I AM BECK TENCH.

I am a wife, daughter, friend, kind stranger, tech geek, puzzle solver, and dog mom. I have deep and abiding curiosities about how to access personal wisdom, connect with others through compassion and friendship, and improve the quality of our lives through awareness of life as we’re living it.

Right now, I am a designer and researcher at the Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

• My email address is beck@becktench.com

• Here is a link to my CV (updated January 1, 2024)

• Use the official bio (on the right) for any publication needs

• I xeet? at @10ch

My undergraduate work trained me to be a designer and technologist. I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication and spent my early career designing websites, programming in early web languages  (HTML, CSS, Coldfusion, ASP, PHP), and conducting light user experience research as an information architect. 

In 2008, I became the Director for Innovation and Digital Engagement at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC, where I designed novel digital experiments in partnership with the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Michigan State University. Some of those experiments were mentioned in major media outlets like the New York Times and NPR’s Science Friday (thanks to Nina Simon pointing those reporters our way), and I had the opportunity to speak about them at places like MIT, the Smithsonian, and even internationally. A complete list of those experiments is archived on this Workflowy list. 

While I worked for the museum, I served on my local library board for five years, eventually becoming the chair. At the same time, I worked with librarians across the state of Illinois through a program called ILEADUSA. For six years, I gave an annual keynote address and then worked with individual teams of librarians across 9-months, supporting them in taking risks with their projects and making change in the culture of their libraries.

In 2014, I took a sabbatical in Ocracoke, NC, and started working independently with cultural organizations, libraries, museums, and foundations. My work spanned digital engagement, institutional culture change, and experience design.

In the spring of 2015, I was a visiting lecturer in the University of Washington’s Museology Graduate Program. I developed and taught the course “Digital Experiments in Museums and Libraries” and also co-taught a course on “Careers and Social Capital” with Kris Morrissey.  At this time, I met David Levy and began to explore research and teaching as the next step in my career.  

In 2022, I completed my doctoral studies at the University of Washington's Information School under the supervision of Dr. David Levy. My dissertation, Designing Restoration, was about protecting and restoring attention using participatory design methods. I have been working with Drs. Emily Weinstein and Carrie James since 2021, and I was a founding member of the Center for Digital Thriving, where we strive to support digital thriving for everyone, and youth in particular.

I welcome conversations with friends and followers and regularly have coffee or Zoom chats with complete strangers. If you'd like to think together, please send me an email. 

Official Bio

Beck Tench has deep and abiding curiosities about how to live well in a radically connected world. She is a designer and researcher at The Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on developing skills and a greater capacity for accessing personal wisdom, connecting with others through compassion and friendship, improving the quality of our lives through awareness of life as we’re living it, and mitigating or minimizing the harms of attention-driven digital culture. Beck graduated with her Ph.D. in Information Science at the University of Washington. Before returning to school, she was an exhibit designer in science museums.

She was formally trained as a designer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She spent her career before returning to academia helping museums, libraries, and non-profits embrace risk-taking, creativity, and change through technology and personal space-making. Her work from that time was mentioned in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Scientific American, and several books and blogs.