SHELLY D. FARNHAM, Ph.D.

Senior Researcher in Social Media, Applications Insights
Yahoo!
work email: shellyf@yahoo-inc.com

personal email:  shelly < at > wagglelabs.com
phone: 206 — 226 — 3586

Bio and Project History

RESEARCHER * SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION * PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Expert in: Research & Development ~ Social Networking ~ Web 2.0 ~ Mobile Social ~ Community ~ Social Media

PROFESSIONAL STRENGTHS

• User research: Fifteen years experience with broad range of user research projects, including laboratory, field, and online studies, focus groups, online questionnaires, and experimental studies. Strong quantitative analysis experience includes data mining of online social behaviors and advanced statistical analyses (linear modeling, analysis of variance, tools: SPSS, SQL, MySQL).
• Innovation team project management: Extensive experience managing innovation teams including developers, designers, usability engineers, program managers, testers, interns, and researchers. Specialize in carrying Web 2.0 social media projects from initial phase of brainstorming to working prototype, including in-depth study of target users and early deployment and evaluation plans.
• Consulting: Have worked with numerous technology companies to incorporate theory, research and best practices into the design of their social technologies, assisted them through phases of project development from brainstorming to working prototype, performed studies of target users, and created evaluation plans.
• Design/advanced prototyping: Leading expert in designing social media and Web 2.0 technologies. Design experience includes interaction design (personas, scenarios, storyboards), user interface design (tools: Photoshop, Illustrator), design reviews, and UI prototyping (tools: Flash, Actionscript 3.0, XML, HTML, perl). 
• Professional activities: Strong organizational skills, including organizing workshops, conferences, and networking events. Extensive experience with presentations at first tier conferences and with Web 2.0 consulting and training. Strong writing skills with numerous published papers.

EDUCATION

• Ph.D. Social Psychology, University of Washington, 1999. Minor: Quantitative Methods. Dissertation: From implicit self-esteem to in-group favoritism.
• B.A. Psychology and Fine Arts, Georgetown University, 1991.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• Senior Researcher in Social Media, Applications Insights, Yahoo!, November 2009 - present.  Research in social technologies expected to impact the design of Yahoo! social media Web 2.0 products. 
• Founder, Research Consultant, Waggle Labs, June 2007 - present.  Create in-house technologies and provide external consulting services focused on prototyping, deploying, and evaluating Web 2.0 social technologies. Research and development projects include technologies for events, social networking, communication, community, knowledge sharing, and mobile social coordination. Internal projects include Pathable (event based social networking, spun out as its own company), RealityAllStarz (online challenge game), and Swaggle (mobile social coordination). Consulting clients include Strands Labs (place-based social networking), Zillow (social technology for home owners), Trusera (health-based social networking), O’Reilly Radar (Facebook application analysis), Microsoft (Teen Panel).
• Founder, User Experience Architect, Pathable, June 2007 - December 2008.  As part of Waggle Labs performed  initial research and design for event-based social networking tool, Pathable, which was then spun out as its own company.  Developed system for tag-based professional match-making, performed initial deployments, conducted interviews and usage studies.
• Adjunct Professor, University of Washington, Fall 2007. Taught course on “Social Web 2.0″ to students in the Digital Media and Communications Master’s program.
• Researcher, Social Computing Group, Microsoft Research, Oct 1999 – Oct 2005. Researched social technologies expected to impact Microsoft products two to ten years in the future. Research activities included: user experience research, including laboratory, questionnaire, and observational user studies; quantitative usage analysis of large scale social technologies; advanced prototyping, which included coordinating teams through phases of brainstorming, design, implementation, deployment, and evaluation; consulting with product groups, and; participating in research community through papers, presentations, organizing workshops and conferences, and mentoring interns. Projects included Wallop (media centric social networking), Slam (mobile social cordination for smart phone), Swarm (text based mobile social coordination), Inner Circle (email-based networking and sharing), Personal Map (email networks), Point-to-Point (enterprise social networking), MSR Connections (bootstrapping mailing list networks), MSN Communities (large scale usage analysis), HutchWorld (virtual world for cancer patients).
• Developer, University of Washington, Fall 1998 - Fall 1999. Developed FIAT 2.3 using C++, an application that allows experimenters to develop and use Implicit Association Tests, which measure implicit attitudes through reaction time data.
• Research Assistant, University of Washington, Fall 1993 - Spring 1998. Developed, implemented, analyzed, and reported studies examining self-esteem, social identity, and stereotypes. Mentored undergraduates in developing and implementing their own research projects.
• Instructor and Teaching Assistant, University of Washington, Fall 1993- Spring 1998. Instructor for Laboratory in Social Psychology, 2 quarters. Taught research skills and provided undergraduates with direct, hands-on experience with the experimental process. Teaching Assistant for Introduction to Social Psychology, 3 quarters, Human Sexuality, 3 quarters, Developmental Psychology, 2 quarters, Laboratory in Social Psychology, 4 quarters. Conducted discussion sections, developed exams, graded papers, and advised research groups.

