University of Washington

U.S.A.

Supporting consensus building in politically-charged domains.

My research interests lie in the field of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). CSCW encapsulates a body of knowledge and techniques that inform the design of information technologies that complements, extends, and enables new forms of collaborative activities. I am particularly interested in work where conflict is endemic and it is necessary for participants to build consensus in order for the collaboration to move forward. I have been researching two specific domains where these conditions hold: collaborative encyclopedia authoring and urban planning, embodied by the sociotechnical systems of Wikipedia and UrbanSim respectively. I plan on focusing on UrbanSim for my dissertation research.

UrbanSim is designed to help in the analysis of various policy alternatives for urban development through a simulation system that models the interactions between land use, transportation, employment and household choices over a span of twenty to thirty years. As such, it provides a foundation for discussion, counteracting typical deadlock when planners and politicians disagree on base truths. Although UrbanSim is used nearly exclusively by Metropolitan Planning Organizations, we are working toward opening policy debates to local organizations and citizens. As my dissertation research, I plan on trying to close the loop between the output of the participatory urban visioning workshops and the policy generation work done by professional urban modelers. Specifically, I will be building UBuildIt, a system that will enable citizens to configure and run UrbanSim scenarios, each of which represent a specific set of concrete, actionable policies. Subsequent informed debate over the simulation results will hopefully ensue. I am hopeful that the development of UBuildIt will actually help empower citizens to be in more control over their own community.

North America, Britain, Scandinavia

I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin where I studied computer science and sociology. As a graduate student in computer science at the University of Washington, I have been working in the field of human computer interaction, specifically computer supported cooperative work. I have also been working on suitable privacy policies for community-oriented RFID deployments. Generally, I am passionate about contemporary sociotechnical issues. To this end, I have been leading the UW CSE Society and Technology Group, a group of mainly computer science and law students. Recently, we have gotten involved with a Puget Sound transit agencies, university officials, the ACLU, and other stakeholders in order to discuss responsible policies for the deployment of a new RFID-enabled transportation option for public transportation in the Puget Sound region. Outside of school, I love long distance trail runs in the mountains, and, as a former Wisconsinite, plenty of milk and cheese.

With respect to the digital government field, I am particularly interested in the research methodologies the digital government research community employs to understand how information technologies can impact citizen engagement and integration into government decision-making processes. During my undergraduate studies in sociology and computer science, I learned a variety of methodologies but there was never a holistic connection between them—I am interested to see how methodologies from these two traditions have been synthesized to take on the problems of digital government. Such versatility will be critical for the success of UBuildIt.