I think designers need to join the ranks of researchers, scientists, and politicians actively working to affect change in areas like education, poverty, healthcare, and sustainability.

I'm interested in understanding human behavior - including the social and emotional factors that cause people to act the way they do - in order to develop technologies and solutions that help people make better decisions and lead healthier lives. More on my research interests.

I am currently a researcher at the Seattle-based product development company Artefact. During a brief flirtation with academia I was a PhD candidate in Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University (2010-2011). I completed my Master's of Design at the Institute of Design (2010), where my capstone project focused on integrating behavioral economics into the human-centered design process. This work resulted in the creation of the Brains, Behavior & Design Toolkit, which focuses on helping designers understand and influence consumer decision making.

Prior to attending graduate school, I worked at Google as a User Experience Designer, focusing primarily on search, personalization, and developer projects.

I hold a Bachelor of Science from MIT in Comparative Media Studies (2006), where my coursework focused on anthropology, computer science, media theory, and digital video. While at MIT I worked in the MIT Media Lab as an undergraduate researcher (UROP) on two projects. In John Maeda's Physical Language Workshop, I developed a web-based design tool for the Openstudio experiment. As part of the Creativity and Learning Project I helped to conduct, compile, and edit dozens of hours of video ethnography and interviews, exploring the use of collaborative tools in William Mitchell's Smart Cities workshop.