PEER REVIEWED JOURNALS, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, AND WORKSHOPS

Brown, J. D., Farnham, S. D., & Cook, K. E. (2002). Emotional responses to changing feedback: Is it better to have won and lost than never to have won at all? Journal of Personality, 70, pp. 127-141.

Cheng, L., Stone, L., Farnham, S., Clark, A. M., & Zaner-Godsey, M. (2000) Hutchworld: Lessons Learned. A Collaborative Project: Fred Hutchsinson Cancer Research Center & Microsoft Research. In Proceedings of Virtual Worlds Conference 2000, Paris, France, June 2000.  Reprinted in J. C. Heudin (Ed.) Virtual Worlds, 2000, Springer Berlin/Heidelberg.

Chesley, H., Kawal, R., Landau, J., Cheng, L., Farnham, S., Seban, S. (2000). Scripting Business Social Interactions. In Proceedings of SSGRR, July 2000.

Davis, J., Farnham, S., Jensen, C. (2002). Decreasing Online ‘Bad’ Behavior. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2002, Minneapolis, April 2002.

Davis, J., Zaner, M., Farnham, S., Marcjan, C., McCarthy, B. (2003) Wireless Brainstorming: Overcoming Status Effects in Small Group Decisions. In Proceedings of HICCS-36 2003, Hawaii.

Farnham, S. (2002). Personal Map: Automatically Modeling the User’s Online Social Network. Paper presented at CSCW 2002 workshop: Redesigning Email for the 21st Century.

Farnham, S. (2002). Visualizing Discourse Architectures with Automatically Generated Person-Centric Social Networks. Paper presented at CHI 2002 Workshop: Discource Architectures.

Farnham, S., Kelly, S.U., Portnoy, W., & Schwartz, J.L.K. (2004). Wallop: Designing Social Software for Co-located Social Networks. In Proceedings of HICSS-37, 2004, Hawaii.

Farnham, S., Turski, A., Portnoy, W., & Davis, J. (2002). Connections: Exploring Who Knows Whom through Social Networks. Paper presented at HCIC 2002, Winter Park, Colorado.

Farnham, S., Portnoy, W., Turski, A., Cheng, L., Vronay, D. (2003). Personal Map: Automatically Modeling the User’s Online Social Network. In Proceedings of Interact 2003, Switzerland, July 2003.

Farnham, S. Cheng, L., Stone, L., Clark, A. M., & Zaner-Godsey, M. (2001) Hutchworld: Lessons Learned. A Collaborative Project: Fred Hutchsinson Cancer Research Center & Microsoft Research. Paper presented at HCIC 2001, Winter Park, CO, 2001.

