Colin Butler

why can't using computers be fun?

colingrantbutler@gmail.com

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June 20, 10:21 AM
My square meal has six sides.

I'm going to talk about nutrition and information visualization for a while. Nutrition is something I haven't ever really understood very well. For most of my life, I've been sort of reactive about my eating habits, adjusting my diet based on whether I felt I needed to lose weight or gain energy, etc. It's worked well enough for me, but it's not exactly a good way to define one's nutritional plan to get anywhere beyond "surviving" and into the realm of "healthy". I could try harder to understand nutrition, but this is America, so instead I'm going to blame education. Specifically, I'll blame the USDA.

Make sure to have a glass of milk or a History wedge piece from Trivial Pursuit with every meal. (Credit: http://robertleehaller.com/foodgroups.htm)


Those of us who are old enough to remember the four food groups probably still remember what those groups were: meats, grains, fruits and vegetables, and dairy. I'd speculate that it's where the term "square meals" originated, and it was a pretty easy thing to remember. Problem is, it never really conveyed proportions. Sure, it promoted balance and helped prevent nutritional deficiencies, but if you looked at it as four equal portions, you'd be eating way more meat and dairy than you should be. I even recall an elementary school field trip to a hospital where we were quizzed on what foods were nutritionally balanced. When they asked us if a supreme pizza was good for us (in that context), many of us were quick to reject it because we knew it was "unhealthy" because it was "delicious" and "not green and leafy"-- common counter-indicators of healthy foods. But no, they said with the tone of one who has cunningly ensnared a bunch of third graders with a trick question. Based on the four food groups, pizza was generally a balanced meal, though one to be eaten sparingly. I don't suspect that this was the point of the question, but their ruse showed that the four food groups were not the ideal method for remembering how to stay healthy and well nourished. However, it turned out to be a very, very effective mnemonic, even if it wasn't much more than a list. It got wide exposure and extensive coverage in schools, so everybody knew their four food groups. Before long, though, the USDA decided we needed something that suggested a more balanced diet as well as a nutritionally complete one.


The solution was introduced in 1992. It was grandly hyped and paraded about as the new and improved method to remember what to eat and now how much of it to eat. Finally, Americans could stop eating giant slabs of cheese with their meals! Their solution was the Food Pyramid:

Be sure not to disturb the baguette. Legend says it's cursed. (Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_guide_pyramid)
How simple! How intuitive! You just start at the top and eat as much of the fats, oils, and sweets as you can, but make sure you also support it with milk, yogurt, and cheese as well as a fair amount of meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs, and nuts! You probably want to be a bit more sparing with the fruits and vegetables, and then way down, neglected at the bottom of the heap, are the ones you probably want the least: bread, cereal, rice, and pasta. I can feel the neurons encoding it forever as we speak. What's that you say? I shouldn't eat lots of fats, oils, and sweets? I need grains for carbohydrates to provide lasting energy? Well that's stupid. Can't you see fats and sweets are at the top? Plus, it's already encoded forever, so you should have said that earlier. Also, please explain why I weigh 400 pounds. Your diagram is weird.

I don't know what you mean, "I'm out of shape." I'm the same shape as the Food Pyramid. That's good, right? (Credit: http://devan1.tripod.com/jabba.htm and Lucasfilm)
Clearly, we needed something better, because the criticism struck pretty quickly. As flawed and confusing as the pyramid was, a replacement was quickly implemented... 13 years later. Ahem. Enter MyPyramid:

The stairs leading nowhere represent an exercise in futility. (Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_guide_pyramid)
Oh my.

Really?

