Education

University of California - Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Doctoral Degree in Information expected in June, 2011

University of California - Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Master's Degree in Information
May 2007 | GPA: 3.97
James Chen award, Graduate Fellowship, Graduation Speaker

Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME
A.B. in Economics
Completed May 2000
Major GPA: 4.0, Overall GPA: 3.9
Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Economics Prize, Writing Tutor

Employment

Digital Youth Research Project, UC Berkeley: Institute for the Study of Social Change
Graduate Student Researcher
September 2005 - Present

• Working under Peter Lyman (UC Berkeley) and Mimi Ito (USC) on a $3.3 million MacArthur grant to study how youths' informal use of digital media affects communication, learning, knowledge, and play.
• Running the Coming of Age in a Digital New York project, an ethnographic study of how New York City teens use information and communication technologies in their daily lives.
• Running the Media Practices in Rural Landscapes project, an ethnographic study of how rural teens use digital media to produce knowledge and culture outside of school.
• Assisted on the Unexpected Collaborations project, a study of urban teens participating in an arts and technology program for the Bayview and Hunters Point communities of San Francisco.
• Using home-visits, participant observation, interviews and diary-based methods.

Services Science, Management & Engineering, UC Berkeley: School of Information
Graduate Student Researcher
September 2006 - February 2007

• Worked under Dr. Robert Glushko to help develop a curriculum for the new Services Science, Management and Engineering program at UC Berkeley.
• Researched and tested human-centered methodologies for the design of information-rich services and experiences.

Yahoo! Research, Berkeley
Design Intern
September, 2005 - February, 2006

• Worked under Marc Davis' Social Media group at the recently launched research collaborative between Yahoo! and UC Berkeley.
• Assessed user needs, developed information architecture plans, and designed user interface prototypes.

Garage Cinema Research, UC Berkeley: School of Information
Designer, User Experience Group
May 2005 - August 2005

• Designed information visualizations and user interface prototypes for desktop and mobile applications that leverage temporal, spatial and social metadata for multimedia capture, use, and reuse.

Jan Krukowski & Company, New York City
Project Director for Interactive Media
July 2000 - July 2005

• Oversaw information architecture, user interface design, multimedia content development, and programming of Web sites, CD-ROMs, DVDs, and interactive environments for marketing agency focused on the not-for profit sector.
• Conducted qualitative needs assessment through individual interviews with stakeholders and focused group and usability testing with users; helped develop survey instruments for quantitative market research.
• Drafted information architecture plans and user interface wireframes.
• Prototyped user interfaces and story-boarded scenarios for interactive experiences.
• Contributed to, and managed, team of writers, animators, 3-D modelers, programmers, photographers, videographers, and editors for multimedia content creation.
• Acted as primary interface with client.
• Project lead on over 20 projects.
• Work received numerous awards including: Macromedia Site of the Day; UCDA Gold, Silver and Judge's Choice awards; CASE Gold.

Papers, Presentations and Talks

Sims, C. "Composing the Ephemeral." Paper presented at the Berkeley Center for New Media Para*Site Symposium, U.C. Berkeley, CA, October 26th, 2007.
>> View Slides

Sims, C. "Composed Conversations: Teenage Practices of Flirting with New Media." Paper presented at the 29th Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science, Montreal, Canada, October 11, 2007.

Sims, C., Perkel, D., Carter, M. & Lang, P. "The Digital Youth Project." Artifact for the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference. Keystone, CO. October 5, 2007.

Sims, C. "Defining Services for Designers: Services as Systems of Social and Technical Relations." Paper presented at Information & Service Design Symposium, U.C. Berkeley, CA, March 2, 2007.

Computer Skills

Design & Prototyping Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign; QuarkXPress; Macromedia Flash.

Computer Languages (with varying levels of expertise): Java, Python, XML, XSLT, XPATH, HTML, CSS, ActionScript.