Chasing the Monsoons

"Good designers borrow, great designers steal" - Author disputed!

That pretty much sums up most of the research in the HCI community. What do we steal one might ask? Its simple. HCI is all about the user, who is king. We base our processes and services on the needs as well as the opinions of users. Thus in effect we “steal” from them their ideas, their wishes and turn them into reality.

My portfolio ranges from bizarre to downright boring depending on what I’ve worked on and what your viewpoint is in these matters. All I can say is that I enjoy what I do. After all I do put my heart, soul, hard work and sleep (oops) into it.

What follows below is a qualitative assessment of my experience. You may download my resume in .pdf format [52KB].

Here is a list of projects described later in the page:

• Usability studies experience on various projects
• User interface design for enterprise products
• adagame.org
• Redesigning the Library Book Finding and Checkout System
• Infovizard
• Easy Rider Navigation System
• Teaching Chinese students conversational English
• Online Testing System

Usability studies experience on various projects

I have participated in many usability studies gathering quantitative data on problems for various products such as a mini-keyboard for cell phones, websites, etc. I have also been on the other side of the fence, logging for a company based in Atlanta which conducts usability studies on various software and websites.

I have observed how one-on-one interaction takes place between the facilitator/moderator and the subject, as well as how various usability labs are set up and how they function. I have also participated in breakout sessions after each subject has been studied, and have contributed to and observed how categories of problems are created, how time logs are leveraged to create a map of problems observed/occurred, and how quantitative analysis are carried out on these revelations.

It is this experience (and that gained on the projects below) that truly got me interested in usability.

User interface design for enterprise products

I have over 1.5 years of experience with user interfaces for enterprise products which handle over a 1000 servers. I have helped with incremental as well as redesign of these products, and have gathered domain knowledge in the area of data center automation, test and development environments, and change and configuration management.

adagame.org

Description from the site itself:

This free, online game is available to play at anytime and simulates how advocacy can promote positive changes in communities. Players take on the role of advocates for disability rights and work together to improve compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in their virtual communities.

Worked on improving the look and feel of the original design, and added 50% more functionality to the existing model. Applied information visualization and usability techniques to make the website more appealing as well as easy to use and comprehend.

We are forever tyring to improve the user experience, and regularly have the users evaluate the game and ask for suggestions and improvements. Users are also encouraged to use the message boards to communicate problems and suggestions, and we try to have a turnaround time of a day or two.

See a screenshot of main page or visit the ADA Game (new window). The website is continuously evolving, so the screenshot might be out of date.

Redesigning the Library Book Finding and Checkout System

Team project for the Engineering Psychology class at GATech. We decided to address the issue closest to our heart, that of correcting the many things wrong (or so we thought) with the process of finding and checking out books at our university library. We found ample problems through user surveys, ran time trials as well as observed people using the library to collect quantitative as well as qualitative data for our project.

We then proceeded to address these issues, built prototypes, and even evaluated those prototypes by doing an interface evaluation as well as a workload analysis.

See the physical checkout system prototype screenshot that was made, as well as an image of the flash prototype used to run time trials [.xls, 20KB] to see how hard it was/long it took to find call numbers for books. A broken copy of the final report is available on request, as the full report was compiled and submitted, and it was half raw data and half typed up pages.

Infovizard

Part of a team which designed and developed a prototype (the Infovizard) for an Information Visualization class. The challenge was to come up with a visualization tool for a dataset which contained papers presented at Information Visualization conferences for the past 10 years. A set of tasks were defined, which included the ability to analyze author-author as well as author-paper relationships among others.

Easy Rider Navigation System

Part of a team that designed a bicycle navigation system for cyclists who like to tour or go on cycling trips. Before a ride a user predefines a set of routes, and then downloads them, along with a current map and point of interest database to the mobile/wearable device. System output is displayed in the rider’s field of vision using a pair of specially designed glasses. The rider interacts with the system through buttons that are attached to the handlebars of the bike.

We went through all the phases of the project: identifying a problem/need, brainstorming and designing for that need, creating paper as well as physical prototypes, and finally evaluating our system against a set of criteria we had identified earlier.

Teaching Chinese students conversational English

A 3 member class project to design educational software to help Chinese students at American universities improve their conversational English skills. Our educational goals include the following:

• Build a good vocabulary
• Learn correct pronunciation
• Converse comfortably in day-to-day personal life as well as in academic situations
• Think and converse in English without having to spend too much time rehearsing
• Recognize American idioms and their meaning