I design and build consentful systems—social computing systems (e.g., social media, workplace software) that are grounded in affirmative consent, an idea that a person or a system must ask for, and earn, enthusiastic approval before interacting with an individual. Existing social platforms enable two classes of problems that negatively impact society: 1) interpersonal harm people cause one another, such as online harassment, and 2) institutional exploitation of users, such as companies’ invasive data tracking of users. Both are closely related to people’s consent (e.g., "Do I decide to interact with this person online?", "Do I opt into tracking for targeted ads?"). Thus, consent is an important concept to define when it comes to software design. In particular, it is critical to define it in a way so that the consent boundaries of even the most marginalized groups (e.g., women of color) are protected. My research provides theoretical ideas about defining affirmative consent and encoding it into social software by drawing from feminist literature. Based on the ideas, I build systems to enable consentful interactions. And because there is a power imbalance between companies and users, I design privacy interfaces to give users more agency, and investigate how users perceive social media’s business models—which are a basis for companies’ power.

I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan School of Information and Division of Computer Science & Engineering. My work is supported by a Barbour Scholarship and a Meta Research PhD Fellowship. I was also selected as an EECS Rising Star.