Jason B. Ellis

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
P.O. Box 704
Yorktown Heights, N.Y. 10598
+1 914 784 7253 (voice)
+1 914 784 7279 (fax)
jason (at) jellis.org
http://jellis.org/

Education

Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

Ph.D. Computer Science, May 2003
Dissertation advisor: Amy S. Bruckman
Minor: History, Technology, and Society

University of Maryland, College Park, MD

B.S. Computer Science with honors, May 1995
Honors advisors: William Gasarch and Clyde Kruskal
Minor concentration: English

Experience

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY (12/02 to Present):

Research Scientist. Joined the Social Computing Group to design, implement, and study social software, including online communities, social visualization, and grassroots team tools.

Selected Projects:

  • Virtual Team Building Games. Iteratively designed and implemented cooperative games in Second Life that facilitate the development of team cohesiveness at a distance. A paper detailing the design process will appear in ACM DIS 2008. This work is ongoing.
  • Social Visualization for Rational Jazz. Designed, implemented, and studied numerous visualizations of social interaction in open source software development processes. These visualizations appeared in the initial preview of Rational Jazz at OOPSLA 2005 and shipped on CD to selected early adopters. More mature versions will be inaugural members of the Jazz plug-in repository in 2006. Papers on this work have appeared in CHI and CSCW, and a patent has been filed.
  • Incentive Mechanisms and Online Community. Served as lead organizer of workshop at Group 2005 that brought together researchers working with a variety of online communities with the aim of better understanding the diverse set of incentives that drive participation in those communities.
  • Unified Activity Management. UAM is the idea that complex repeated activities can be scaffolded by software that structures the task and brings together multiple systems in service of a goal. I designed and implemented extensions to the UAM platform that support ad-hoc software development activities, served as liaison between UAM and Rational, and defined the UAM vision as it relates to software development.
  • Collected Names. Served as lead front-end development for a team that designed and implemented extensions to the Lotus Websphere Portal Server Platform that allowed users to treat people as first class objects. Lead a user study to determine the efficacy of the approach and the general utility of the platform's user interface conventions. The report that emerged from this study was received by Lotus and impacted the design of the product.

College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (10/96 to 5/03):

Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science. Received fellowships from the NSF, IBM and Intel to pursue a doctorate in Computer Science with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction. My dissertation work, Palaver Tree Online, involved the design and implementation of an online community that supports kids interviewing elders to build up a shared database of oral history. Within this environment, kids and elders work together to explore elders' life stories and build artifacts that share these stories with the world. This work was funded by IBM and Intel. Other research interests while at Georgia Tech included ubiquitous computing from an applications perspective.

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY (6/98 to 9/98):

Summer Intern. Designed and prototyped extensions to Babble, a distributed workgroup support system developed at IBM Research. Babble allows members of a workgroup to stay in contact through semi-synchronous textual discussion (both public and private) and variety of awareness aids. Performed an in-depth analysis of the system as it currently exists and created a number of design sketches, prototypes, and working versions of an improved Babble that supports much richer interaction. Two patents have issued on this work.

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA (6/97 to 9/97):

Summer Intern. Designed and built the infrastructure for Audio Aura, an audio augmented reality system. This system is designed to provide peripheral awareness of one's environment via audio. It uses positioning data from an active badge system and keyboard activity to form a flexible, queryable data store. Audio Aura Services include E-mail Notification, Audio Footprints, and Group Pulse. New Services may be authored by users. This work was published in the proceedings of CHI 98. Two patents have issued on this work.

Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland, College Park, MD (6/95 to 9/96):

Faculty Research Assistant. Participated in a system-wide analysis and redesign of the information system for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice. Used an iterative design process at DJJ to design and implement a dynamic query interface that allows for the assignment of troubled youth to appropriate facilities. This work was published in the proceedings of CHI 97.

