Hi! I'm Gus.
I help local communities design and use collaboration technologies to organize around issues that are
meaningful to us, like climate change and democracy.
Academic explanation
Digital technologies like crowdsourcing and peer production tools have increased our potential to address
social issues like climate change and inequality, but realizing this potential depends on our ability to
organize around issues that are meaningful to us. While some of this organizing work might happen online
(e.g., coordinating events, managing participant lists), most of it must happen face-to-face (e.g.,
deliberation, outreach).
I research and design equitable hybrid work collaboration technologies for organizing civic collective actions
through deliberation, group formation, coaching, and outreach. To do so, I draw on my academic training in
computer science, psychology, and design as well as theories from learning, political, and management
sciences. I use both qualitative and quantitative research methods to understand the social processes I study
to inform the design of and to evaluate the technologies I build.
Background
As a PhD student in the departments of Computer
Science and
Communication at Northwestern University,
member of the interdisciplinary Delta Lab, Human-Computer Interaction + Design and Cognitive
Science Fellow, I
study how to design, build, and evaluate technologies to increase participation and representation in open
democracy initiatives, like participatory budgeting. I worked with the City of Evanston (population 78K) to
implement their first participatory budgeting process, a year-long process where the community generated
ideas, developed proposals, and voted on how to spend $3M. With the help of 100+ trained and committed
volunteers, we achieved 8.4% participation (a lot more than the 1-2% national average) and overrepresented
underrepresented communities in this historic civic
engagement
process. As part of this process, I studied how
organized groups formed and grew, how effective outreach was conducted, and how collaboration technologies
were used and how new technologies might be designed.
Publications
Check out my Google Scholars page for a full list.