My career has been made up of a series of wonderful serendipities that have allowed me to focus on how people find, manage and use information. Some highlights of this are below; For a full up-to-date CV please email me.
PhD in Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, awarded 25 July 2019. Thesis title Down the Superhighway in a Single Tome: Understanding information browsing and how to support it online.
Graduate Certificate in University Teaching, University of Melbourne, 2020
MSc(Hons) in Computer Science, University of Waikato, New Zealand.
I am currently Associate Dean, Interaction, Technology and Information n the School of Computing Technologies, STEM College, RMIT University. I am an associate professor. In this role I manage a team of people who work in HCI, Information Interaction and Retreival and Computer Science Education, alongside research and teaching.
I was previously a Senior Lecturer in Innovative Interactive Technologies, in the School of Computing Technologies, STEM College, RMIT University.
Prior to 2021 I was a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, in the School of Computing and Information Systems. I am affiliated with the Human Computer Interaction and Information Systems research groups.
Before working at the University of Melbourne, I spent 10 years working as a UX professional in an academic library making information systems easier to use for university students and staff. This role did not involve publishing as part of my job, but I ran a program of research anyway. It was this research that led me back to academia for my PhD.
For a complete list of my publications, please see my Google Scholar profile. You may find an earworm; I like to use song lyrics for my paper titles. A representative sample includes:
Mckay, D., Makri, S., Gutierrez-Lopez, M., MacFarlane, A., Missaoui, S., Porlezza, C. & Cooper, G. (2024) I'm the same, I'm the same, I'm trying to change: Investigating the role of human information behavior in view change. Journal of the Association For Information Science and Technology early release.
Molem, A., Makri, S., & McKay, D. (2024) Keepin' it Reel: Investigating how Short Videos on TikTok and Instagram Reels Influence View Change. In Proceedings of CHIIR '24. ACM, 317-327.
Sheldrick, S., Chang, S., Kurnia, S., & McKay, D. (2023). Across the Great Digital Divide: Investigating the Impact of AI on Rural SMEs. In Proceedings of the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) 2023, AIS, paper 1123.
Beall, S., Makri, S., & McKay, D. (2023). Stronger Than Yesterday: Investigating Peoples' Experiences of View Strengthening on Social Media. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), 41-52.
Alaofi, M., Gallagher, L., McKay, D., Saling, L. L., Sanderson, M., Scholer, F., Spina, D. & White, R. W. (2022). Where Do Queries Come From?. In Proceedings of the 45th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval ACM, 2850-2862
McKay, D., Zhang, H., & Buchanan, G. (2022). Who am I, and who are you, and who are we? A Scientometric Analysis of Gender and Geography in HCI. In CHI, ACM (pp. 1-19).
Han, B., Buchanan, G., & Mckay, D. (2022). Learning in the Panopticon: Examining the Potential Impacts of AI Monitoring on Students. In Proceedings of the 34th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. ACM, 9-21 (best paper)
Zhang, H., Buchanan, G., Kelly, R., Twidale, M., Chang, S., & McKay, D. (2022). It's Still Rock and Roll to Me: A Model of Online Browsing Behaviour. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 59(1), 381-392. (honourable mention)
Spina, D., Sanderson, M., Angus, D., Demartini, G., Mckay, D., Saling, L. L., & White, R. W. (2023). Human-AI cooperation to tackle misinformation and polarization. Communications of the ACM, 66(7), 40-45.
