Location: Washington, DC Time: Mar. 2011

As part of an Alternative Spring Break project, I was asked to analyze the Record & Filing Office's internal website and to generate ideas and recommendations for improvement. After a few days, I was able to come up with broad guidelines and templates for how the RFO could redesign the website. The recommended changes included a new homepage, reorganization of the navigation and structure of the website, a general template for individual content pages, and areas where new content could be created.

The final presentation, including mock-ups and recommendations, is included below.

Location: Ann Arbor, MI Time: Sep. - Dec. 2010

Road Trip 682 was a group project for the course, Interface & Interaction Design. The design problem was: how do you integrate new types of technology into cars while making the system easy to use and adaptable for individual preferences and learning styles?

Our client, Ford Motor Company, gave us constraints and feedback that helped focus our project. We went through the entire design process, from contextual inquiry (for gathering design requirements) to prototype building in Adobe Fireworks to testing our design on users. In the end, we came up with a prototype center console that uses both voice control and touch screen technology.

For more information on the project, our group site can be viewed here.

Location: Ann Arbor, MI Time: Mar. - Apr. 2010

I worked with a partner to analyze the Comprehensive Cancer Center's website -- in particular, the donation and fundraising sections. We created a set of recommendations based on a combination of interviews, comparative analysis, and heuristic evaluation. In total, we developed a list of 22 recommendations, categorized broadly into 8 sections.

We presented our recommendations to the center's Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Information Officer.

Location: Ann Arbor, MI Time: Jan. - Apr. 2010

Noteworks is a music composition application that, at the time of the project, was in pre-beta release. The application uses a temporal networks metaphor to visually represent the relationship between musical notes.

I worked with 2 group members on the semester-long project to evaluate the system by conducting interviews, developing personas and scenarios, performing comparative analysis, and designing and administering surveys and usability tests. I was the Project Manager for conducting the interviews and developing the personas and scenarios.

My performance in the course, Evaluation of Systems & Services, lead me to become the Graduate Student Instructor for the Winter 2011 term.

Location: Chicago, IL Time: Mar. 2010

The Adler Planetarium is an astronomy-based educational institution.

As part of Alternative Spring Break, I worked with 2 other students in order to assess the Planetarium's social media presence; our team created an online survey for Planetarium visitors to fill out and complete based on their current usage of social media (Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and podcasts).

We compiled the data and reported back to the Planetarium's Interactive Media department with our findings.

Location: Ann Arbor, MI Time: Sep. - Dec. 2009

As a Contextual Inquiry project, I worked with 4 other students to analyze the workflows of Switchback, a local Ann Arbor web development company.

Our project consisted of conducting interviews, interpreting them, mapping work models, and building an affinity wall. Our efforts culminated in a final presentation and report on our key findings and recommendations for how Switchback can improve their internal processes.

Most of our work was developed as a team. The only individual assignments were the consolidated models we created, for which I was in charge of making the communication model.

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