 2012, CSCW 2013, and IR 2013) and white papers.