Farnham, S., Cheng, L., Stone, L., Zaner-Godsey, M., Hibbeln, C, Syrjala, K., Clark, A., & Abrams, J. (2002). HutchWorld: Clinical Study of Computer-Mediated Social Support for Cancer Patients and Their Caregivers. In Proceedings of CHI 2002, Minneapolis,April 2002.

Farnham, S. D., Chesley, H. McGhee, D., & Kawal, R. (2000). Structured On-line Interactions: Improving the Decision-making of Small Discussion Groups. In Proceedings of CSCW 2000, Philadelphia, December.

Farnham, S.D., Keyani, P. (2006). Swarm: Hyper Awareness, Hyper Coordination, and Smart Convergence through Mobile Group Text Messaging. In Proceedings of HICSS-39, 2006, Hawaii.

Farnham, S., Keyani, P. (2004). Swarm: Smart Convergence and Peripheral Social Awareness. Paper presented at HCIC 2004, Winter Park, Colorado.

Farnham, S. Kirkpatrick, R., Pedersen, E. (2006). Observation of Katrina/Rita Deployment: Addressing Social and Communication Challenges of Ephemeral Groups. In Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006, Newark, New Jersey.

Farnham, S., McCarthy, J., Patel, Y., Ahuja, S., Norman, D., Hazlewood, W., Lind, J. (2009). Measuring the Impact of Place Attachment on the Adoption of a Place-Based Community Technology. In Proceedings of CHI 2009. (short paper)

Farnham, S., Schwartz, J., Brown, P.  (2009).  Leveraging Social Software for Strategic Social Networking and Community Development at Events.  To appear in Communities and Technologies 2009.

Farnham, S.D, Zaner, M., Cheng, L. (2001). Designing for Sociability in Shared Browsers. In Proceedings of Interact 2001, Tokyo, July 2001.

Farnham, S., Zaner-Godsey, M., S. Cheng, L., Stone, L., & Clark, A. M. (2001). Hutchworld: Computer-Mediated Social Support for Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (HSCT) Recipients and their Caregivers. In Proceedings of Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 2001, San Jose, January 2001.

Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., Rudman, L. A., Farnham, S. D., Nosek, B. A., & Mellott, D. S. (2002). A unified theory of implicit attitudes, stereotypes, self-esteem, and self-concept. Psychological Review, 109, 3-25.

Greenwald, A. G., & Farnham, S. D. (2000). Using the Implicit Association Test to measure self-esteem and self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 1022-1038.

Greenwald, A. G., Pickrell, J. E., & Farnham, S. D. (2002). Implicit partisanship: Taking sides for no reason. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 367-379.

Jensen, C., Davis, J., & Farnham, S. (2002). Finding Others Online: Reputation Systems for Social Online Spaces. In Proceedings of CHI 2002, Minneapolis, April 2002.

Jensen, C., Farnham, S., Drucker, S., & Kollock, P. (2000). The Effect of Communication Modality on Cooperation in Online Environments. In Proceedings of CHI 2000, The Hague, Netherlands March 2000.

Kelly, S., Sung, C., & Farnham S. (2002). Designing for Improved Social Responsibility and Content in On-Line Communities. In Proceedings of CHI 2002, Minneapolis, April 2002.

LeeTiernan, S., Farnham, S., & Cheng, L. (2003). Two Methods for Organizing Personal Web History. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2003, Fort Lauderdale, FL.

McCarthy, J., Farnham, S., Patel, Y., et al. (2009).  Supporting Community in Third Places  with Situated Social Software.  To appear in Communities and Technologies, 2009.

Smith, M., Farnham, S., & Drucker S. (2000). The Social Life of Small Graphical Chat Spaces. In Proceedings of CHI 2000, The Hague, Netherlands March 2000. Reprinted in R. Schroeder (Ed.) The Social Life of Avatars: Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments. Springer: London. 2002.

Turski, A., Warnack, D., Cheng, L., Farnham, S., Yee, S. (2005). Inner Circle: People Centered Email Client. Poster presented at CHI 2005.

