ABOUT ME

My name is Jude Yew and I am a doctoral candidate at the School of Information, University of Michigan. Broadly, I am interested in studying the design and use of technology that enables amateurs and even professionals to collaborate with each other across organizational or geographic boundaries. This broad interest in collaborative technologies has led me to study large scale scientific collaboratories, the use of blogs and social tagging in the classroom and the implementation of wikis in organizations.

Presently, I am working on my dissertation which focuses on participatory behavior in "open contribution systems" - online applications that encourage users to openly contribute and share content in a "public" networked environment. I am interested investigating what motivates individuals to contribute, share and collaborate with relative strangers in these systems. What drives individuals to contribute personal effort and time on open contribution systems such as wikipedia? What makes the users of these systems collaborate with each other towards collective goals? In order to begin answering some of these questions, I employ a mixed methodological toolkit - combining social network analysis with ethnographic work to better understand the motivations and dynamics of the participatory behavior exhibited by both the individual as well as the community of users as a whole. The findings generated by this research endeavor will inform interventions and design recommendations that help develop systems which encourage participation, cooperation and sharing.

My academic advisor is Stephanie Teasley and I am associated with the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW). I have also worked on The Science of Collaboratories and The BIT320 Learning Remix projects. I am currently the secretary for the Michigan-Ohio chapter of SIGCHI (MOCHI) and I am also a member of the organizing committee for the Sensemaking Interdisciplinary Forum.

RANDOM BITS FROM MY PAST

HCI work:

Visual Arts work:

    I had the great privilege of being able to work with Singaporean dramaturg, Kuo Pao Kun, who passed away in 2002. I wrote a Thesis titled "From the Margins to the Centre: An exploration of the Singapore Identity in the theatre of Kuo Pao Kun".
    I used to be a teacher/lecturer of English Literature and Drama in Singapore.
    I used to workshop and devise plays with my students. I am very proud of them all (Shades of grey, Pretty good year, zeropointone, Eden), though I think that my students aren't aware of how proud I am of their work. One of the plays even won a Silver Award in the Singapore Youth Festival 2000.
    I have written, directed and exhibited an experimental video entitled "EMAS" at Moving Images: Local Flavor at the Substation. I am too embarressed by the immature and naive nature of this video to present it here :)
    I have conducted workshops and presented on the topics of "Creativity" and "The use of Role-play in problem based learning".

Writings:

    I spent my free time during my undergraduate years as an entertainment/pop culture journalist. Highlights of my work can be found below.
    Interview with Sonic Youth
    Circa 1996. This article was co-written with Lim Cheng Tju. We were thoroughly amateurish and unprepared for the interview. Click on the image for the article for the article. But proceed at your own risk, it's 12Mb!!!




    Interview with Shonen Knife
    I remember being really excited about this interview assignment. There was clearly some miscommunication that took place in the interview ... Read the article and you'll see what I mean ...




    TV's a real turn on
    One of my first assignments. I was tasked with thinking about the state of television in Singapore as the arrival of Cable TV and the privatization of the national broadcasters took place in 1997.



National Service:

    I was an Armoured Trooper with the rank of Corporal in the 42nd Singapore Armoured Regiment from 1989 - 1993.
    I was the captain of the Battalion Rugby team. We emerged champions in the Armour formation rugby tournament 1992.
    I was an "Operationally ready" trooper (Reserve service) in the 424th Singapore Armoured Regiment from 1994 - 2003.

Community Service:

    I have spent time with the Hmong children at the Catholic Mission Center of Wian Kean, Chiang Rai, Thailand. I have been to Wian Kean twice, once in 1999 and another time in 2002. The first time I went there was to produce a documentary video with my students. My second trip there, I was the project leader for an overseas community involvement project.