Information Data Systems, Inc. & LAN Based Systems, Inc., Silver Spring, MD (7/89 to 9/95):

Computer Programmer. Developed database and other systems based on technical specifications. Designed modular memory management and user interface objects for use in present and future systems. Developed multimillion dollar SAFE system for the U.S. Treasury Department, INVEST system for NIDA and many others.

Analyst. Wrote technical specifications for project proposals. Aided president regarding future ventures and the execution thereof. Negotiated contracts with clients. Evaluated client needs and recommended solutions.

Network Administrator. Set up and maintained local area networks for the U.S. Treasury, NIDA, The Product Group, Information Data Systems and many others.

Honors and Awards

Publications

Conference Publications (refereed):

Jason B. Ellis, Kurt Luther, Katherine Bessiere, Wendy A. Kellogg. "Games for Virtual Team Building." Proceedings of ACM DIS 2008 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems. February 25-27, 2008.

Jason B. Ellis, Shahtab Wahid, Catalina Danis, Wendy A. Kellogg. "Task and Social Visualization in Software Development: Evaluation of a Prototype." Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. April 28-May 3, 2007. Honorable Mention - SIGCHI Best of CHI 2007 Award.

Christine A. Halverson, Jason B. Ellis, Catalina Danis, Wendy A. Kellogg. "Designing Task Visualizations to Support the Coordination of Work in Software Development." Proceedings of CSCW 2006 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, November 4-8, 2006.

Jason B. Ellis, Catalina Danis, Christine Halverson, Wendy Kellogg. "Social Visualization in Software Development." Work in Progress. Proceedings of ACM CHI 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 24-27, 2006.

Jason B. Ellis, Amy S. Bruckman. "Encouraging Attitudinal Change through Online Oral History." Proceedings of ICLS 2002, International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Seattle, WA, October 23-26, 2002.

Jason B. Ellis, Amy S. Bruckman. "Different Achievement in Online Oral History." Proceedings of CSCL 2002 Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Boulder, CO, January 7-11, 2002.

Jason B. Ellis, Amy S. Bruckman. "What Do Kids Learn from Adults Online? Examining Student-Elder Discourse in Palaver Tree." Electronic Proceedings of CSCL 2002 Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Boulder, CO, January 7-11, 2002.

Jason B. Ellis, Amy S. Bruckman. "Designing Palaver Tree Online: Supporting Social Roles in a Community of Oral History." Proceedings of ACM CHI 2001 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, March-April 2001, pp. 474-481.

Jason B. Ellis, Amy S. Bruckman, D. Kevin O'Neill, Nancy B. Songer. "Scaling Educational Online Communities: The Role of Volunteerism in Doing Large-Scale Educational Projects Online." Panel discussion in Proceedings of ICLS 2000, International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Ann Arbor, MI, June 2000, pp. 362-365.

Jason B. Ellis, Amy S. Bruckman, Robert C. Satterwhite. "Children and Elders Sharing Stories: Lessons from Two Online Oral History Projects." Proceedings of CSCL 99 Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Stanford, CA, December 1999, pp. 151-158.

Jason B. Ellis. "Kids and Elders Working Together in an Online Community of History." Doctoral consortium paper in Proceedings of CSCL 99 Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Stanford, CA, December 1999, pp. 7-8.

Jason B. Ellis, Amy Bruckman. "Building a Community of History." Proceedings of ACM CHI 99 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts, May 1999, pp. 37-38.

Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Maribeth Back, Roy Want, Michael Baer, Jason B. Ellis. "Designing Audio Aura." Proceedings of ACM CHI 98 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 1998, pp. 566-573.

Jason B. Ellis, Anne Rose, Catherine Plaisant. "Putting Visualization to Work: ProgramFinder for Youth Placement." Proceedings of ACM CHI 97 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, March 1997, pp. 502-509.

Conference Publications (non-refereed):

Jason B. Ellis, Amy S. Bruckman. "Towards an Online Community of History." Presented at HCIC 99, Human Computer Interaction Consortium, February 1999.

Doctoral Thesis:

Jason B. Ellis. "Palaver Tree Online: Technological Support for Classroom Integration of Oral History," submitted April 2003.