Mckay, D., Twidale, M.B. and Buchanan, G (2021) "Lady Chatterley's Library: Books and Reading as Public Performance and Private Act". 2021 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR '21). ACM 197–208. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3406522.3446032
McKay, D. and Miller, C. (2021). Standing in the Way of Control: A Call to Action to Prevent Abuse through Better Design of Smart Technologies. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 332, 1–14. DOI:10.1145/3411764.3445114
Pang, P.C-I, McKay, D., Chang, S., Chen, Q., Zhang, X., and Cui, L. (2020). Privacy concerns of the Australian My Health Record: Implications for other large-scale opt-out personal health records, IP&M, Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/j.ipm.2020.102364
Mckay, D., Makri, S., Gutierrez-Lopez, M., MacFarlane, A., Missaoui, S., Porlezza, C., & Cooper, G. (2020). We are the Change that we Seek: Information Interactions During a Change of Viewpoint. 2020 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR 2020) ACM 173-182. DOI: 10.1145/3343413.3377975
McKay, D. Makri, S. Chang, S. and Buchanan, G. (2020). "On Birthing Dancing Stars: The Need for Bounded Chaos in Information Interaction". 2020 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR ’20). ACM, 292–302. DOI: 10.1145/3343413.3377983
McKay, D. Chang, S., Smith, W. and Buchanan, G. (2019) “The Things We Talk About When We Talk About Browsing: An Empirical Typology of Library Browsing Behavior” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1002/asi.24200
Makri, S., Chen, Y. C., McKay, D., Buchanan, G., & Ocepek, M. (2019). "Discovering the Unfindable: The Tension Between Findability and Discoverability in a Bookshop Designed for Serendipity". IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT 2019). Springer, 3-23. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-29384-0_1
Buchanan, G. and McKay, D. (2017) “The Lowest Form of Flattery: Characterising Text Re-Use and Plagiarism Patterns in a Digital Library Corpus”, ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), June 19-23, IEEE 1-10 DOI: 10.1109/JCDL.2017.7991570
McKay, D., W. Smith and S. Chang (2014). "Lend Me Some Sugar: Borrowing Rates of Neighbouring Books as Evidence for Browsing." ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) Septemer 14-18, IEEE, 145-154. (Best International paper) DOI: 10.1109/JCDL.2014.6970161
Hinze, A., D. McKay, N. Vanderschantz, C. Timpany and S. J. Cunningham (2012). "Book Selection Behavior in the Physical Library: Implications for Ebook Collections." ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), June 10-14, ACM, 305-314 DOI: 10.1145/2232817.2232874
McKay, D., S. Sanchez and R. Parker (2010). "What's My Name Again?: Sociotechnical Considerations for Author Name Management in Research Databases." Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference (OZCHI) November 22-26, ACM, 240-247. (Best paper) DOI:10.1145/1952222.1952274
All funding is reported in Australian dollars.
$200,000 ACCAN grant on online safety in social media, co-investigator
$183,500, ADHA tender on CALD communities and vaccine hesitancy 2022, co-lead
$5,000,000 NHMRC Synergy grant on bowel cancer screening uptake, associate investigator
$200,000 Westpac Trust funding on child safety, 2021
$410,000 ARC Discovery Project (2021-4) 'Improving Interactions for Browsing Large Digital Collections', chief investigator
$925,000 ARDC project funding (2021), co-investigator.
$499,676, Paul Ramsay Foundation Award (2021-3) 'A Fair Day's Work' co-investigator
$36,497 Melbourne Social Equity Institute Grant (2021), 'Why Do They Do That? An Investigation into the Perpetrator Perspective on Technology Facilitated Abuse', chief investigator
$23,000 Melbourne Early Career Researchers Grant 'Social Media Information Influencing Viewpoints', (2021) chief investigator
$5,000 Dyason Fellowship (2021), chief investigator
$40,000 C0onsultancy project with Museums Victoria (2019), collaborator
$10,000 Google PhD fellowship in HCI (one of only 4 awarded in 2016)
$4500 Special study grant from University of Melbourne (matched by City, University London, partially funded by Google News Initiative) (2019)
$5,000 as the industry liaison on a LiSRA RADAR grant (2017)
$2,509 as a visiting researcher stipend to City University London (2015)
$637 as a visiting researcher stipend to University of Waikato in Hamilton New Zealand (2012)
Best Paper, Interact 2019 for "Discovering the Unfindable: The Tension Between Findability and Discoverability in a Bookshop Designed for Serendipity ", DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-29384-0_1
Honourable mention, JCDL 2019 for "One Way or Another I'm Gonna Find Ya: The Influence of Input Mechanism on Scrolling in Complex Digital Collections ", DOI: 10.1109/JCDL.2019.00048
Honourable mention, CHIIR 2017 for "Slide Over Here: The Various Adjacencies of Co-borrowed Ebooks." DOI: 10.1145/3020165.3022159
Best International Paper, JCDL 2014 for "Lend Me Some Sugar: Borrowing Rates of Neighbouring Books as Evidence for Browsing." DOI: 10.1109/JCDL.2014.6970161
Best Paper, OzCHI 2010 for "What's My Name Again?: Sociotechnical Considerations for Author Name Management in Research Databases." DOI:10.1145/1952222.1952274
August 2024, New Idea, ABC Radio, Smooth FM and Joy FM on the inherent dangers of dating apps
August 2024 and November 2023, NSW Law Society Journal on Google and Antitrust
May 2024 Ten News, New Daily, Sky News, ABC Radio, Financial times on the eSafety Commission and X
December 2023 Yahoo News on AI generated pornography
December 2023 9Honey and New Daily AI in Hiring
October 2023 ABC news on AI training on copyright books
Mid 2023 SBS News in print and TV, New Daily on AI regulations
March 2023, The Age on why we need more women in technology design
May 2021, on the role of Influencers in decision making, ABC.