Okay, so here's an exercise. Look at the image for a good 5 seconds, then look back here. How many groups did you see? Remember that answer, now look back and specifically count the groups. If you came out with different numbers each time, then obviously there's a problem with this diagram. If you came out with the same number both times, give the USDA 10 points if that number was 6. If it was 5, deduct a million from their score. Raise your hand if you spotted the tiny yellow sliver between the red Fruits section and the blue Milk section. The one with no label, no representation at the bottom, no indicator of any kind of its existence apart from a narrow yellow sliver (the most difficult hue to distinguish from white) and a tiny bottle of vegetable oil buried in the morass of random food clip art. You know, the kind of bottle that you would probably only recognize if you cook, specifically with oil that comes in a similar container to that. As if people ate vegetable oil anyway. The number of problems with this design makes my head spin. As of 2005 though, this was the state of the art of nutritional education: a clipart stick figure from 1997 climbing stairs attached to a rainbow whose pot of gold was replaced by a shopping cart accident.

Now, I've done all of this complaining because I wanted to contextualize the next design, which was rolled out just this month, June 2011, after 19 years of pyramidal iconography trying desperately to represent the foods you should and shouldn't eat. While I'm going to miss feeling like I'm raiding the pharaoh's tomb every time I have a cracker, the new design is something of a revelation compared to the old ones. Behold, MyPlate:

MyBrain still wants to leap out of MySkull every time I see anybody brand a design as MySomething though.
What's this? I must have embedded the wrong image. This is elegant, simple, and relatable! It makes sense! It's visual and attractive, yet it contains a surprising amount of useful information! The fact that this image can quite literally be used as a visual template for laying out a healthy, well-proportioned plate of food is the first good idea the USDA has had on this front since the four food groups were introduced... in 1956. I'll grant that something so visual may be hard to remember in detail and tricky to relate in non-visual terms, but since there's plenty of room to fudge the exact proportions, I'd bet it's actually pretty easy to put this into practice if you are, for example, a parent planning a family meal.

It's hard to believe, but after the steady and painful decline of sensibility in the USDA's nutritional imagery, I think they really knocked this one out of the park. Congratulations, USDA. You've ended your 55-year ingenuity dry spell.

So, do you like the new design? Think it just might work? I'd love to hear any other opinions on the matter.
April 13, 01:56 AM
How to spot a usability failure
Double-tap up then hold down while making a swift clockwise motion in the center to not prevent the history eraser from not being averted.  You have 5 seconds.

 I encountered a light switch this past weekend.  It was the most amazing light switch I've ever seen.  I had no idea one could incorporate that much functionality into a simple light switch, but someone out there decided to change my worldview vis-a-vis lights and the switching on and off thereof.  The light switch was so amazing that I had to request a demo of it, and even after the demonstration of its full functionality, I still had no idea how to use it.

Let me try to explain my understanding of this light switch, gained after careful consideration and review of the instructions (helpfully printed directly onto the switch) and the demo.
  1. Double-tapping up or down will fade to full-on or full-off quickly.
  2. Holding up or down will fade lights up or down slowly.
  3. Tapping either up OR down once will set the lights to a "preset"?  Maybe?
  4. Finding a pen and jamming it into the tiny little nook on the right of the switch will set the current level of lighting to be the "preset".
  5. Despite the ominous multi-colored glow it emits in the dark, the light switch is probably not a killer robot sent from the future, but I might be wrong here.
I will grant that the owner of said light switch seemed to have a pretty good grasp of how it worked, but then again, she lives with it.  Personally, I like to think that if I walk into a room and see a panel of switches, I already know how to turn the lights on and off.  I believed myself until now to have a knowledge bordering on the encyclopedic of light switch designs.  All five of them.  But if someone casually asked me to hit the lights and I found myself face-to-face with this beast?  They'd have to wheel me out on a dolly.
April 13, 12:51 PM
Grip it and rip it: a concept for touch-scrolling and touch-dragging

It seems that the current model for drag and edit operations on objects in a touch-scrolling environment a la iPhone or Android is to tap-and-hold to initiate an edit mode, wherein the screen dims or the icons begin to jiggle or something else signifies this new modality where the domain is now locked down and the entities within that domain are free to move.  It works well enough, I suppose.  There's another model that involves a "drag handle" on each item that allows it to be moved when you drag up or down from that point of contact.  Also works well enough, but I'm left unsatisfied.