Workshops Run:

Jason Ellis, Bonnie Nardi, Celia Pearce. "NSF Workshop on Productive Play." May 17-18, 2008. University of California, Irvine.

Jason B. Ellis, Christine A. Halverson, Thomas Erickson. "Sustaining Community: The role and design of incentive mechanisms in online systems." Proceedings of Group 2005. Sanibel Island, Florida, November 6-9, 2005.

Position Papers:

Wendy A. Kellogg, Jason Ellis, John C. Thomas. "Towards Supple Enterprises: Learning from N64's Super Mario 64, Wii Bowling, and a Corporate Second Life." Position paper for Supple Interfaces Workshop at ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 2007.

Jason B. Ellis, Catalina Danis, Christine Halverson, Wendy Kellogg. "Social Visualization in Software Development." Position paper for Social Visualication Workshop at ACM CHI 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 2006.

Jason B. Ellis. "Sustaining Community: Incentive Mechanisms in Online Systems." Position paper for Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium 2005. Seattle, WA, April 25-26, 2005.

Technical Reports:

Jason Ellis, Anne Rose, Catherine Plaisant. "Designing Interfaces for Youth Services Information Management." 1996 Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory Video Reports, C. Plaisant, Ed., CS-TR-3664, University of Maryland, College Park, June 1996.

Anne Rose, Jason Ellis, Catherine Plaisant, Stephan Greene. "Life Cycle of User Interface Techniques: The DJJ Information System Design Process." CS-TR-3637, University of Maryland, College Park, May 1996.

Jason Ellis, Chi Tran, Jake Ryoo, Ben Shneiderman. "Buttons vs. Menus: An Exploratory Study of Pull-down Menu Selection as Compared to Button Bars." CS-TR-3452, University of Maryland, College Park, June 1995.

Other Publications:

Jason B. Ellis, Sandra Kogan, Jim Rowan. "SeniorCHI: The CHI 99 Development Consortium." in SIGCHI Bulletin October 1999 issue, pp. 37-42.

Presentations

Conference Presentations (refereed):

"Games for Virtual Team Building." Paper presentation.ACM DIS 2008 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems. Cape Town, South Africa. February 26, 2008.

"Designing Task Visualizations to Support the Coordination of Work in Software Development." Paper presentation. CSCW 2006 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Banff, Alberta, Canada, November 6, 2006.

"Different Achievement in Online Oral History." Paper presentation. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 2002, Boulder, CO, January 8, 2002.

"Designing Palaver Tree Online: Supporting Social Roles in a Community of Oral History." Paper Presentation. Computer-Human Interaction 2001, Seattle, WA, April 5, 2001.

"Palaver Tree Online and Oral History: Emerging Debates." Panel presentation. Oral History Association Annual Meeting 2000, Durham, NC, October 14, 2000.

"Palaver Tree Online: A Community of Oral History." Panel presentation. International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2000, Ann Arbor, MI, June 15, 2000.

"Children and Elders Sharing Stories: Lessons from Two Online Oral History Projects." Paper presentation. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 99, Stanford, CA, December 15, 1999.

"Towards an Online Community of History: Work To Date & Future Directions." Paper presentation. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 99 Doctoral Consortium, Stanford, CA, December 11, 1999.

"Building a Community of History." Paper presentation. Senior CHI 99, Pittsburgh, PA, May 16, 1999.

"Putting Visualization to Work: ProgramFinder for Youth Placement." Paper presentation. Computer-Human Interaction 97, Atlanta, GA, March 26, 1997.

Conference Presentations (non-refereed):

"Towards a Community of History." Boaster presentation. Human-Computer Interaction Consortium, Estes Park, CO, February 4, 1999.

Invited Presentations:

"UDC Technology and Literacy Interview Series." University of the District of Columbia. Recorded for broadcast on DC Public Television. Also featured were Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, and Ejovi Nuwere. Hosted by Bobby Austin. March 30, 2005.

