About me
Me
I work in the People and Practice Research (PaPR) group within Intel Labs, based in Beaverton, Oregon. I am drawn to research questions that require bringing together approaches from psychology (self-awareness, embodiment, mental models of abstract domains), anthropology (cultural/political construction of infrastructure, norms, and meaning), and HCI (ubiquitous computing, usable privacy and security, critical design). For example, my colleagues and I have looked at experiences of everyday mobility and transactions; people and communities living “off the grid” by exclusion or by choice; and, most recently, technology-based alternative currencies like Q Coins in China and EDY cards in Japan.
I’m currently working as part of a large collaborative project within PaPR, “Consumerization,” which seeks to understand the processes by which abstract conceptions of “the global consumer of technological goods and services” (often represented as middle-class, enlightened, and deserving of empowerment or protection) come in practice to structure and motivate the aspirations, perceptions, and behaviors of people, governments, development NGOs, and businesses around the world. I am particularly interested in how notions of green or sustainable consumption are reacting to and also influencing these larger processes.
Professional Background
My academic training is in cognitive psychology (Ph.D., Stanford, 1994) and computer science (A.B., Harvard, 1985). I began my career as a Unix software engineer (1981-1987), switched into basic research in cognitive science (1987-1994), which evolved into the more applied, design-oriented, cultural/ethnographic research I learned as a postdoc and staff researcher at Interval Research Corporation (1994-2000) and continue to develop as a senior researcher within PaPR (2000-present).
Selected Publications
- Wang, Y. & Mainwaring, S.D. (2008). “Human-Currency Interaction”: Learning from Virtual Currency Use in China. In Proceedings of CHI 2008 (Florence, Italy, 5-10 April, 2008), pp. 25-28. ACM Press.
- Mainwaring, S.D., March, W., & Maurer, B. (2008). From meiwaku to tokushita! Lessons for digital money design from Japan. In Proceedings of CHI 2008 (Florence, Italy, 5-10 April, 2008), pp. 21-24. ACM Press.
- Mainwaring, S.D. & George, C. (2008). Navigating Future Moneyscapes (video). Presented at the Intel Technology and Research Pavilion, Technology Showcase, Intel Developers Forum (San Francisco, 19-21 August, 2008).
