News
  • I'm on the job market. I'm interested in academic and industry research positions related to how online platform design impacts relationships and mental health.
  • I'm honored to have been selected as a participant for EECS Rising Stars.

Amanda Baughan

Hello! I am in the final year of my PhD (ABD) in Computer Science & Engineering, advised by Alexis Hiniker. My expected graduation date is Spring 2024. My work focuses on human-computer interaction and social computing, drawing from a variety of disciplines including user-centered design, social psychology, and recently, critical theory. The purpose of my work is to design, evaluate, and build systems to support users' connection with themselves and each other on social media and communication platforms.

Currently, I'm building a messaging platform as a culmination of three years of research on hard conversations online, including conflict and other emotionally fraught discourse. I'm implementing novel design features to increase connection and understanding during these critical moments. The beginnings of this work have been featured on NPR.

Separately, I'm passionate about understanding social media use through the lens of dissociation. I'm interested in how design and peer networks can disrupt dissociation to support users' goals for time spent on social media. This work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American.

Previously, I worked as a UX Researcher at AI2's Semantic Scholar, improving human-AI interaction on research feeds. Before that, I spent two years working at Google, and I returned recently as a Research Intern to evaluate user trust in voice assistants. This work received an honorable mention at CHI '23.

When not working, you can find me surfing, hiking, or screaming into the void.


Email: baughan at cs.uw.edu

Publications

A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding User Trust after Voice Assistant Failures
Amanda Baughan, Allison Mercurio, Ariel Liu, Xuezhi Wang, Jilin Chen, Xiao Ma [video] [dataset] [bib]
ACM CHI 2023
Best Paper Honorable Mention: Top 5%

Attached to “The Algorithm”: Making Sense of Algorithmic Precarity on Instagram
Yim Register, Lucy Qin, Amanda Baughan, Emma S. Spiro [video] [bib]
ACM CHI 2023

Shame on Who? Experimentally Reducing Shame During Political Arguments on Twitter
Amanda Baughan, Katherine Cross, Elena Khasanova, Alexis Hiniker [video] [blog post] [bib]
PACMHCI 2022 (CSCW conference)

"I Don’t Even Remember What I Read": How Design Influences Dissociation on Social Media
Amanda Baughan, Mingrui "Ray" Zhang, Raveena Rao, Kai Lukoff, Anastasia Schaadhardt, Lisa Butler, Alexis Hiniker [video] [press] [bib]
ACM CHI 2022

Monitoring Screen Time or Redesigning It? Two Approaches to Intentional Social Media Use
Mingrui "Ray" Zhang, Kai Lukoff, Raveena Rao, Amanda Baughan, Alexis Hiniker [video] [bib]
ACM CHI 2022

Someone Is Wrong on the Internet: Having Hard Conversations in Online Spaces
Amanda Baughan, Justin Petelka, Catherine Jaekyung Yoo, Jack Lo,
Shiyue Wang, Amulya Paramasivam, Ashley Zhou, Alexis Hiniker [storyboards] [press] [bib]
PACMHCI 2021 (CSCW conference)

Do Cross-Cultural Differences in Visual Attention Patterns Affect Search Efficiency on Websites?
Amanda Baughan*, Nigini Oliveira* (*=equal contribution), Tal August, Naomi Yamashita, Katharina Reinecke [video] [blog post] [bib]
ACM CHI 2021
Best Paper Honorable Mention: Top 5%

Keep it Simple: How Visual Complexity and Preferences Impact Search Efficiency on Websites
Amanda Baughan, Tal August, Naomi Yamashita, Katharina Reinecke [blog post] [bib]
ACM CHI 2020

Workshop Papers, SIGs, Demos

Relationality in Social Computing
Amanda Baughan
Conceptualizing Indigeneity in Social Computing, CSCW 2023.

SIG on Designing for Constructive Conflict
Amanda Baughan, Ashwin Rajadesingan, Alexis Hiniker, Paul Resnick, Amy Bruckman
ACM CHI 2022.

Crowdsourcing Inclusion
Amanda Baughan
Race in HCI workshop, ACM CHI 2020.

Inspiration

XO Higher Self. An advice podcast in which Bunny Michael guides listeners to their higher self: the manifestation of love within all humans.

To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself. And to trust that there is enough, that you are enough. Edith Eva Eger, by the way of Nedra Tawwab