Read on for an explanation of a new concept I came up with.



Being a fan of exploring real-world metaphors, I'd love to see something new.  I had an idea that, while it has its limitations, is at least more discoverable than the current model of drag and edit via tap-hold.  Here's how it works.

First, the primary limitation.  This will only work on a one-dimensional list of items in its most basic form.  It could theoretically be adapted to a two-by-infinity list of items and still work fine though.  Yes, that's a pretty major limitation, but it's still a viable shape to work with.  Edit: It also makes use of the right-swipe gesture, which might otherwise be used for navigation, but arguably the tap-hold also uses up one of the user's potential gestures.  The trade-off comes down to whether discoverability is worth making use of a more readily understood gesture than tap-and-hold.

Now, the concept.  The real-world analogue is the tear-off strips you see on bulletin boards everywhere:

The only real difference is that in order to more visibly afford the "tear-off" action, we add perforation.  The action then becomes fairly evident and intuitive:

And now, we have vertical motions equating to scroll actions and a rightward drag motion equating to a "tear-off" action that frees the item from its location.  It's by no means a perfect model, but it does have advantages:
  • No location-specific drag button on each item that could lead to accidental reordering of the list
  • Very clear gesture, little room for misinterpretation
  • Visible affordance, good potential for discovery
  • Fun, pseudo-haptic (and optional audio) effect and capitalization on real-world understanding
  • Edit: "Hint" animations upon making contact with an item can also improve discoverability to the point that I believe most people would discover the action on their own after a rather short acclimation period.
It doesn't fit everything, but I wouldn't mind seeing some menus based on the idea.  If you're currently designing a two-dimensional touch menu with items that can be rearranged, feel free to use the idea.  Just send me an email if you do.
March 18, 05:58 PM
We don't need no edumacation

Somebody was foolish enough to let me teach some young, impressionable minds about interaction design.  A friend of mine who teaches at University of Virginia asked me to do a guest lecture on Human-Computer Interaction in two of his Software Engineering courses, and now I've posted the presentation on SlideShare, because this thing is pretty cool.


The lecture is pretty much a low-level overview of the field with some good/best practices thrown in there to hopefully get them on the right foot if they're one day out there making the products that I will use someday, but it won't be anything new to the heavy hitters in the field or anything.

Update: Slides seem to be in sync now!
March 17, 01:24 PM
This phone has more personality than some of my Facebook friends.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/17/puma-phone-hands-on/

It's not often that technology meets playful simplicity quite like this.  There are those who would argue that iPhones are fun and playful, but no, they really aren't.  Not like this, at least.  Lately many devices have started to incorporate playful aspects thanks to the iPhone and the recent movement towards a more personable user experience, but here are some examples of how the Puma phone shown in the link puts them all to shame:
  • Menus are "hidden under the rug" and shown with a swipe and a "pull up the corner" animation
  • The music player is in the form of a turntable, complete with interactive scratching
  • The solar panel on the back encourages outdoor usage and keeps track of how much power you save by using it, with a display phrased in terms such as "## mins of music powered by the sun"
  • Retro-analog stopwatch and bike speedometer tools
  • A calculator that reportedly chides you for using it on overly simplistic calculations
  • A built-in puma
Seriously, just watch the video in the link.

Now, I'm sure Jakob Nielsen would have a field day with some of the usability decisions they've made, and I can definitely see a few ways that the experience may be a little clunkier than it needs to be.  But lately I've been thinking a lot about things like giving devices a "face" and injecting personality and playfulness into the ordinarily cold or inert, and Puma have really surprised me with this device.  I would love to see this become a popular thing to do.
March 17, 01:24 PM
The cup-holder quotient

Cars are a fascinating platform for user experience design.  From the aesthetic and reflective value of a flashy or quirky car to the behavioral considerations of the interior design (can you tell I'm a Don Norman follower?), there are so many factors to the design of an automobile and so many ways in which a car interfaces with its owner's life that the challenges faced-- and often the solutions created-- can be quite intriguing.

