Researcher Resume

Please see my Researcher Resume below, my Artist Resume, my full Curriculum Vitae

Shelly Diane Farnham, Ph.D.

Linkedin.com/in/ShellyFarnham phone: two oh six two two six 3586

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PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY – SENIOR RESEARCHER (USER EXPERIENCE RESEARCHER / RESEARCH SCIENTIST / INNOVATION RESEARCHER)

Experienced, innovative researcher and research manager in leading computer technology companies and startup environments, meaningfully impacting product development, user engagement, and community development. Topical expertise in collaborative web and mobile technologies, communication technologies, cooperative work, event management tools, social media, online and in-person communities, civic media, and social well-being.

CORE QUALIFICATIONS

  • Mixed methods, with knowledge of diverse quantitative and qualitative methodologies, including usage analysis, surveys, experimental design, advanced statistics, AB testing, interviews, focus groups, ethnographic field studies, usability testing, exploratory concept design analysis.
  • History of impactful research with demonstrated ability to develop and articulate research strategy, perform high quality studies, and leverage results through presentations, papers, and patents to meaningfully impact product design and deployment strategies.
  • Research management experience with highly collaborative approach for interdisciplinary teams, including quantitative and qualitative researchers, usability engineers, data scientists, developers, designers, and graduate student interns.
  • Professional leadership in industry and academic research circles, with deep topical knowledge in fields of Human Computer Interaction, Social Computing, Computer Mediated Collaborative Work, Social Media, and Civic Media research and design. Participated in industry research communities through papers, presentations, organizing workshops and conferences, collaborations, and teaching as an adjunct professor.
  • Highly collaborative with strong communication and organizational skills, working effectively with stakeholders across disciplines and fields.

WORK EXPERIENCE

  • President, Third Place Technologies. November 2018 – present. As we evolved our mission in 2019 to focus exclusively on art and tech communities of practice (building on our annual event Electric Sky), developed our business plan for Sky Artworks (gallery and makerspace studio), secured funding including donations and grants, managed the remodeling of our studio and gallery spaces, recruited members and staff, and organized numerous large-scale collaborative exhibitions and events at the intersection of art and technology.
  • Senior User Experience Researcher & Analyst, Google (contractor role via Zenith). February 2018 – February 2020. Performed mixed-methods research to inform the design and deployment of Google’s internal collaboration tools, including next generation ticketing, endpoint management, and community platform systems, and Chrome media experience. Research activities included studying existing practices and assessing product design concepts and usability through qualitative interviews, surveys and behavioral analytics. In addition worked with teams to develop and implement dashboards for key metrics for product impact.
  • Executive Director, Third Place Technologies. November 2014 – 2018. Founded a small non-profit organization with a mission to foster interdisciplinary, collaborative communities through innovation in technology, research, events, and spaces. Developed strategy and mission statement, recruited board of directors, applied for grants, managed contingent staff, interns, and volunteers, performed research, developed community analytics dashboards, participated in artist/research communities through papers and presentations.
  • Researcher/Research Team Lead, FUSE Labs, Microsoft Research. April 2011 – November 2014. Team lead for all research initiatives exploring innovative social media and community technology solutions. Managed interdisciplinary team, performed user research, and developed proof-of-concept prototypes.
  • Senior Staff Researcher, Yahoo! November 2009 – December 2010. Researched early stage social technologies as an embedded user researcher with the Communications and Communities teams (Yahoo! Mail, Groups, Messenger), with the goals of guiding forward-thinking products and inspiring innovation.
  • Founder and Research Consultant, Pathable, June 2006 – November 2009. Founded startup and startup consulting company performing early stage research and development in the social networking, conference management, and community technologies space.
  • Researcher, Social Computing Group, Microsoft Research, October 1999 – October 2005. Researched early stage collaborative and social technologies expected to impact Microsoft products two to ten years in the future. Core responsibilities included user research, advanced prototyping, and management of teams of two to five.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

  • Research tools: Extensive experience collecting, analyzing, and reporting research results using knowledge worker and research scientist tools such as SPSS, Qualtrics, Plex, Tableau, Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Google Docs.
  • Statistics and data manipulation: As a social scientist, strong quantitative background and experience with statistical analysis (e.g. ANOVAs, regressions, linear modeling, dimension reduction, structural equation modeling, social network analysis, content analysis), operationalizing social constructs from usage behavior in online and mobile technologies, instrumenting social systems, and data manipulation including object oriented programming (C#, .Net, Javascript). Tools: PLX, GoogleSQL, BigQuery, Tableau, Visual Studio .Net and C#, Azure, SPSS, Excel, SQL, MySQL, Perl, Web APIs, Actionscript 3.0, JSON, XML, Excel, Hadoop, Cosmos.
  • Prototyping: Extensive experience translating ideas into proof-of-concept prototypes and real-world applications, particularly for data-oriented user interfaces. Tools: Visual Studio .Net and C#, SQL, Azure, Javascript, Flash, Actionscript 3.0, HTML5, Web APIs, Map APIs, WordPress, Illustrator, Photoshop, Omnigraffle.

RELATED PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

  • Chair, Communities and Technologies (2021). Co-chair of upcoming academic conference in Seattle, WA bringing together leading academics and practitioners focusing on community technologies.
  • Town Councilmember, Town of Skykomish (2018-2019). Play a lead role in civic and community development, with a special focus on communication technology infrastructure as a member of the technology committee.
  • Organizer: Electric Sky (2015 – 2019), bringing together people at the intersection of art and technology.
  • Adjunct Instructor, Cornish College of the Arts (2017). “Embedded Interaction and the Internet of Things”.
  • Chair: Social Media Expo, iConference (2013-2015). Organized the Social Media Expo as a channel for Microsoft Research to have impact on the growing community of iSchools.
  • Adjunct Professor, University of Washington, Fall 2007. Developed and taught course on “Social Web 2.0” to students in the Digital Media and Communications Master’s program.
  • Panel Chair: MSR Faculty Summit Panel “Public Networks” (2014)
  • Principle Organizer: SoDApop (2014). SoDApop is an interdisciplinary group of civic tech researchers and practitioners in the Pacific Northwest. Played a lead role organizing in collaboration with UW iSchool faculty.
  • Editor: ACM Interactions Magazine Social Media Forum (2013-2014)
  • Works in Progress Co-Chair: CHI (2013-2014)
  • Senior Program Committee: ICWSM (2013)
  • Organizer: Social Researchers Workshop & Social Media Day Workshop (2013).
  • Associate Chair of Paper Committee: ACM Computer Human Interaction 2005
  • Associate Chair of Notes Committee: ACM Computer Human Interaction 2007
  • Principle Organizer: Social Computing Symposium 2004 & 2005, Microsoft Research. The Symposium brings together leaders in the study and development social technologies both in research and industry. Played lead role in initiating the symposium and organizing the first several years.
  • Reviewer (Ongoing): International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), Computer Human Interaction (CHI), Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Journal of Computer Human Interaction, GROUP.

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

  • Association for Computer Machinery; SigCHI chapter member.
  • American Psychological Society.

EDUCATION

  • Ph.D. in Social Psychology, Minor in Quantitative Methods. University of Washington, 1993 – 1999.
  • B.A. in Psychology and Fine Arts, Georgetown University, 1989-1991.