May 2021, Australia Talks on Misinformation
March 2021, ABC Australia television interview, based on Pursuit 'The Importance of Teaching Boys About Brilliant Women'.
February 2021, BBC New television Interview about the Facebook Australian News Ban, CNN International News Interview about the Facebook Australia news Ban, and ABC Australia television interview about the algorithms used in the Facebook Australia news ban
The most manic of these were the two talks in 48 hours on opposite sides of the planet: the Women's Day talk at Melbourne Museum, and the talk at Aalto. I have been deeply fortunate to speak in five countries, and to a range of professional associations; each talk has brought out new ideas and thinking in my research.
‘Made to Measure? People, Metrics and Conversational AI’ keynote at the 2024 Symposium on Conversational AI, March 2024
Panel on Technology Facility Related Harm, Society and Ethics 5.0, Melbourne, Australia, June 2024
Generative AI workshop with The National Archives, London, UK, July 2023
‘Mind the Gap’, keynote workshop, RMIT Urban Futures ECP Student milestone conference, February 2023
'More comfortable with Chaos: The case against search in a beautiful world', UIUC iSchool student conference keynote, November 2022
‘We are the Change that we Seek: Information Interactions During a Change of Viewpoint’, Invited talk, Vrije University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands September 2021
‘We are the Change that we Seek: Information Interactions During a Change of Viewpoint’, Invited talk, Vrije University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands September 2021
'Sowing the Seeds – How Libraries can Support Innovation and Creativity' Keynote, AIUG Conference 2019
'Space Oddity: Understanding and Supporting the Interactions Between Physical and Online Library Services', Keynote, CRIG Seminar, 2019
'Not All Who Wander Are Lost: On Collection Browsing, and How To Support It Online' Centre for HCI Design, City, University of London, July 2019
‘Don’t Forget to Be the Way You Are: On Researcher Identity’: School of Design, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland, March 2019
‘This Pedestal Is High and I am Afraid of Heights: We All Balance Better on the Ground’, International Women’s Day Address, Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Australia March 2019
‘Don’t You Forget About Me: Information Seeking Beyond Search’: iSchool, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada June 2017
‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For: Research Tales from an Academic Library’. CRIG Seminar Keynote, Melbourne, December 2016
'Lend Me Some Sugar', The Information Retrieval General Reading Group, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia, October 2014
Physical, Digital, Interactive, Human: More Tales from an Academic Library', Centre for HCI Design, City University London, UK March 2014.
Program Chair, RAILS 2025
Program Chair, CHIIR 2024
Posters Vice Chair ASIST 2023, Chair 2024
Steering Committee member, CHIIR 2021-25, Chair 2023
Program Chair, JCDL 2021
Short papers chair, CHIIR 2021
Workshops and tutorials chair, TPDL 2021
Doctoral Consortium Mentor, HT 2021
Workshops and Tutorials chair, CHIIR 2020
Doctoral Consortium Chair, OzCHI 2019
Programme chair, OzCHI 2018, 2022, 2023
Secretary, HFESA CHISIG 2012-
Workshops and Tutorials co-chair, OzCHI 2011-2015, 2017
Conference reviewer OZCHI 2011-,JCDL 2014-, TPDL 2012-, CHIIR 2016-, iConference 2012, 2016, ASIS&T 2018-, CHI 2018-, MobileHCI 2019, UbiComp 2019
Journal Reviewer International Journal of Digital Libraries, IP&M, PLoS One
I speak fluent Finnish as a result of a student exchange and considerable subsequent travel. At conferences I can be found looking for people with whom I can practice
I can read some MARC as a result of analysing library circulation data for my PhD
I have written two date extraction systems in Perl, one for data crosswalking in MARC, and one for historical dates
In my undergrad days I wrote a multitasking kernel and a prolog theorem prover in my second year