Making place for conversation and connection.
I build research programs and technical toolkits that improve social collaboration through place-based conversation.
Knowledge · Understanding · Response
My work sits between ethnography, design, and systems engineering, shaped by years of experience in education, conversational AI, and field research.
Research Programs
Local Conversation Studio
Local Conversation Studio is a place-based research and design program dedicated to understanding how locals and visitors negotiate language, identity, and knowledge through everyday conversation. The work combines ethnographic field research and qualitative analysis with the design of small, analog interventions that operate inside live interaction rather than alongside it.
Learning from Oaxaca
Field research on language, identity, and everyday interaction in a multilingual city.
AI-QA
AI-assisted qualitative analysis for navigating place-based conversational evidence.
Local Knowledge Cache
A retrieval-first reference system for grounded, traceable local knowledge.
Local Language Cards
Programmatic, physical language tools to support adaptation to place.
Tools for Conversation
Most conversational AI systems are built on data that flattens real interaction into linear speech, erasing spatial relationships, overlap, and embodied cues. Tools for Conversation investigates how these losses originate not only in models, but in capture, recording, and annotation infrastructure itself. Through a vertically integrated set of tools - from physical instrumentation to human-in-the-loop correction - the program addresses what becomes knowable about conversation based on how it is recorded.
Convo-Box
Field-ready hardware for capturing embodied, multi-party conversation.
Convo-Recorder
Software for recording conversation as spatially explicit, reusable research data.
Convo-Max
Multimodal transcription pipeline structured for conversation analysis.
Convo-Script
Lightweight annotation software for rapid human correction.