"Palaver Tree Online: A Community of Oral History." Invited presentation. International Society for Technology in Education, Minority Leadership Symposium; Atlanta, GA, June 24, 2000.

"Kids and Elders Sharing Stories: Towards an Online Oral History Archive Constructed by Kids." Invited presentation. Society of Georgia Archivists Annual Meeting; Jekyll Island, GA, November 5, 1999.

"Kids and Elders Sharing Stories: Tales from Two Online Oral History Projects." Invited presentation. IBM T.J. Watson Research Center; Hawthorne, NY, August 27, 1999.

"Community Update." Cleveland Talk Radio 1490am. Invited guest discussant. March 7, 1999.

"Technological Samba Schools: Interdisciplinary Learning-By-Doing on the Internet." With Amy Bruckman. Invited presentation. "Computing in the Humanities" lecture series, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, February 18, 1999.

Other Talks:

"Designing Audio Aura." Summer Intern Talk Series. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA; August 1997.

Patents

Jason Ellis, Laurent Hasson, Peter Malkin, "A System and Method of Visualization for Aggregation of Change Tracking Information," Patent filed August 15, 2006.

Rachel K.E. Bellamy, Jason B. Ellis, Thomas D. Erickson, Wendy A. Kellogg, Mark R. Laff, Peter K. Malkin, John T. Richards, Philip S. Yu, and Tracee Wolf, "Method for Translucent Online Interaction," Patent US6970931 issued November 29, 2005.

Peter Malkin, Rachel Bellamy, Jason Ellis, Thomas Erickson, Wendy Kellogg, Mark Laff, John Richards, "User-Defined Online Interaction Method and Device," Patent US6944655 issued September 13, 2005.

Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Maribeth Back, Roy Want, Jason Ellis, W. Keith Edwards, "A System and Method for Providing Audio Augmentation of a Physical Environment," Patent US6611196 issued August 26, 2003.

Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Maribeth Back, Roy Want, Jason Ellis, W. Keith Edwards, "Virtual Interface for Configuring an Audio Augmentation System," Patent US6608549 issued August 19, 2003.

Memberships

Professional Activities

Conference Reviewer:

  • ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2008 (CSCW 2008). San Diego, CA, November 8-12, 2008.
  • ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction 2008 (CHI 2008). Florence, Italy, April 5-10, 2008.
  • Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2008) Fifth Annual Workshop and Minitrack on Persistent Conversation. Big Island, Hawaii, January 7-10, 2008.
  • Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2008) Minitrack on Social Spaces: Production and Consumption of Goods in Digital Collectives. Big Island, Hawaii, January 7-10, 2008.
  • ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction 2007 (CHI 2007). San Jose, CA, April 28-May 3, 2007.
  • ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2006 (CSCW 2006). Banff, Alberta, Canada, November 4-8, 2006.
  • ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction 2006 (CHI 2006). Montréal, Quebec, Canada, April 22-27, 2006.
  • ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction 2005 (CHI 2005). Portland, OR, April 2-7, 2005.
  • ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction 2004 (CHI 2004). Vienna, Austria, April 24-29, 2004.
  • ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction 2002 (CHI 2002). Minneapolis, MN, April 20-25, 2002.
  • ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction 2001 (CHI 2001). Seattle, WA, March 31-April 5, 2001.
  • Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2004) Fifth Annual Workshop and Minitrack on Persistent Conversation. Big Island, Hawaii, January 5-8, 2004.
  • Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 2002 (CSCL 2002). Boulder, CO, January 7-11, 2002.
  • 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association 2002 (AERA 2002). New Orleans, LA, April 1-5, 2002.
  • 82nd Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association 2001 (AERA 2001). Seattle, WA, April 10-14, 2001.

Journal Reviewer:

  • IBM Systems Journal
  • International Journal of Human Computer Studies
  • Journal of the Learning Sciences

Demo Reviewer:

  • IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerComm 2007). White Plains, NY, March 19-23 2007.

References

Available on request

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