Hi! My name is Sasha. I live in Toronto, Canada and work at Zuva as a Research Scientist for User Behaviour. My work has quantitative and qualitative aspects to it. I design and run user studies, distill insights through thematic analysis, compile reports to help prioritise the process of development. I conduct quantitatve analysis of user event logs with the goal of finding high level events that can explain user activity and goals.
Broadly speaking, I am interested in understanding people's usage of technology and improving said technology to suit users better. Throughout my PhD I focused on voice-based interactions between humans and computer systems. In particular, I have been studying how such interactions can be used to facilitate the process of information finding, and web search specifically. In one of my projects, I explored how voice-based web search can be useful for people who are blind or visually impaired.
General life updates
January, 2023
Our paper Building a Better Mousetrap: Tools and Processes for Selling A Company was accepted at CHIIR 2023. In this paper, we lay out the challenges small companies go through in the process of fundraises or exits (sale of company). We also describe an early version of the proposed solution to streamline aforementioned processes.
Septermber, 2021
As Kira Systems got acquired by Litera, ZuvaAI was spun off as a child company. I stayed with the Zuva team to continue user behaviour analysis work. Now with a new product!
August, 2020
Our paper A Mixed-Method Analysis of Text and Audio Search Interfaces with Varying Task Complexity was accepted at ICTIR 2020. In short, in it we ponder how one might represent a search result using an audio-only channel. By the way, I also recorded a talk for it.
May, 2020
I am excited to announce that I started my work at Kira Systems as a Research Scientist for User Behaviour!
October, 2019
I ran my first full marathon! I might write a bit about it later.
August, 2019
Our paper VERSE: Bridging Screen Readers and Voice Assistants for Enhanced Eyes-Free Web Search was accepted to ASSETS 2019. It received a best paper nomination (but not the award) which I was quite content about. At the time of acceptance it also generated some interest in the press: