Conversational Ecologies: Amplifying Responsivity to Sustain Diversity
A research statement for the MIT Media Lab's Center for Constructive Communication
Human conversation is an ecosystem.
Every attentive reply—every nod, pause, or shift in tone—keeps that ecosystem alive.
My work studies and prototypes ways to amplify responsivity: the prompt, sensitive, context-aware act of answering one another. I treat conversation as a living ecology, where responsiveness sustains diversity just as varied species sustain resilient habitats.
Through ethnographic fieldwork, multimodal transcription, and design experiments, I explore how dialogue can become more grounded in place, more understanding across difference, and more capable of responsive action.
MIT Media Lab Alignment
At the MIT Media Lab's Center for Constructive Communication, I aim to connect these small-scale studies with larger systems:
- translating micro-patterns of listening into measurable “health metrics” for dialogue,
- building tools that protect nuance instead of erasing it,
- and showing that attentive, caring conversation can be a technology in itself.
What I Bring
Technical Stack
- 9-agent multimodal transcription pipeline
- Custom Raspberry Pi recording hardware
- Sub-10ms synchronized multi-camera capture
- ELAN-compliant CA annotation output
Research Outputs
- 26 ethnographic interviews (20+ hours)
- 614 coded clips with AI-assisted analysis
- 100+ code hierarchical codebook
- Place-based language learning prototypes
Industry Experience
- Product Manager at Microsoft/Nuance
- Voice AI conversation design
- Enterprise IVR systems
- Human-AI collaboration patterns
Research Methods
- Ethnographic fieldwork
- Conversation analysis (CA)
- Agent-based modeling for game design
- Human-in-the-loop AI validation
In short: I build prototypes that help people hear each other better—across language, culture, and medium.
Research Approach
Place
Grounding knowledge in specific locations, connecting local wisdom with global dialogue systems
Understanding
Building bridges across language, culture, and difference through multimodal tools
Responsivity
Amplifying attentive, caring dialogue that sustains conversational ecosystems