The ArticuLab
At the ArticuLab, we study how people communicate with and through technology. We use technology as a way of better studying
human-human communication, and use the study of human-human
communication to design better technology. This interest leads us to questions concerning the intersection of language, learning, the
body, and computational systems, through a range of
interdisciplinary methods and tools. Benefiting from the synergy of
rigorous experimental methods and extensive computational modeling,
our work contributes to theoretical research 
in cognitive science,
communication studies, learning sciences, artificial intelligence,
human-computer interaction, and many other related disciplines.
Our research includes the interaction between humans and virtual peers we call Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA), as well as how humans interact with each other through computer-mediated contexts on the Internet and in online communities. We are also interested in how gender and ethnicity mediate technology use, including issues of power and empowerment. Finally, we are interested in how technology can be used for positive educational and developmental initiatives, such as improving literacy skills for children who do not grow up speaking Standard American English, or social skills for children with Autism.
We believe that work of this sort is made possible only through careful observation and experimental methods combined with the affordances of new, interactive media, models and simulations. We invite you to explore the projects, people and publications of the ArticuLab.
The ArticuLab is part of Northwestern University's School of Communication and McCormick School of Engineering.