Also, they can be quite shiny.

I've read plenty of material on the various human factors of cars and their design.  Also, I've been in a car or two in my day, and I've come up with a theory quantifying how carefully car manufacturers design for the user.

I call it the "cup-holder quotient."  Big surprise, I know.  I read the title of this post too.  The cup-holder quotient is a simple metric for determining how much of the design process was concerned with the experience of the users of the car, both driver and passengers.  It goes like this:

D = C/S
 
That's it.  Here's the secret decoder key:
    D = Design rating
    C = Number of cup-holders
    S = Number of persons comfortably seated by the vehicle (including driver) 

When you run the math, you come up with a number that represents the amount of consideration paid to the user experience.  Don't cheat doing the math; you can't stick someone in the trunk, and putting a passenger where they'll get a stick shift in the tender bits is also not kosher.  They'll only hurt your score anyway.  As for figuring C, pretty much any round space that'll hold a cup counts, though I'd argue that some cars try to pass off a little circular divot as a cup-holder when it really just invites disaster.

Once you've worked it out, check your score.  A D-value of 1 is a standard, average sort of ride.  This occurs when the automaker has ensured that everyone has a place for their drink.  A D-value greater than 1 shows considerable attention paid to the needs of those in the vehicle.  This is a designer doing her job.  A D-value below 1, however, is a sad thing to see.  It's when the designer is ignorant of the user's plight, or in some cases is possibly just a sadist.

When a car has more cup-holders than seats, the designers clearly want to make sure that no one wants for drink space.  The reasons for having a D-value greater than 1 can be quite broad.  Off the top of my head, I could imagine several reasons for a D>1 score: accommodating left- and right-handed people; ensuring that people have a comfortable place to keep their drink regardless of posture, preference, or physiology; providing different-size accommodations for different types of cups; or even allowing for a large number of drinks or other cup-sized objects to be conveyed securely.  The designers that consider these factors are designers with the users' interests in mind.

I drive a Chevrolet Colorado-- a pickup truck.  It has an extended cab with two rather feeble fold-down jump seats in the extension, which I'll call half a seat each-- one adult laid across them, two children, or maybe a couple of midgets.  This gives me S=3.  My truck has SIX cup-holders.  My D-value of 2.0 is quite the source of pride, because for a pickup truck owner, I'm very happy with the design considerations made in my vehicle.  It's not just about places to put my drink, though the cup-holders are plentiful and varied (for different-sized drinks, which is lovely).  It also has well thought-out instrumentation, a good control layout, and even nice little touches like the wipers automatically restarting their cycle anytime you increase the wiper speed.  Even the driving experience has been tuned to be slightly more fun than the average truck, with a short-throw shifter and a tighter steering wheel.  I consider my truck's design to be very considerate of me as a user.

On the other end of the spectrum (and yet made by the same company) is the Chevy Uplander.  I had the misfortune of riding in one of these atrocities a couple of years ago, and it was a significant part of my devising this theory.  I believe the cup-holder quotient for this medieval grotesquerie of a minivan was about 0.3 (I'm estimating 2/7, or 0.29, to be more precise).  I rode in one of the captain's chairs in the middle row, and halfway into the first turn, realized that my chair had no armrests as I tumbled into the aisle until the seat belt halted my fall with a snap.  The ride thereafter continued to be unpleasant, though I fortunately managed not to come out of the ordeal with PTSD, so at least there's that.  It was easily the worst example of vehicle UX I've ever experienced.

 In their defense, they added armrests in the next year's model.

