John Tang - IORG Member bio page

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John Tang

Research Staff Member, IBM Research

Web site: http://www.research.ibm.com/people/j/johntang/

I am a Research Staff Member in the USER group at IBM Research at the Almaden Research Center. My research interests are focused on understanding the needs of users to shape the design of technology to support collaboration. I have a special interest in interfaces for distributed groups to share awareness information to help coordinate contact. More recently, I've been intrigued by opportunities of taking advantage of electronic traces left by users' interactions to help maintain awareness of information of interest without any additional user input. I apply a mix of qualitative (video-based observation, interviews, surveys to collect user perceptions) and quantitative (usage logs) methods to understand how people currently use technology and how to design new technology to improve their work.

You can find more details on my professional homepage at IBM Research, but I've selected some publications relevant to the Information Overload topic below.

Selected Publications

Unobtrusive But Invasive: Using Screen Recording to Collect Field Data on Computer-Mediated Interaction, John C. Tang, Sophia B. Liu, Michael Muller, James Lin, and Clemens Drews, Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 2006, Banff, Canada, November 2006, pp. 479-482. ACM Digitial Library
Beyond Instant Messaging, John C. Tang and James "Bo" Begole, ACM Queue, Vol. 1, No. 8, November 2003, pp. 28-37. ACM Digital Library
When Can I Expect an Email Response? A Study of Rhythms in Email Usage, Joshua R. Tyler and John C. Tang, Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW) 2003, Helsinki, September 2003, pp. 239-258. PDF from ECSCW site
Work Rhythms: Analyzing Visualizations of Awareness Histories of Distributed Groups, James "Bo" Begole, John Tang, Randall Smith, and Nicole Yankelovich, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 2002, New Orleans, LA, USA, Nov 16-20, 2002, ACM Press, NY, pp. 334-343. ACM Digital Library
Exploring web browser history comparisons, Mark Bilezikjian, John C. Tang, James Bo Begole, Nicole Yankelovich, CHI '02 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, Minneapolis, April 2002, pp. 828-829. ACM Digital Library
ConNexus to Awarenex: Extending awareness to mobile users, John Tang, Nicole Yankelovich, James "Bo" Begole, Max Van Kleek, Francis Li, and Janak Bhalodia, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) 2001, April 2001, Seattle, WA, ACM Press, NY, pp. 221-228. ACM Digital Library
Piazza: A Desktop Environment Supporting Impromptu and Planned Interactions, Ellen A. Isaacs, John C. Tang, and Trevor Morris, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) `96, Boston, November 1996, pp. 315-324. ACM Digital Library

Background

I joined IBM Research in 2004. Prior to IBM, I was at Sun Microsystems, Inc. for 13 years, and worked on empirical studies and prototype designs to support distributed work through video and awareness technologies. Before joining Sun, I worked at Xerox PARC on tools to support shared drawing activity. I received my Ph.D. from the Design Division of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford University in 1989.