Clifford Nass

Department of Communication
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2050
E-Mail: nass@stanford.edu
Phone: (650) 723-5499
Fax: (650) 725-2472

I am the Thomas M. Storke Professor at Stanford University. My primary appointment is in the Department of Communication. I have appointments by courtesy in Computer Science, Education, Science, Technology, and Society, Sociology, and Symbolic Systems (cognitive science).

I have directorial responsibilities for three laboratories:

• I am the Founder and Director of the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab. The vision of CHIMe is: To rapidly advance theory, assessment, & design of how individuals and groups behave, feel, and think, research must be general, psychologically informed, quantitatively grounded, complimentary to partners, near-term informed, and broadly disseminated.

• I am one of the Founders and Directors of the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory at Stanford University. The vision of KGC is: To ensure sustainable prosperity for all individuals and communities, there must be integrated creation and engagement with charismatic individuals, trans-disciplinary research, clinical application, and committed communication.

• Finally, I am one of the Founders and Directors of CarLab. The vision of CarLab is: By creating a community of faculty and students from a range of disciplines at Stanford with leading industry researchers, we can radically re-envision the automobile for unprecedented levels of safety, performance, and enjoyment. The mission of CarLab is: to discover, build, and deploy the critical ideas and innovations for the next generations of cars and drivers.

I have written two books:

• The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Televisions, and New Media Like Real People and Places (New York: Cambridge University Press) and
• Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). (The stunning cover for Wired for Speech was created by internationally-renowned Sumi-e Artist, Drue Kataoka).

I have just signed a book contract for a new trade book, tentatively entitled:

• Flattery is Underrated: The Science and Simplicity of Successful Relationships in Business.

I have written over 125 articles for journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters. I am very proud that virtually every one of my papers has been co-authored with one or more students (primarily Ph.D. students, butalso undergrad and MA students), very frequently with the students as first author.

My current research areas are all informed by the notion that people respond to technologies as if they were people. The specific domains I focus on are:

• Human-Car Interaction, particularly the social psychology of autonomous cars, voice interfaces in cars, adaptive and personalized cars, emotion in cars, and car entertainment systems.
• Mobile Interfaces, particularly cellphones as social actors, location-based interactions, voice analysis, and mobile sensing.
  
• Human-Robot Interaction, particularly robots as social actors and the psychology of embodiment.
  
• Adaptive and Personalizing Systems.
  
• User Modelling, including emotion, personality, and
  
• Voice Interfaces.

I do NOT do research in the following areas (although it might seem that I should):

• Virtual Communities
• Computer-Mediated Communication
• Games, including MMPORGS (massively multi-player online role-playing games), video games, educational games, and any other computer-based or non-computer-based games
• Social Network sites, including Facebook or MySpace

Ph.D.students who wish to work with me as a primary advisee should apply to the Department of Communication. I am a secondary or tertiary advisor for Ph.D. students in a number of different departments and schools throughout the University.

I have many undergraduate and MA students working with me. The typical route to start working with me is through my course, Communication 268/368, Experimental Research Practicum in Advanced User Interfaces, which is offered in Winter and Spring. Sign-ups for the course are currently available here .

All of the courses I teach are open to all levels of students at Stanford. The four courses I teach per year are:

• Fall: Media, People, and Society, a lecture course
• Winter: Computers and Interfaces: Social and Psychological Perspectives, a lecture course, and Communication 268/368, Experimental Research Practicum in Advanced User Interfaces (teams of 3-4 students per team)
  
• Spring: Communication 268/368, Experimental Research Practicum in Advanced User Interfaces (teams of 3-4 students per team)
  

I have consulted on the design of over 200 information products and services for companies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. My current consulting focuses on automobile interfaces, intelligent interfaces, financial services, mobile interfaces, and internationalization.