emily saltz

Hi, I'm Emily. I'm a UX researcher and strategist specializing in AI and media. I think a lot about how to make digital infrastructure more humane, accessible, and fun.

User Experience

Labels for Manipulated Media (The Partnership on AI and First Draft) - Led user research to investigate tactics for labeling manipulated media for the public alongside PAI and First Draft

The News Provenance Project (The New York Times R&D Lab) - Led research and design for a prototype exploring media verification for digital photojournalism, culminating in a set of best practices for surfacing photo provenance

Stockgrok (Bloomberg/CMU) - Led research for a sonic chart analysis tool for financial visualizations accessible for people with visual impairments

Toward Measuring Empathy in Virtual Reality - A qualitative user research protocol for measuring emotion in VR

Pop Up Archive - Community codesign and wireframing for podcast and radio search products

Art & Speculative Design

ALGOBOG special (Discobog on WFMU) - Three-hour generative music special for my weekly radio show featuring live AI-generated audio and visuals

These Eyes Do Exist (Science Gallery Detroit/MSU) - Video installation exploring several stages of AI art creation, displayed on a rotating room-sized sphere. Shown alongside zine Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide.

Bread Symphony - Workshop and sound art installation that sonifies phases of the bread fermentation process, presented at UC Berkeley's Refamiliarization exhibit in 2021

Human-Human Autocompletion - Talk and workshop comparing human interruption and completions in speech to patterns in autocompletion software. Presented at Babycastles' WordHack in 2020 and Radical Networks in 2019

Super Sad Googles (Code Societies @ SFPC) - Autocomplete populated by crowdcourced "sad" google searches

Filter Bubble Roulette (Winner of Mozilla's Reality Redrawn Challenge) - An experience to inhabit user-specific social media feeds based on volumetric video interviews with a range of New Yorkers. Exhibited at the Tech Museum of Innovation

Close (but not too close) - An interactive installation using depth-sensors to explore the concept of proxemics with a virtual figure

Into the Mode - A web simulation of an early mode-based text editor which explores an alternate history of computer-based text editing

Slavic Vintage Illustration Mashups - Vector recreations and collages of found vintage Soviet print designs

Talks & Workshops

Neither Her Nor Hal - Considering Access and Representation in the Next Generation of Speech Technology at Processing Community Day in Los Angeles (2019)

New Frontiers in the Sonification of Financial Data - A presentation of Bloomberg/CMU accessibility user research and design at the CSUN Assistive Tech Conference (2017)

Podcast Search API: Audiosear.ch - Presented Audiosear.ch podcast search API at the Collab/Space San Francisco meetup hosted by KQED and Mediashift (2015)

Writing

Speech Recognition for Media: It’s Not All About Accuracy (PBS Mediashift) - A call for publishers to consider the benefits of imperfect machine-generated transcripts

Potato is a Mass Noun - My newsletter about language, life, and technology

Popcast by Pop Up Archive - Script editing and creative direction for found sound podcast with stories ranging from 1904 wax cylinder songs to NASA's interstellar rumbles

Using Speech Technology for Political Analysis (Medium) - In this project the Pop Up Archive team took a look at how text analysis tools could bring insight about the speech patterns and key topics during an especially crowded Oakland mayoral race

Prototyping With Data: Visualizing Environmental Triggers Of Asthma (Medium) - A blog post about exploratory data visualization of asthma triggers for an asthma service design interface

What are the Top Challenges Facing Audio in 2015? (Medium, PBS Mediashift) - A two-part collection of quotes from podcast and radio influencers surveying challenges facing spoken word audio in the digital landscape, created in collaboration with Anne Wootton

Hackathons

Morse Striker (Google Creative Lab/Adaptive Design) - A spy-themed soccer game developed with a student with motor and visual diabilities

Amviewlate (ArchHacks Health Tech @ WashU) - Voice-activated augmented reality guide for Parkinson's Disease

Voxanon (Come and Play Audio Hackathon) - VoxAnon is a platform for submitting anonymous audio stories with the ability to use vocal filters to change their voice to share their story anonymously, or to modify their voice for fun

A-to-V (Open Audio Weekend from The Moth & NYPL) - A-to-V is a tool for users to upload their oral history audio collections onto a searchable map