It's maybe a bit of a silly whim of mine to measure vehicles this way, but talking about it with friends and co-workers has gotten people to think about user experiences and how much consideration has to be made at an early stage to really cater to the end user and all their many possible needs and circumstances.  It's always fun to engage people in discussions about UX, because everyone has a story or an opinion and everyone's opinion is valuable.  Plus, my truck scores well, so I can brag about it, and who doesn't like that?

March 17, 01:25 PM
The kind of experience anybody would want.
http://blog.hellohenrik.com/?p=391

A very brief, but very valuable look at how we all want things to operate.  Imagine that before you went to bed, you went into the bathroom and streamlined every aspect of your shower-taking experience so that it would be as effortless as possible when you woke up the next morning.  Now imagine that someone snuck in and did it every day while you were away.

Actually, that's creepy.  Go back to the did-it-yourself version.  Nice, isn't it?
March 17, 01:25 PM
Voice-operated vs. voice-augmented interfaces

Mention the term "voice control" and one of two scenarios usually comes to mind.  The first scenario is of stilted, error-prone interactions, often involving the user repeating himself as the computer dumbly responds with "I don't understand."  Worse, it can lead to the user shouting, "No!" as the phone asks if he would like to call the ex-girlfriend he hasn't gotten around to deleting from his contacts yet.  This would be the "real world" scenario.  The second scenario that may come to mind is of magical understanding, where the computer has all the language comprehension of a fluent speaker.  It readily parses natural language and produces instantaneous results to any query or command.  This is the "Star Trek" scenario.


"Computer, calculate warp trajectory."
"Did you say, 'Call Charlotte Padalecki?'"


There's a pretty wide gap between the two scenarios, and there has been a tremendous amount of time and money invested in pursuing the second scenario.  The idea of controlling a computer with voice commands is an enticing one, to the point that it is in fact often referenced as an archetype of "futuristic" interaction.  This is for good reason: it's not going to happen anytime soon.

The list of technologies that would have to be perfected to reach this level of control is daunting.  For the ideal scenario of standing in the middle of a room and candidly addressing a ubiquitous computer listener to do your bidding, we would need the capability to:
  • Identify the speaker (voice identification)
  • Filter out ambient noise as well as speech not directed at the computer (signal processing)
  • Understand that the computer is being addressed at the moment (speech recognition and possibly even tone recognition unless listening is triggered with a completely unique phrase)
  • Parse the command (speech recognition)
  • Act upon the command (natural language processing)

So far, very few, if any, of these technologies are mature enough to meet the requirements of the Star Trek scenario.  It is not yet the future, to our collective chagrin, and we're going to have to continue using our hands to control our devices, like cavemen.



I just killed a buffalo with my universal remote.

So we're currently stuck without the ability to interact naturally with our computers using only our voices, but we've sunk tons of effort into developing computers that can recognize and respond imperfectly to voice commands.  Until we manage to finally reach that holy grail of Star Trek interaction, do we just suffer using our computers manually as academia and industry each make a million baby steps towards the goal?

Well, yes.  That's how progress gets made.  But in the meantime, I propose putting some consideration into an offshoot to this particular pursuit: multimodal voice control.

Multimodal voice control isn't an entirely unheard-of concept.  W3C has a working draft of technical requirements for multimodal interactions at http://www.w3.org/TR/multimodal-reqs, and there are other investigations of ways to combine modalities for richer interactions out there.  But in most cases, voice control is viewed as an alternative, fully-functional and redundant layer of interaction, much like how Windows Speech Recognition allows you to operate the computer entirely by very awkward and complicated voice commands.  It serves to support users who cannot operate the interface by normal means, and must instead rely on speech for navigation.  What does not seem to have been considered, however, is using voice control as a supplementary mode of interaction.

