Designing social media: research programming position

We are looking for a part time research programmer (20 hours per week) to assist in developing and managing web based software for experiments on social media design.

Interested applicants should have a bachelors degree in computer science, strong programming skills, experience scripting in js, PHP, python or perl, and knowledge of SQL. Interaction design and interface development skills are also a plus.

To apply, send your resume to: dabbish [at] cmu [dot] edu

The project

In this project we are applying theories from social psychology to inform the design of social media sites. Our goal is to foster commitment to temporary groups and increase participation in online communities. We are comparing the influence of features such as competition, communication, and visible cues about others behavior on attachment to the group, performance, recruitment behavior and turnover. We are doing this in two settings: (1) as part of a popular online application in Facebook (Tetris) where temporary game groups interact, and (2) in a citizen science website eBird. The eBird website is a resource for collecting casual observations of birds across different geographic areas. We want to understand how different interventions can help motivate participation and convert lurkers into active participants on the site.

The job

The research programmer on this project will extend our Facebook application and help develop interventions for the eBird website. Depending on interest, you will have the opportunity to develop new designs for experimental manipulations, monitor the experiments as they run on Facebook and the eBird site, and assist in the management of the collected data obtained from these studies. You will gain valuable behavioral and technical experience conducting research and running online experiments that incorporate state of the art behavioral science research and web programming techniques. This position is part time (20 hours per week) with the opportunity to continue working full time pending additional funding.