Tara Matthews
tára@táramatthews.org
Research Staff Member
IBM Almaden Research Center
650 Harry Road
San Jose, CA 95120
I am a Research Staff Member in the USER group at IBM Almaden Research Center. My research interests include collaboration support, awareness, glanceability, information visualization, activity-based computing, and multitasking. My current research focuses on understanding how people manage and participate in collaborative activities, with the goal of designing better support tools. Another area of my current research is exploring new ways to help system administrators manage large systems. More specifically, I am designing tools to help administrators more effectively monitor and troubleshoot system problems, perform complex, multi-step tasks, and work in teams.
I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. My major was Human-Computer Interaction. My advisor was Jennifer Mankoff. The goal of my dissertation work was to increase knowledge on how to design and evaluate glanceable peripheral displays in order to improve the user’s experience and efficiency while multitasking. My thesis on Designing and Evaluating Glanceable Peripheral Displays is available. The reason for my interest in HCI and related topics is that I would like to help people by making technology more accessible and useful to them.