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Ellie Harmon

dblp:49/5660 · DBLP profile ↗
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16ranked-venue papers
6as first author
1since 2021 · last 2026
0000-0003-3971-1873ORCID · verified

Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several

Human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing · 16 · 6 first-author · 1 since 2021

Expertise — from the expertise taxonomy: the topics of the expert's papers under the CCF categories. A weight counts papers with recency: 1 for a paper about the topic, 0.3 when the topic is its context, halved every five years.

Human-computer interaction and pervasive computing
9 papers
Collaborative and social computing · 74% Design research and methods · 16% Immersive interaction · 5%
Interdisciplinary, comprehensive, and emerging computing
3 papers
Computational social science and digital humanities · 100%
Databases, data mining, and information retrieval
2 papers
Data integration and cleaning · 89% Database system architecture and tuning · 11%
Software engineering, system software, and programming languages
1 paper
Program verification · 100%

Topics — the 12 heaviest of 16, each with the papers that count most for it

TopicWeightPapersLastEvidence papers
Collaborative and social computing
nonprofit organizations
1.012026
Degraded Data in Nonprofit Homebrew Databases · CHI 2026
Data integration and cleaning
data quality
0.312026
Degraded Data in Nonprofit Homebrew Databases · CHI 2026
Collaborative and social computing
computer-supported cooperative work
0.312017
Supporting Everyday Philanthropy: Care Work In Situ and at Scale · CSCW 2017
Design research and methods › speculative design
design fiction
0.312017
The Design Fictions of Philanthropic IT: Stuck Between an Imperfect Present and an Impossible Future · CHI 2017
Program verification
temporal logic
0.212015
Circumscribed Time and Porous Time: Logics as a Way of Studying Temporality · CSCW 2015
Collaborative and social computing
social computing
0.112012
Bridging between organizations and the public: volunteer coordinators' uneasy relationship with social computing · CHI 2012
Collaborative and social computing
care work
0.112017
Supporting Everyday Philanthropy: Care Work In Situ and at Scale · CSCW 2017
Immersive interaction
augmented reality
0.112007
Presence and engagement in an interactive drama · CHI 2007
Games and playful interaction › interactive narrative
interactive drama
0.112007
Presence and engagement in an interactive drama · CHI 2007
Immersive interaction › virtual reality
presence
0.112007
Presence and engagement in an interactive drama · CHI 2007
Design research and methods › field study
ethnographic study
0.112015
Circumscribed Time and Porous Time: Logics as a Way of Studying Temporality · CSCW 2015
Database system architecture and tuning
database usability
0.012011
Homebrew databases: complexities of everyday information management in nonprofit organizations · CHI 2011

