Hello, I'm Amy!
I am a first year PhD student and NSF GRFP fellow at the University of Washington in the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering, where I am advised by Dr. Emily Tseng.
My work explores digital safety for marginalized groups, with a focus on community-centered models of resilience against harm both facilitated and enacted by technology. I am often asking "what is safety?" and "who gets to be safe?" — thinking about what that means for how we design, govern, and resist technology. My research is grounded in critical social studies, but is primarily empirical, mixed-method, and participatory. Through it, I seek to contribute both practical artifacts (protocols, design, data) and conceptual frameworks.
Previously, I was at Brown University where I worked with the Brown HCI Lab (now Socio-HCI @ Brown) and the Human Trafficking Research Cluster.
Get in touch at amywxiao@uw.edu (institutional) or amyw.xiao@gmail.com (personal). You can also connect with me on LinkedIn!
A headshot of me, an Asian person with bangs and teal dip-dyed hair. Super stylish of course.
What am I working on?
In my research, I like to think about the legibility of
[harm, healing, personhood] in socio-technical
systems and how
it impacts the safety and wellbeing afforded to marginalized communities. This has led me
to work on
projects on the both risks and possibilities of emerging technologies, like:
- Mapping the intersection of help-seeking and sensemaking dynamics in the collaborative identification (or mis-identification) of tech-mediated scams targeting immigrants.
- Visualizing immigrant workers' experience of anti-trafficking surveillance technology with the juxtaposition of oral histories and historical municipal data.
- Designing accessible communication technology through the translation of neurodiversity principles into usable, scalable messaging features.
- Exploring how AI has impacted advice-seeking behaviors on interpersonal intimacy and how users conceptulize the social roles, risks, and rewards of AI chatbots.
In the past, I have published or presented my projects at venues like CHI, CSCW, AIES, and AAAS. Translational work has also been an important part of my scholarship, adapting my research to public-facing settings like legislatures, art galleries, and community workshops!