Morgan Ames : Grad School Choices

School choices:

Research ideas:

General themes: appropriate technology for developing regions, cross-cultural HCI techniques, social impacts of technology, technology and sustainability

Possible specific projects:

interface evaluation (e.g. remote usability studies) across cultures/languages (NSF proposal)
needs assessment in developing regions or between different cultures/languages
healthy cities ambient displays (again? did a year of work on it last year; could pick it up again, but it would probably be a 1-2 year project at most)
e-government and public/civic empowerment
social impacts of technology (specifically what?)
technology and intellectual property issues overseas?

General comments: There are few people working on this anywhere: there are generally not more than one or two faculty members and grad students at any one school that have interests that are even somewhat related to this area. I would hope that no matter where I choose to go, I would have the opportunity to collaborate with faculty members at other institutions. If this is the case, perhaps what matters most is the enthusiasm and support in my home department, so that I have a good base for interdisciplinary and inter-university collaboration. The NSF fellowship will help this a lot: the general impression that I've gotten is that it'll be much easier to visit other institutions for a term if I bring my own funding along with me.

Thanks, everyone, for your help in this decision! Since I've already made it, I've taken down the individual school considerations. You can email me (see my address at the bottom of this page) if you want more information.