Methods — techniques the papers use, named apart from their topics

qualitative study · 2.8interview study · 0.9qualitative analysis · 0.6discourse analysis · 0.6case study · 0.6ethnography · 0.4interviews · 0.4mobile diary study · 0.3content analysis · 0.2
YearPublicationVenuePosition
2026 Degraded Data in Nonprofit Homebrew Databases
Amy Voida, Ellie Harmon, Temidayo Olorunsogo, David R. Karger
CHI2
2020 Securing the Next Generation
abstract
Weak authentication practices that rely on passwords for security have led to widespread data breaches and successful phishing attacks. Recent advances in the cost and usability of hardware security tokens have made the prospect of effectively augmenting password-based authentication or removing it altogether a possibility. To actualize this, a paradigm change in how people learn to authenticate accounts on-line must occur. Towards this end, we describe a curriculum to teach high-school students the perils of passwords and a program to distribute hardware security tokens to them as they are first setting up their on-line presence in order to improve the security of the next generation.
Wu-chang Feng, Robert Liebman, Ellie Harmon, Veronica Hotton, Michael Lupro, Lois M. L. Delcambre
SIGCSE3
2020 CyberPDX: An Interdisciplinary Professional Development Program for Middle and High School Teachers
abstract
CyberPDX is an annual professional development program hosted at Portland State University. Our long-term goal is to broaden participation in cybersecurity. Since 2016, over 70 middle and high school teachers from the Pacific Northwest have participated in the STREAM program, which offers interdisciplinary instruction in programming, cryptography, personal security, policy, literature, and arts. In this poster, we share our interdisciplinary curriculum, present data on short-term impacts, and describe our in-progress work to evaluate the program's longer term impacts.
Ellie Harmon, Veronica Hotton, Robert Liebman, Michael Lupro, Wu-chang Feng, Lois M. L. Delcambre, David Pouliot
SIGCSE1
2019 Rating Working Conditions on Digital Labor Platforms
Ellie Harmon, Michael Six Silberman
Comput. Support. Cooperative Work.1
2018 Technology on the Trail
abstract
The Technology on the Trail workshop will examine the encroachment of technology into hiking and outdoor adventures, with a focus on identifying and developing ways for technology to support positive and mutually beneficial connections among people. These connections include both intentional ones helpful in collecting scientific data, supporting the environment, maintaining safety, and sharing via social media. We will also explore more opportunistic connections, such as those that are leveraged when tracking and sharing biometric or geotemporal data. With the inclusion of technology in places where it is not used and sometimes not welcome, there will be mismatches of ethics and values that must be considered in the design and use of technology. The workshop will examine existing and emerging challenges of bringing technology onto the trail and reflect on ways to understand, design, and deploy appropriate technological solutions moving forward.
D. Scott McCrickard, Michael A. Horning, Steve Harrison 0001, Ellie Harmon, Alan J. Dix, Norman Makoto Su, Timothy Stelter
GROUP4
2017 Disempowered by Data: Nonprofits, Social Enterprises, and the Consequences of Data-Driven Work
abstract
Organizations across many sectors are under intense pressure to become data-driven. Yet, for mission-driven organizations, the path to becoming and value of being data-driven is not always clear. We present results from an interview-based study of the role of data in the monitoring and evaluation practices of mission-driven organizations. Instead of leading to productive and empowering data-driven decision making, monitoring and evaluation work is characterized by the erosion of autonomy, data drift, and data fragmentation. Together, these consequences of monitoring and evaluation practices play into a cycle of increasing disempowerment for the mission-driven organization. These findings suggest that the design of information systems should work towards empowering organizations in ways that make sense for their unique data needs and those of their constituents.
Chris Bopp, Ellie Harmon, Amy Voida
CHI2
2017 The Design Fictions of Philanthropic IT: Stuck Between an Imperfect Present and an Impossible Future
abstract
In this paper, we examine the stories about philanthropic IT that circulate via product websites, marketing materials, and third-party news articles. Through a series of product-centered case studies, we surface these texts' implicit and explicit visions about the (near) future of philanthropy. We detail their prescriptions about how, why, and in service of what ends nonprofit organizations could, should, and ought to leverage IT. We also examine their underlying assumptions about philanthropy: how social good is accomplished, how philanthropic organizations are - and might be more - effective, to whom organizations and beneficiaries should be accountable, and the terms of that accountability. Analyzing these visions as design fictions, we argue that they help cultivate unrealistic anticipatory relationships to the present and entail concomitantly unrealistic imperatives for the philanthropic sector. We conclude by arguing for the crucial role of HCI scholars in disrupting these impossible futures, and by highlighting areas needing further, re-imagined, research.
Ellie Harmon, Chris Bopp, Amy Voida
CHI1
2017 Supporting Everyday Philanthropy: Care Work In Situ and at Scale
abstract
Prior research has drawn attention to numerous problems with ICTs designed for philanthropic contexts. Yet, little is known about how to support philanthropic work in its own right, especially as it transcends formal engagements with nonprofit organizations and suffuses everyday life. In this research, we draw on data from a 33-day mobile diary study augmented by follow-up interviews to examine the work of everyday philanthropy. By taking individuals' philanthropic work-rather than a specific technology or its users-as our unit of analysis, we establish an empirical foundation for a new design space for philanthropic informatics. Our research shows that philanthropic work is not just about transactions of money, goods, or services. Instead, we argue that a lens of care work is a more useful framing of everyday philanthropy. We also draw renewed attention to the myriad roles of institutions beyond that of a resource intermediary.
Ellie Harmon, Matthias Korn, Amy Voida
CSCW1
2017 Competing Currencies: Designing for Politics in Units of Measurement
abstract
We present results of a qualitative study of the information systems used by college and university food banks and find that their inventory systems are characterized by the patchwork use of multiple units of measurement-currencies-collected at different points in their workflow for different stakeholders. Considerations of whether to track information by item count, points, monetary value, or weight are immensely political and privilege some stakeholders over others. We contribute to an emergent body of research in computer-supported cooperative work about the ways in which the politics of measurement influences the design of organizational information systems through an explanation of the ways that these different currencies embody politics and stymie design at the most mundane level of the information system-the unit of measurement.
Amy Voida, Ellie Harmon, Willa Weller, Aubrey Thornsbury, Ariana Casale, Samuel Vance, Forrest Adams, Zach Hoffman, Alex Schmidt, Kevin Grimley, Luke Cox, Aubrey Neeley, Christopher Goodyear
