My Role

Methods

Lead Researcher
Lead Author

Heuristic Evaluation
Competitor Testing
Data Analysis

Purpose

To better understand how ZOTT can differentiate itself from it's competitors

Highlights

Competitors deliver insights automatically to parents about their child's activities on the platform. Through periodic report and customizable data dashboards parents quickly learn how the child is using a platform. Competitors also allow flexible controls to administer parental controls, which include going 'over the shoulder' on the child's device, or through a remote method on the parent's dedicated device.

My Role

Methods

Co Researcher
Co Author

Qualitative Content Analysis
Identity Model
Theme generation
Remote Interviews

Purpose

To understand how ZOTT's backend CMS is used on a day to day basis by hospital care staff. Also to gauge the level of interest of parents in having a greater presence on the platform.

Highlights

We learned that hospital care staff struggled to find time to adequately introduce the platform to parents due to the demands of their job. When children use the platform without the support of their parents involvement their interest in ZOTT was mixed. But parent who understood the value of ZOTT acted as advocates for the platform and made it a point to use it with their children.

My Role

Co Creator
Added Interactivity

Methods & Tools

Purpose

To make our design ideas quickly tangible and validate the concept, without developing a fully functioning product. The prototype is a tool that will be used to solicit feedback from real users in order to iteratively improve the design.

Highlights

We needed to nail down the introduction that ZOTT makes to parents when first signing up. Being in a hospital with a child, parents may be short on time and attention. Signing up for an entertainment platform is not a high priority. The on-boarding process needed to quickly and clearly explain the benefits to them and their children. Our research showed that if parents were not on involved with ZOTT, then their children wouldn't be either. The team members involved in the brainstorming sessions converged on similar ways to have ZOTT introduce itself. This gave us confidence that we were on the right track.

My Role

Lead Test Implementor
Lead Author

Methods

Unmoderated Remote Testing
Think out loud Protocol
Qualitative Data Analysis
Software Usability Scale (SUS) Survey

Purpose

To validate the concepts presented in the high fidelity Parent Experience Prototype with real users. The study was designed to evaluate 3 areas in the prototype: The parent on-boarding process, parent analytics dashboard and ability to flag content. Based on the insights produced from the study, we put forth short and long term recommendations to ZOTT stakeholders that could be used to guide the actual implementation of parental features.

Highlights

Participants reported few usability issues, and shared mostly positive feedback about the navigation and ease of use of the prototype. A SUS survey was given at the end of each session as a way to quantitatively measure overall system usability with an industry recognized metric. The average SUS score was 94 , above 80 is considered good. Some concerns did arise surrounding the cost of the product and the level of privacy enforced in the platform. User comments revealed that these concerns were partially due to the nature of the product being used in a hospital and that it is meant to be used by children.

My Role

Methods

Sole Creator with peer review/critique
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Contextual Inquiry
Ethnographic Observation and Participation
Interviews
Qualitative Data Analysis & Interpretation

Purpose

Contextual Inquiry diagrams are used to transform data into insight. They are tools used to inform the design of products that fit into the structure of work and life for people and organizations. I created 3 types of diagrams after completing 5 interviews with staff and students, and 4 observational visits.
1. Cultural Model - reveals influences on people and groups.
2. Workflow Model - demonstrates the processes, roles and responsibilities that keeps the Interfaith center running.
3. Physical Model - shows the layout of the space and the footsteps of work activity.

Highlights

Conversations with staff and students revealed that the Fish Interfaith Center is a source of pride for them and also a showcase for Chapman University. Meticulous processes are in place to make sure the center is well maintained, and that the student docents are knowledgeable in its history, art, and artifacts. This care is demonstrated in the level of detail, effort and practice student docents put into learning how to give tours of the center. But this care is not always matched with the level of interest expressed by outside students. The interfaith center, of course, has a core and loyal audience, but some expressed they would like to see the center utilized more by outsiders. Conversations with students revealed that the center is sometimes a place they come not to congregate with others but to be alone. When the gathering spaces of the center are not in use it's perfectly acceptable for students to come sit and spend time. This insight inspired one of the core features of the Concierge App concept.

My Role

Sole Creator with peer review/critique

Methods & Tools

Purpose

Wireframes are tools used early in the design process to describe the general flow and layout of visual elements. It describes menus, pages, buttons, functions, and their relationships through annotations and call outs. Placeholder text and images are commonly used.

Highlights

At this stage of design, the main pages were identified, but peer critique helped me to identify many areas that could be improved. Legibility was very important for a system where people are supposed to walk up and use it, text needed to be enlarged, copy reduced, and alignment of elements needed to be improved. The number of taps to move between pages needed to be reduced to one since people would be spending little time at the station. Also the ability to page a docent was an important and global function which needed to be displayed more prominently.

