Pranav Khadpe

As a Human-Computer Interaction researcher, I use design and engineering as methods to understand and re-imagine the digital means through which we communicate, understand each other, and coordinate action. My current work is focused on communication in professional spaces and attempts to counter the asociality that results from new forms of networked work, and from increased allowance for remote work within traditional jobs. My work has investigated and contributed artifacts to support: (1) social integration of newcomers; (2) exchange of social support and approval; and (3) coordinated action. In my work, I draw on substantive theories from sociology and social psychology as a lens to interpret social phenomena and employ practices of user-centered and community-collaborative design to prototype new communication technologies that alter the phenomena in desirable ways, while advancing scholarly conversation on developing communication technologies.

Through this work, I have noticed that although networked communication promises to support prosocial interactions, digital systems sometimes require us to make ourselves legible in ways that can work against the formation and maintenance of communities. Specified commitment mechanisms like “follows” may not support the nuanced and tentative ways in which we form professional relationships. Similarly specified communication affordances like “likes”, “reacts”, or “votes” may not support the necessary flexibility and ambiguity we employ when providing support, critical assistance, and seeking consensus. Some of my work presents technical realizations of useful “ambiguous”, “unspecified”, and “tentative” interactions that can support processes underlying the formation and maintenace of communities. This focus on ambiguity emphasizes the observation that many social processes rest on incompatible conditions: we are all familiar with the opposing needs to fit-in and stand-out when joining new groups or the needs to be critical but also supportive when giving feedback to colleagues. In advancing notions of ambiguous communication, I suggest that because social experience is often paradoxical, communication must inherently reflect those paradoxes and resist rigid categorization but is not flawed or poor communication because of its indeterminate nature. (Others who have made similar proposals ).

I am a fourth year PhD student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where I am fortunate to be co-advised by Chinmay Kulkarni and Geoff Kaufman. I have also spent time at Stanford HCI and Microsoft Research.

Find me: Pittsburgh, PA pkhadpe@cs.cmu.edu @pranavkhadpe