I design for collective action.

👋🏽 I design and evaluate sociotechnical systems to support expert-led crowdsourcing, collective action, and content moderation.

I am a PhD candidate in Computer Science with a focus in HCI at Virginia Tech where I’m advised by Dr. Kurt Luther in the Crowd Intelligence Lab. In my research, I take a mixed-methods approach that draws upon my training in computer science and human–computer interaction. I first conduct qualitative inquiry of collective action “in the wild.” Next, I build social computing and crowdsourcing tools that introduce new social dynamics. I then empirically evaluate these tools through experiments, log analysis, user studies, and longitudinal deployments.

Here is my CV. You can also view a full list of my publications here or view them on my Google Scholar profile. My email address is sukrit at vt dot edu.

News: Full paper accepted to CHI 2022 titled “Compete, Collaborate, Investigate: Exploring the Social Structures of Expert-led OSINT Investigations”!

Now: Using trace ethnography and social network analysis, I am studying an online community whose goal is to identify rioters who took part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Previously:

• Using an iterative research through design approach with a class of 40 students, I developed CuriOSINTy, an online platform that enables teams of trained crowds to support professional investigators in debunking misinformation.
• I conducted an ethnographic study of CrowdSolve, a crowdsourcing event where over 250 true crime enthusiasts worked with law enforcement experts to generate new leads on two decades-old cold cases. We found three tensions: between experts and crowds, security & privacy and openness, and entertainment and reality.
• I built a crowdsourcing system, GroundTruth, to help expert investigators, such as journalists and human rights activists, geolocate images. Our mixed-method evaluation found that GroundTruth reduces the search area by up to 67% and can scale up and speed up experts' work practice.
• In summer 2021, I was a UX Research intern at Facebook, where I conducted formative research on ad formats. In summer 2020, I was a Research Scientist intern at Microsoft Research where I worked with Sid Suri and Liane Scult to conduct research on the effectiveness of Upwork in improving worker well-being and reducing overheads.