Who actually reads a PhD dissertation?

[ EDIT: 07/2026 ] This blog post was originally written when I first submitted my thesis for review with my committee, prior to my defense. But now, the final draft is available. All of the links below have been updated to point to the newest version of each doc (you may need to hard-refresh the page to get the newest version, in case the old one is stored in your browser cache). I am very happy with the latest draft - it is a significant improvement over the original, which was mostly a staple-job thesis in the purest sense (this now really expands several chapters and also adds a preface and postface reflection to each). I’ve also added a real, proper conclusion section as well. Exciting! Hope you enjoy and thanks to those of you who read the earlier draft and gave feedback. I really appreciate it. Also note: the main thesis doc (linked here) is tagged for accessibility. The others are auto-generated in python, so their accessibility is limited. Apologies for the technical limitations! And for anyone else interested, my code for generating the subdocs for my thesis can be found here . Well, howdy! This blog post is mostly just a fun adventure/experiment where I try to make it easier to read and engage with academic work, simply by altering the format. This core idea was already the focus on my micro-paper project , where I mused: is there a place for 1-2 page micro-papers in our larger academic conversation? I am conjecturing that smaller pieces of an idea, or smaller units of information, might get broader or qualitatively different engagement than longer-form, archival, written media. And the opening question of this blog post: “who actually reads a PhD dissertation?” is largely answered with, “nobody except the committee.” But even so… committee members don’t often even need to read the whole dissertation itself. For mine, this document (24 pages) is really what my committee needs to focus the most on. They’ve all probably already read or are familiar with my main research projects. What they care about is how it all comes together (so basically the beginning and end parts of the document). So if committee members aren’t reading the whole thing and basically nobody else does (because these things are sometimes 200 pages long), then what the heck is the point of a thesis ? The point, of course, is to have an archival-quality record of the work and the defense made by the PhD candidate. The primary purpose of publishing a dissertation is just to show to the world that the work was done. Yet, I reckon that many different parts of the thesis are actually valuable and interesting to folks who aren’t academics or who are but are unfamiliar with my body of work. I have been stewing on a paper by Mohammadi et al, “Who reads research articles?” and it turns out that all kinds of people do. So then I wondered… is there a way to make my thesis more-digestible for different kinds of folks? That led me to the following: What if I could generate a bunch of smaller docs from my thesis, based on assumptions I have about different kinds of readers? Would this simple change of format make my thesis more accessible and more usable? (It’s important for me to think about accessibility, after all!) So what is my dissertation and what is it actually about? My thesis is titled, Tool-making as an intervention on the accessibility of interactive data experiences . I specifically study how tool-making is a site for generating knowledge about how people engage with difficult practical problems. I make tools and then use those tools as a probe to understand more about authors, creators, and users of data experiences. My core argument (the “thesis statement” at the heart of the dissertation) is this: “This dissertation argues that the tools practitioners use to build interactive data experiences are themselves sites where accessibility barriers are produced, prevented, or alleviated for both end users and authors. This work contributes fve tools, Chartability, Data Navigator, Skeleton, Cross-perception, and Softerware, that collectively center accessibility work on the empowerment of disabled and non-disabled practitioners across the full arc of evaluation, data navigation, analytical interaction, and personalization.” My work is interesting primarily because I argue that the work practitioners do is a rich site for research. I don’t just make a proverbial “hammer” but study what sort of hammers we need, whether hammers really work, and then how people actually use them. ( You can find the whole thesis here .) Well, perhaps my dissertation has piqued your interest a little? And perhaps you don’t know where to start? Well look below, and perhaps one of these categories applies to you and your interests or experiences. (Below is a series of sections/subsections taken from a previous blog post announcing my thesis defense , which of course you are welcome to attend at noon EDT on April 29th, 2026. So, please feel free to see if any of the documents are actually interesting/useful to you, especially if you fit one of the descriptions of my assumed readership below:) Should you read my dissertation? I highly doubt it! But that being said, there are some pretty fun parts in it, worth a skim (depending on who you are). For the most part, my dissertation is a “stapled paper” type of thesis, where the bulk of the document is comprised of my top-papers (that are the projects I personally led and executed) inserted without editing as the main “body” chapters of the dissertation. Then, the thesis itself generally has (up front) an acknowledgements section, introduction, overview of contributions, and (at the end) some kind of summary/discussion as well as a biographical sketch. 🤓 📚➟📖 I’ve generated miniature versions of my thesis document, to make reading easier! The basic document has 180 pages of content (248 pages total). That’s a lot! But I wondered… would more people actually look at my thesis if the page count wasn’t so intimidating? (See below sections for these mini-docs.) Here is the link to the thesis itself . That being said, many folks may want to check out one or some of the sections in the dissertation without having to read all of it. So here are some suggested readings for folks I know who are of different kinds: 1. Anyone who attends my thesis defense Download my “personal-only” thesis doc! 📚 (180 pages) ➟ 📖 ( 6 pages ) Anyone who attends my thesis defense should probably check out my acknowledgements section. You’re probably in there! If you aren’t but think you should be, let me know!! I am terribly forgetful and would hate to leave out a friend, colleague, or supporter. It also might be worth it to skim my biographical sketch , especially because the introduction to it pokes fun at many other bio sketches where people love to point out their origins as a genius child in high school who then ascended to harvard/MIT/etc; brilliant because of their own individual genius, of course. By contrast, I have largely been an unremarkable and unaccomplished person. I was a terrible student in high school and mostly didn’t “deserve” or earn the opportunities I had in life. And yet I did remarkable things regardless, mostly thanks to all the folks who have helped me out over the years. I hope my biography is a testament to the power of social support and that I have never really been a “main character” in my life. (Note that my own advisor joked that he wished he had paid more attention to my PhD application, because my undergraduate closed and I did poorly in high school. I probably shouldn’t have been admitted to CMU, haha. He is certainly from a “real” academic and technical pedigree; he would know!) 2. You are a technical practitioner of some kind (non-researcher) Download my “for the toolmakers” thesis doc! 📚 (180 pages) ➟ 📖 ( 12 pages ) I’d recommend that anyone technical (whether a designer or developer) checks out 1.2 , 9.1 , and 9.3 . Pretty much everyone who works…