CSCW2
2016 Social Justice-Oriented Interaction Design: Outlining Key Design Strategies and Commitments
abstract
In recent years, many HCI designers have begun pursuing research agendas that address large scale social issues. These systemic or "wicked" problems present challenges for design practice due to their scope, scale, complexity, and political nature. In this paper, we develop a social justice orientation to designing for such challenges. We highlight a breadth of design strategies that target the goals of social justice along six dimensions -- transformation, recognition, reciprocity, enablement, distribution, and accountability -- and elaborate three commitments necessary to developing a social justice oriented design practice -- a commitment to conflict, a commitment to reflexivity, and a commitment to personal ethics and politics. Although there are no easy solutions to systemic social issues, a social justice orientation provides one way to foster an engagement with the thorny political issues that are increasingly acknowledged as crucial to a field that is not just about technological possibility, but also about political responsibility.
Lynn Dombrowski, Ellie Harmon, Sarah E. Fox
Conference on Designing Interactive Systems2
2015 Circumscribed Time and Porous Time: Logics as a Way of Studying Temporality
abstract
In this paper, we introduce the notion of a temporal logic to characterize sets of organizing principles that perpetuate particular orientations to the lived experience of time. We identify a dominant temporal logic, circumscribed time, which has legitimated time as chunkable, single-purpose, linear, and ownable. We juxtapose this logic with the temporal experiences of participants in three ethnographic datasets to identify a set of alternative understandings of time -- that it is also spectral, mosaic, rhythmic, and obligated. We call this understanding porous time. We posit porous time as an expansion of circumscribed time in order to provoke reflection on how temporal logics underpin the ways that people orient to each other, research and design technologies, and normalize visions of success in contemporary life.
Melissa Mazmanian, Ingrid Erickson, Ellie Harmon
CSCW3
2013 Stories of the Smartphone in everyday discourse: conflict, tension & instability
abstract
As the smartphone proliferates in American society, so too do stories about its value and impact. In this paper we draw on advertisements and news articles to analyze cultural discourse about the smartphone. We highlight two common tropes: one calling for increased technological integration, the other urging individuals to dis-integrate the smartphone from daily life. We examine the idealized subject positions of these two stories and show how both simplistic tropes call on the same overarching values to compel individuals to take opposing actions. We then reflect on the conflicts individuals experience in trying to align and account for their actions in relation to multiple contradictory narratives. Finally, we call for CHI researchers to tell and provoke more complicated stories of technologies and their relationships with values in conversations, publications, and future designs.
Ellie Harmon, Melissa Mazmanian
CHI1
2012 Bridging between organizations and the public: volunteer coordinators' uneasy relationship with social computing
abstract
We present the results of a qualitative study of the use of social computing technologies by volunteer coordinators at nonprofit organizations. The work of volunteer coordinators is bridge-building work - bringing together numerous public constituencies as well as constituencies within their organizations. One might expect this class of work to be well supported by social software, some of which has been found to enable bridging social capital. However, we find that, in many ways, this class of technology fails to adequately support volunteer coordinators' bridge-building work. We discuss a number of strategies for bridge-building via social computing technologies, numerous challenges faced by volunteer coordinators in their use of these technologies, and opportunities for designing social software to better support bridge-building between organizations and the public.
Amy Voida, Ellie Harmon, Ban Al-Ani
CHI2
2011 Homebrew databases: complexities of everyday information management in nonprofit organizations
abstract
Many people manage a complex assortment of digital information in their lives. Volunteer coordinators at nonprofit organizations are no exception; they collectively manage information about millions of volunteers every year. Yet current information management systems are insufficient for their needs. In this paper, we present results of a qualitative study of the information management practices of volunteer coordinators. We identify the resource constraints and the diverse and fluid information needs, stakeholders, and work contexts that motivate their information management strategies. We characterize the assemblages of information systems that volunteer coordinators have created to satisfice their needs as 'homebrew databases.' Finally, we identify additional information management challenges that result from the use of these 'homebrew databases,' highlighting deficiencies in the appropriateness and usability of databases and information management systems, more generally.
Amy Voida, Ellie Harmon, Ban Al-Ani
CHI2
2008 Cognitive partnerships on the bench top: designing to support scientific researchers
abstract
There has been a growing interest to develop technologies for laboratory environments. However, existing systems are underdeployed in real research labs. In order to create more successful technologies for the creative laboratory setting, we need a deeper understanding of the values of the researchers we are designing for and the unique roles of technology in the research laboratory. Our three-year ethnographic study of a biomedical engineering (BME) lab contributes to building this foundation for future design. Drawing form a distributed and situated cognition framework, our analysis highlights the ways in which technology is integrated into the researchers' daily practices. This study is one of the first deep ethnographies of a laboratory culture with a central focus on technology and provides several insights for the design community.
Ellie Harmon, Nancy J. Nersessian
Conference on Designing Interactive Systems1
2007 Presence and engagement in an interactive drama
abstract
In this paper we present the results of a qualitative, empirical study exploring the impact of immersive technologies on presence and engagement, using the interactive drama Façade as the object of study. In this drama, players are situated in a married couple's apartment, and interact primarily through conversation with the characters and manipulation of objects in the space. We present participants' experiences across three different versions of Façade -- augmented reality (AR) and two desktop computing based implementations, one where players communicate using speech and the other using typed keyboard input. Through interviews and observations of players, we find that immersive AR can create an increased sense of presence, confirming generally held expectations. However, we demonstrate that increased presence does not necessarily lead to more engagement. Rather, mediation may be necessary for some players to fully engage with certain interactive media experiences.
Steven Dow, Manish Mehta 0001, Ellie Harmon, Blair MacIntyre, Michael Mateas
CHI3