My Role

Sole Creator with peer review/critique

Methods & Tools

Purpose

To demonstrate a cohesive and tangible user experience of the proposed Concierge App concept. A showcase of my ability with prototyping software, visual design and information architecture.

Highlights

The global banner was updated to include the docent paging function so that the user could request a docent from any page. The homepage took some design cues from dashboard design. In dashboards the most important information placed in the middle and at the top left. Correspondingly the most important function I wanted to promote in the app, the participate page, was to help new visitors to participate in events happening in the moment. The second highest priority, the Relax page, is to help those who want to enjoy a quiet space alone.

My Role

Methods

Partnered with 2 usability professionals to perform the evaluation. I judged the findings, formulated recommendations, and authored the final report.

Expert Review
User Interface inspection

Purpose

To detect usability problems in a user interface with respect to best practices. Jakob Nielsen's 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design were chosen as the review criteria.

Highlights

The most common problems found in the OC libraries website were related to visibility of system status, & minimalism. These violations reflect a website that has not adapted to modern standards where users expect clear interactions and confirmation of their actions.

My Role

Sole Author

Methods & Tools

Purpose

To compare the usability and features of similar libraries.

Highlights

The OC public libraries can learn from the ways other libraries connect useful resources to their patrons. For example a pattern seen in other libraries is how they have sections on the home page that call out to specific groups of people, for example job-seekers, Veterans, new Americans, school teachers. Each of these sections contains information pertinent to that group.

My Role

Designed and executed a large scale usability test

Methods & Tools

Purpose

A usability test puts the target system in front of real users and gathers empirical evidence about what parts of the user interface could be improved. In order to evaluate the OC Public Libraries website, I executed two types of tests

1) A Quantitative test with 77 people using an automated testing platform where I measured time on task and task success.

2) A Qualitative test with 3 users where I observed on-screen actions and behaviors as the participants spoke aloud.

Highlights

The home page has 2 navigation bars: a horizontal one at the top, and a vertical one along the left margin. Surprisingly, with it's big & bold buttons, the left vertical bar was a blind spot for some users. Participants had difficulty finding critical pages that were located here.

Participants were consistently overwhelmed by the library's events calendar system. The website is the hub for managing events across the 33 library branches. As a result of the scale of events, the calendar UI was difficult for users to find events of a particular type or at a specific branch.

My Role

Sole Creator

Methods & Tools

Purpose

The Persona pop-up book paper prototype served a two goals:

1) It was a response to the observational data I collected from exploring downtown Santa Ana by foot. I generalized the observations to imagine a human profile of someone who could live in that space.

2) The pop-up book was a demonstration paper prototyping techniques. Paper prototyping is traditionally used to demonstrate user interface interactions without spending a lot of time or money.

Highlights

My persona pop-up book demonstrated important qualities of the Downtown Santa Ana community that influence how people live and move within the space. The Downtown is situated in a historic and walkable community that allows for frequent social interaction. Small niche shops catering to different groups show how the population is bi-cultural, bi-lingual, and multi-generational.

My Role

Sole creator

Methods & Tools

Purpose

To design a compelling, in-person experience that responds to specific observations I collected through exploration. Propose a way that improves the target space. To define an experience in a structured way - through the 3 phases of Attraction, Engagement, and Extension.

Highlights

The Memory Board is a large scale interactive touch screen. It attracts visitors by acting like a mirror that reflects the environment. Visitors who engage with the Memory Board are given the chance to create personal profiles that document memories of their time in the space through pictures & video. Memories are tied to the site and not externally accessible. This was a design choice to encourage appreciation and physical presence inside a space.

My Role

Sole Creator

Methods & Tools

Purpose

To demonstrate the technical ability to create a real-time, interactive, multi-user web application.

Highlights

I wanted to change the nature of Reversi from a slow, tactical game to a fast paced, intense playing style while keeping the gameplay rules intact. I did this by

1) Animating the scores with color and size changes to emphasize when the player is in the lead, increases or decreases score.

2) Briefly highlighting potential legal moves at the start of a turn

3) Briefly displaying the number of line directions that a potential move will flip.

My Role

Sole Creator

Methods & Tools

Purpose

To demonstrate an understanding of how underlying machine learning models impact the user experience. To demonstrate how prioritizing user agency, trust, and transparency in a machine learning based user experience could help the underlying technology improve prediction accuracy.

Highlights

The prototype guides the user through a tutorial that gives them insight into how the predictive balance feature works. It informs them that the feature is driven by their data and behavior. It builds trust between the technology and the user by displaying the information being collected for the data model and also gives the user control over how that data is used - including ceasing collection.

Machine learning predictions can be inaccurate. The feature gives the user insight into how predictions were reached. Additionally, the user is given some agency to rate the accuracy of these predictions. By having the user participate in the machine learning tuning process, better predictions can be made in the future.