At Northwestern, I worked with Madhu Reddy in the PITCH Lab out of the Center for Communication and Health. My dissertation t looks at how technology can support the coordination and collaboration necessary to respond to public health crises, specifically the rise in maternal mortality in the US.
Previously, I worked with Eszter Hargittai at the Web Use Project. Projects included looking at how people develop the social and technical skills to protect their privacy online, correlations between privacy concerns and sharing behavior online, and the impact of privacy concerns on Internet adoption patterns.
I have my Master of Science in Information from University of Michigan's School of Information. During my time there, I worked with John King and Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck. I also spent time on various extracurricular activities, such as co-organizing Ann Arbor Data Dive and working on projects out of the LED Lab. Before I left, I wrote a thesis applying theories from urban planning to understand the lifecycle of online platforms.
Mental Health
Exploring Factors Influencing Youth and Adult Participation in Remote Research (2020-2021) Collaborative Project, Methodology Lead
With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, many research activities will need to be translated into online contexts to ensure participant safety. However, little is known about the factors and platform affordances that help participants feel comfortable engaging with research online. What kinds of characteristics are participants looking for in a platform to engage in research on and what variations are there across different demographics?
Understanding the Effects of COVID-19 on Youth Mental Health (2020-2021) Collaborative Project, Methodology Lead
COVID-19 has limited in-person interactions and many people have turned to online interactions as substitutes. Many youth are turning to online venues for both social and informational support for issues they are facing during the pandemic. How has COVID-19 impacted young people’s mental health, their informational needs, and shifted their personal social media ecosystems?
Community-based Research to Design a Mental Health App for Adolescents Experiencing Anxiety (2020-2021) Collaborative Project, Methodology Lead
Anxiety among young people is on the rise in the US. However, existing technological tools to help address anxiety are rarely designed with the developmental needs of adolescents in mind. Working with existing community organizations that focus on serving teens, what are the adaptations necessary to develop a mental health tool that works best for adolescents experiencing anxiety?
Public Health
Navigating Power Dynamics in Collaboration to Address the Rise in Maternal Mortality (2019-2021) Primary Investigator
Addressing a systemic problem like the rise in maternal mortality in the US takes incorporating perspectives that have been underrepresented due to systemic racism. Previous research has established the importance of knowledge from doulas, midwives, community health workers and reproductive justice advocates to decreasing the racial gap in maternal mortality and improving maternal health outcomes. How do these professionals navigate the power dynamics when collaborating with public health experts and the larger medical system?
(In)visible Choices: Articulation Work and the Rise in Maternal Mortality (2018-2019) Primary Investigator
The rate at which people die in childbirth related circumstances has increased in the US in the past 10 years, even as this rate has gone down in other similar countries. Black birthing people dies at rates 3-4 times higher than their white counterparts. How do public health officials make choices about who they collaborate with to address this crisis? How can information and communication technologies support more just, equitable, and effective responses to this systemic problem?
Ashley Marie Walker. 2018. Disruption, Technology, and Time: Supporting Response to the Maternal Mortality Crisis. In Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 69–72. [link]
Ashley Marie Walker, Michael A. DeVito, Kathryn E. Ringland, and Madhu Reddy. 2019. (In)visible Choices: Articulation Work and the Rise in US Maternal Mortality. In Conference Companion Publication of the 2019 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 403–407.
LGBTQ+ Community
Values (Mis)alignment: Exploring Tensions between Platform and LGBTQ+ Community Design Values (2019-2020) Collaborative Project, Methodology Lead
Platforms are rarely designed with the needs of marginalized groups in mind, which can lead to situations where online social spaces have disproportionately negative impacts on these groups. At the same time, online social spaces are increasingly the site of crucial informational and social support, so leaving them is rarely an option. Values are one way to understand the wants and needs of users. What values do LGBTQ+ users have for their online social spaces? How do LGBTQ+ users experience the disconnect between their values and the values of the platform? What are design suggestions that might bring platforms into closer alignment with the values of LGBTQ+ users? Funded by a Sexualities Project at Northwestern Grant, Summer 2019.
Intracommunity Power Dynamics and Harms in Online LGBTQ+ Spaces (2018-2020) Collaborative Project, Co-investigator
Much of the socialization for the LGBTQ+ population has begun to include online components. How might the social and technical aspects of these online spaces impact the experiences of an already marginalized group within the LGTBQ+ community? Funded by a Sexualities Project at Northwestern Grant, Summer 2018.
Ashley Marie Walker and Michael A. DeVito. 2020. "More Gay Fits in Better”: Intracommunity Power Dynamics and Harms in Online LGBTQ+ Spaces. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (April 2020), ACM, 10 pages. [link]
Presenting LGBTQ+ Identity Throughout the Personal Social Media Ecosystem (2017-2018) Collaborative Project, Co-investigator
We live in multi-platform environments where people often use not just one, but many different social media as part of their online lives. How do LGBTQ+ people navigate their self-presentation across these different spaces? Funded by as Sexualities Project at Northwestern Grant, Summer 2017.
Michael A. DeVito, Ashley Marie Walker, and Jeremy Birnholtz. 2018. “Too Gay for Facebook”: Presenting LGBTQ+ Identity Throughout the Personal Social Media Ecosystem. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, Article 44 (November 2018), 23 pages. [link]
Communication in Clinical Environments
Enhancing Central Telemetry to Floor Communication (2019-2020) Collaborative Project, Subject Matter Expert
Hospital units are increasingly relying on telemetry to monitor patients. Telemetry is often observed from a central site where technicians monitor units on different floors and where they need to communicate with clinical teams remotely. How can we improve communication between telemetry teams and clinical teams to reduce adverse events and improve collaboration?
Communication Technology as Infrastructure (2016-2017) Collaborative Project, Qualitative Data Lead
Communication technologies are integral to coordination and collaboration, particularly in hospitals. However, as technology continues to develop, evolution will be necessary for this vital communication infrastructure. How can necessary changes to these technologies be implemented with least disruption to workflows?
O'Leary, K. J., Liebovitz, D. M., Wu, R. C., Ravi, K., Knoten, C. A., Walker, A. M., & Reddy, M. C. (2017). Hospital-Based Clinicians' Use of Technology for Patient Care-Related Communication: A National Survey. Journal of hospital medicine, 12(7), 530-535. [link]