SHELLY DIANE FARNHAM, PH.D.

email: shelly@wagglelabs.com
phone: two oh six — 226 — 3586
Dowload PDF :: See Curriculum Vitae

RESEARCH SCIENTIST * SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY * INNOVATION

Expert in: Social Networking ~ Communication ~ Mobile Social ~ Community ~ Social Media

PROFESSIONAL STRENGTHS

• Research/R&D: Specialize in strategic, innovation research, carrying cutting edge social technologies from initial phase of brainstorming to working prototype, including in-depth study of target users and early deployment and evaluation plans.   Fifteen years experience with broad range of user research projects, including laboratory, field, and online studies.  Strong quantitative skills (SPSS) and many years experience operationalizing social constructs from behavioral data.
• Research Team Management: Managed project teams of researchers, usability engineers, designers, interns, and developers depending on project.
• Impact/Consulting:Have worked with numerous corporate product groups and startup technology companies to incorporate theory, research and best practices into strategic product development.   Well-respected, leadership role in fields of industry research and startup innovation.
• Advanced Prototyping:Extensive experience designing and prototyping Web 2.0 technologies (tools: Flash, Actionscript 3.0, Perl, SQL, HTML, XML, JSON, Hadoop).  Hands on design experience includes interaction design (personas, scenarios, storyboards), and user interface design (tools: Photoshop, Illustrator).
• Professional Activities: Strong organizational skills, including organizing workshops, conferences, and networking events designed to build collaboration in communities of practice. Extensive experience with papers, patents, and presentations and with Web 2.0 consulting and training.

EDUCATION

• Ph.D. Social Psychology, University of Washington, 1999. Minor: Quantitative Methods.
• B.A. Psychology and Fine Arts (double major), Georgetown University, 1991.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• Staff/Senior Researcher, Yahoo!, December 2009 – December 2010.  Researched early stage social technologies as an embedded researcher with the communications and communities teams (Yahoo! Mail, Groups), with the goals of both guiding forward-thinking products and inspiring innovation.  Core responsibilities include:
  • Consulting with product groups to inform product initiatives and develop research agenda;
  • User experience research, including laboratory, questionnaire, and observational user studies;
  • Quantitative usage analysis of large scale social technologies including Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Groups;
  • Exploratory user interface and algorithm development for communication and community technology initiatives; and
  • Participation in research community through papers, presentations, organizing workshops, and mentoring interns.
• Founder, Research Consultant, Waggle Labs, June 2007 – November 2009.  Started consulting company with co-founder, where I performed early stage research and development for startups in the social networking and community technologies space.  Activities included:
  • Consulting services focused on designing, prototyping, deploying, and evaluating Web 2.0 social technologies.  Focus of most consulting projects was to help product groups or innovation teams develop deep understanding of users through industry expertise and research to inform design;
  • Consulting clients included 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), and City of Seattle (teen blogging for civic engagement);
  • Incubated several in-house technologies, including Pathable (event based social networking, later spun out as its own company), RealityAllStarz (online challenge game), Swaggle (mobile social coordination), and MyTwee (twitter visualization game).
• Founder, User Experience Architect, Pathable, June 2007 – December 2008.  Spun out Pathable, one of our Waggle Labs incubation projects, as its own company with two co-founders.  Pathable continues to progress as a successful small startup.
  • Performed early phase research and development for event-based social networking tool, Pathable;
  • Developed tag-based professional match-making algorithms;
  • Managed early product deployments, including interviews and usage studies used to inform iterative design; and
  • Created design specifications, the original business plan, and recruited CEO.
• 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 with projects expected to impact Microsoft products two to ten years in the future.   Core responsibilities 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 to develop research initiatives and optimize tech transfer, 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.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Statistics and data manipulation:  Strong quantitative background and experience with statistical analysis (e.g. ANOVAs, linear modeling), operationalizing social constructs from usage behavior in communication technologies, and data manipulation including object oriented programming (originally C++, now Actionscript 3.0).  Tools: SPSS, Excel, SQL, MySQL, Perl, Web APIs, Actionscript 3.0, JSON, XML, Hadoop
• Prototyping:  Extensive experience translating ideas into proof of concept prototypes and real world applications.  Tools:  Flash, Actionscript 3.0, HTML, WordPress, Illustrator, Photoshop, Omnigraffle

RELATED PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

• Event Committee Member: Women in Technology at Yahoo!  2010
• Principle Organizer: Workshop on Innovation in Social Technology, Yahoo! internal event, December 2010
• Panelist: National Science Foundation, socio-technical systems 2010
• Principle Organizer: Frayed Wire, a noe day workshop for people at the intersection of art and technology,  2009
• Principle Organizer: SalonTC, Salon de Technologie et de Creativite, 2009
• 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), Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Journal of Computer Human Interaction
• Graduate Student Representative: Social Psychology Search Committee and Graduate Training Committee, Department of Psychology, University of Washington
• Member: Association for Computer Machinery, American Psychological Society

PUBLICATIONS AND PATENTS

Please see full curriculum vitae for list of publications and patents at http://wagglelabs.com/shellyfarnhamcurriculumvitae