Williams, A., Farnham, S., & Counts, S. (2006). Exploring Wearable Ambient Displays for Social Awareness. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2006, Florida, April 2006.

NON-PEER REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

Cheng, L., Farnham, S., and Stone, L. (2002). Lessons Learned: Building and Deploying Shared Virtual Environments. P. 90-111. In R. Schroeder (Ed.) The Social Life of Avatars: Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments . Springer: London 2002.

Farnham, S. D., Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. (1999). Implicit self-esteem: Using the implicit association test. In D. Abrams & M. Hogg (Eds.), Social Identity and Cognition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Farnham, S. D., (2002). Predicting Active Participation in MSN Communities. It’s All in the Conversation. Microsoft Technical Report MSR-TR-2002-36.

Farnham, S. D., (2007). Art in the Age of Social Participation on the Mega Scale: Using Crowdsourcing for your Projects. ONSCREEN Magazine, May 2007, 911 Media Arts.

Farnham, S. D., (2008). The Facebook Application Ecosystem: Why Some Thrive – and Most Don’t. An O’Reilly Radar Report, March 2008.

Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., Rudman, S. D., Farnham, S. D., Nosek, B. A., & Rosier, M. (2000). Prologue to a unified theory of attitudes, stereotypes, and self-concept. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.) Feeling and Thinking: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition and Behavior (pp. 308-330). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Keyani, P., & Farnham, S. D., (2005). Swarm: Text Messaging Designed to Enhance Social Coordination. In Harper, R., Palen, L., Taylor, A. (Eds.) The Inside Text: Social, Cultural, and Design Perspectives on SMS.

CONFERENCES, COMMITTEES, AND WORKSHOPS

• Principle Organizer: Social Computing Symposium 2004 and Social Computing Symposium 2005, Microsoft Research. The Symposium brings together leaders in the study and development social technologies both in research and industry.
• Organizer and MSR Liason: Design Expo, Microsoft Research. Worked with Joy Mountford and Lili Cheng to bring students and faculty from six leading design universities to present team projects at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit
• Chair of Organizing Committee: Dorkbot-sea 2006-2009, Seattle-based group that meets monthly to foster innovative art and technology.
• Program Committee: Communities Technologies 2005
• Associate Chair of Paper Committee: ACM Computer Human Interaction 2005
• Associate Chair of Notes Committee: ACM Computer Human Interaction 2007
• Organizer: Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2004 Workshop, Social Networks for Design and Analysis
• Principle Organizer: Computer Human Interaction 2001 Workshop,
• Integrating Diverse Research and Development Approaches to the Construction of Social Cyberspaces.
• Reviewer: Computer Human Interaction (CHI), Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Journal of Computer Human Interaction.
• Graduate Student Representative: Social Psychology Search Committee and Graduate Training Committee, Department of Psychology, University of Washington

PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES

Association for Computer Machinery, American Psychological Society

PATENTS

• Place-based Social Networking (2008 patent predisclosure)
• Event-based Social Matching (2007 patent predisclosure)
• Implicit Group Formation around Feed Content for Mobile Devices (8/15/2005)
• Group-centric Location Tagging for Mobile Devices (8/8/2005)
• Systems and Methods to Facilitate Self-Regulation of Social Networks through Trading and Gift Exchange (5/13/2005)
• Dynamic Group Formation for Social Interaction (4/21/2005)
• People -Centric View of Email (2/1/2005)
• Command Based Group SMS with Mobile Message Receiver and Server (9/30/2004)
• Sharing Media Objects in a Network (7/1/2004)
• Application for Sharing Content in a Network of Computer USers (4/19/2004)
• Instant Meeting Preparation Architecture (4/1/2004)
• Identification of Relationships in an Environment (12/31/2003))
• Computer System Architecture for Automatic Context Association (6/28/2002)
• Social Mapping of Contacts from Computer Communication Information (6/04/2002)
• System and Methods for Sharing Dynamic Content Among a Plurality of Online Co-Users (5/31/2002)