Masters Thesis Paper
My thesis paper explores the thinking aspect of design to understand what it is designers actually do so that we can understand our value and communicate it to others. To this end, I read several books, including The Design Way, The Reflective Practitioner, How Designers Think, and Thoughtful Interaction Design. In addition, I reference The [...]
MetaMe — Masters Thesis Project
Abstract When people switch jobs, move to a new city, start school, or have a child, aspects of their identity change. For designers, this presents an opportunity to help people invent and discover who they would like to be in their new roles. But there is little evidence of design attempting to support this behavior. [...]
UPMC Neurosurgery Clinic
For this service design project, our team worked with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Center for Quality Improvement and Innovation to identify design opportunities for Dr. Amin Kassam’s Neurosurgery Clinic. Due to being able to perform a rare brain surgery by going through the patient’s nose rather than cutting open the skull, Dr. [...]
Lampie: RFID and Sensor Lamp
Final Project Making Furniture Interactive Carnegie Mellon University Fall 2007 Abstract The more complex the artifacts we interact with become, the more we personify their behavior. The goal of this project was to explore interacting with a small, playful form and the emotional connection between a person and an artifact. I chose a lamp, and [...]
Service Design Applied to Airport Security
For our first project in Designing for Service, our groups were asked to create a service that will foster flow at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security screening stations at the airport. The two biggest restrictions we had were little experience in designing a service and having only one week to complete the project. Our [...]
Charmr Project: Diabetes Management
Interaction Designer, Adaptive Path, Summer 2007 Charmr was an internal R&D project at Adaptive Path inspired by an Open Letter to Steve Jobs by a prominent diabetes blogger, Amy Tenderich. The goal was to generate enthusiasm for human-centered thinking and inspire broader change throughout the medical device and design industry. In eight weeks, we went [...]
Visualizing Information Space
This project required me to visualize information space for the book Else/Where Mapping. It was to be either interactive or a time-based video. I chose the latter, because it is where I had the least experience. In combination with sketches, I prototyped ideas in Flash and experimented with animation early. I used the mapped structure [...]
Grad Type Final Crit
For our final grad type class, we had to print our final project, a poster for a fictitious event at the MoMA, and present our identity projects. We spent most of the second half of the semester working on the identity project, of which the main deliverable was business cards. However, we also needed to [...]
Plugg: Wearable Music Player for Commuters
For the final Interaction and Visual Interface Design project, my team created Plugg, a wearable music device for commuters using public transit. We researched the experience of commuters, looked for opportunities to improve the experience, and also create something that users would form an emotional connection with. The resulting system involved wireless headphones that communicated [...]
Email Visualization
The purpose of this project was to create a self-portrait using data collected about myself over the course of a week and represent it visually. I started by tracking my communications, then narrowed my focus to three email accounts: personal; work; and school. Between the sketches and the final, there was a careful balance of [...]
GoCoffee Mobile Interface
GoCoffee was a result of a project for John Zimmerman’s Interaction and Visual Interface Design course in fall 2006. A Cooperesque persona and scenario drove the design process. We used research from interviews to develop the persona. In addition, we created a flow diagram and wire frames based on the scenario. Our final presentation included [...]