Interning at UCSD's Design Lab

OVERVIEW——

In the summer of 2018, I was a research intern under Dr. Lilly Irani working on the Turkopticon project at the UCSD Design Lab. Under her guidance, I had my first exposure to human-computer interaction research and its practices. I worked closely with another undergraduate student for the next 12 weeks to redesign, and reverse engineer Turkopticon on a content management system.

In those four months, I was pushed and challenged to think critically about what open-source software and end-user development meant for small online communities such as Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (Turkers). My main task was to improve Turkopticon, a reviews-based forum where Turkers can flag, rate, and review requesters, users on Amazon Mechanical Turk that employ Turkers to complete Human Intelligence Tasks (HIT)s for in exchange for monetary compensation. Because scamming Turkers became a common phenomenon, Dr. Lilly Irani along with a team of colleagues and moderators developed Turkopticon so that Turkers could voice their concerns and be a part of an online community. Through the 12 weeks, my colleague and I conducted research on Airtable and WordPress to reverse engineer Turkopticon on a platform that was more end-user sustainable. My research internship concluded with a work-in-progress submission which I co-authored for the Designing Interactive Systems 2019 conference.

DEVELOPMENT OF MINI TURKOPTICON

Case study coming soon.

DESIGNING INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS 2019 CONFERENCE

My colleague Andres at the Designing Interactive Systems 2019 Conference. Photo taken by Dr. Lilly Irani

You can find the work-in-progress "The Promise and Limits of Tailorability in Turkopticon" on the DIS 2019 Companion Publication in the ACM Digital library.

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LESSONS LEARNED

During the 3 months that I worked with Dr. Irani in the Feminist Labor Lab, I was humbled by the wealth of knowledge I had yet to explore. I was overwhelmed by the complex relationships that members of the Turking community share, and deeply impressed by the amount of time and passion educators and moderators invested into empowering this online community. I learned many new skills, from critically analyzing HCI literature to understanding the qualms of manipulating open source software. Writing the work-in-progress was not only an enriching yet grueling experience, it was also a great way for me to document and reflect on my entire research development and gain a better idea of what have other people done in this particular research topic. It taught me that design is truly a continous process: there is no "final result" because your product is constantly evolving and improving. I was always constantly asking myself "What else can I read? What other topics should I look into to enhance my overall perspective? What more can I do?" It reminded me so much of how I approached my growth as a designer: constantly seeking to improve, to learn, and to better myself.

Thank you to Dr. Lilly Irani for taking me under your wing and putting your faith, time, and effort into my growing interests and providing me with so many educational opportunities. You've always encouraged my opinions, pushed me to think critically, and welcomed all my questions.