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Dr. Sara Kiesler

University Professor and Hillman Professor Emerita of Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction,
Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII),
Carnegie Mellon University
kiesler@andrew.cmu.edu

Former position
Program Manager,
National Science Foundation

Computing has come a long way since our studies of how people used computer networks. My book with Lee Sproull, Connections, anticipated some of the long term effects for individuals and organizations of using the applications then available. Advances in computing and online services since have made possible new kinds of organization, collaboration, and learning. My research applied behavioral and social science research methods and theory to understand how groups, teams, and organizations collaborate, and the human factors dimensions of people’s use of, and interactions with, technology.

Projects

Organization Science of Science:
With Jonathon Cummings, I studied scientific work in research groups and watched the shift to larger teams engaged in multidisciplinary and geographically-distributed research. Over a nine year period, we followed 549 research groups funded by the National Science Foundation. Our goal was to understand how the structure and interactions in these research groups led to differences in their productivity and creativity, and in their integration as teams.

User Perspectives on a New Internet Architecture:
I worked with Laura Dabbish and our students on the eXpressive Internet Architecture (XIA) project at Carnegie Mellon to develop a new Internet architecture. We studied ways to provide early signals of how a new Internet architecture might affect ordinary people, for good or bad, and to help networking teams make decisions that could affect usability, privacy, and security.

Why People Seek Anonymity
With the Internet’s transparency and permeability, I’ve studied the myriad of reasons why everyone needs privacy protections and, sometimes, the ability to be anonymous. This also includes strategies that people use to hide their digital footprints. With the support of NSF, I’ve also studied why people want anonymity and how they try to attain it.

Collaborative Analysis
With Susan Fussell, Aimee Kane, and our students, we studied the process of investigation as carried out by intelligence analysis and detectives. Their task was to look for clues in data, and see patterns that lead to a solution. We found a major problem associated with tools for collaborative analysis: People tend to believe bad advice online, even with various cues that tell them the advice should be ignored.

The Project on People and Robots
This project has evolved and now is about human-robot interaction within a service delivery framework. View my Publications page for key related papers.

Journal of Human-Robot Interaction
I am the past editor of the journal The Journal of Human-Robot Interaction (JHRI). I worked with Jessica Hodgins and Jenn Hyde on social psychological aspects of motion in animated characters and avatars, and with Kevin Huang, Dan Siewiorek, and Asim Smallagic on using the iPhone to help monitor and correct at-home rehabilitation exercises.

Google Scholar
View my Google Scholar profile.