If you've ever waved someone over and then begun to speak to them, or if you've used your hands to better articulate a spatial concept, you've interacted multimodally with someone with one of those modes being speech.  Humans naturally interact using whatever modes are available to us.  We talk, wave, point, wink, nod, poke, shove, and engage in any of a number of attempts to convey information as we see fit.  Sometimes we even attempt to engage our computers in completely unsupported ways:
 
 It's part of human nature to throw everything we've got at it.  Just watch a golfer try to coax his ball back onto the fairway mid-flight.  He may shout at it, wave at it, or try to lean in the direction he wants it to travel.  Unfortunately, the golf ball won't listen.  Fortunately, even though computers don't listen either, they could if we wanted them to.

Consider the possibility of a computer that listens to what you say concurrently to functioning with the usual modes of interaction (i.e. mouse and keyboard in most cases).  Just as you might provide the bulk of input via keyboard with additional mouse input, we could create a system where voice input could be taken optionally at any point in time.  Allow me to illustrate with an example.

I sit down at my computer.  Much like interacting with a person, I have to get the computer's attention first.  I do so quite naturally by addressing it by name.  My computer's name is Eddie, so I say, "Hey, Eddie."  At this point, the computer begins listening to me.  It's only polite, as in conversation with a person, that you manage attention by addressing the person to whom you wish to talk, and excuse yourself from conversation should you have to speak to someone else.

I begin working.  Let's say I want to write an email.  Because I'm pretty quick with the mouse and keyboard, I go ahead and launch my email client in the usual fashion.  At this point, the computer and I both know that I'm working on an email, so everyone's on the same page.  The benefit of this is that Eddie can limit his working vocabulary to words and phrases related to email.  He doesn't need to know about tabs, history, song and album titles, or anything else that isn't appropriate.  Now that I've got the program open, I can just say, "let's start an email to Mark."  Since the key terms are "start," "email," and "Mark," most of the decorative and linking words can be parsed out relatively easily.  Eddie dutifully starts a new email message to my friend Mark.

Now I begin typing.  Somewhere in my email, I type out a sentence and realize that it's redundant.  I don't need it in there, so I say, "scratch that last sentence."  Eddie then erases the redundant sentence.  Since we're in a state of composing text, Eddie can respond to a number of natural language constructs involving sentences, paragraphs, words, and typography.  I'm not writing an email with my voice, because then I'd spend half of my time dictating punctuation and saying things like, "Things have been good here in Durham period.  Argh.  ...Scratch that.  Correct 'during'.  'Durham.'"  Instead, I can type an email, but choose between two (or more) different modes of interaction for certain actions.  When chunks of text are easily identified and manipulated in spoken terms, then I have the option of doing so if it's faster than selecting the text with the mouse or keyboard.

Continuing my missive, I'm typing merrily along, and then my phone rings.  I don't want Eddie to think I'm talking to him while I'm on the phone, but we aren't at the point where Eddie can watch me via webcam to determine that I'm on the phone (see my blog post on multimodal visual interaction, coming in 2019).  I politely excuse myself from the ongoing "conversation" with Eddie by saying, "Hang on."  Eddie waits while I talk, and then snaps back to attention when I return to the interaction with, "Okay, Eddie, I'm back."  I finish typing my email, and I say, "Okay, send it."  I'm done emailing, so I say, "Minimize window," and get back to drooling over $2000 camera lenses at Amazon.

Hopefully this example makes some sense.  It's not a completely fluid speech interaction, but it's natural.  In fact, it's arguably more natural than almost any unimodal interaction.  We are multimodal creatures.  We talk with our hands and we push with our words.  As a rule of thumb, if it's listening, we'll talk to it.  If it's not, we'll talk to it anyway.  Since computers have microphones and some modicum of smarts these days, I figure we might as well put it to use.

Given that we often find ourselves operating computers on a focused, one-on-one basis, there are a lot of ways voice could be used to augment and accelerate the standard physical modes of interaction.  Just consider the utility of some of the following example commands in common scenarios:
  • "Yes/yeah/sure/okay/uh-huh/yup/yep/yarp/whatever", "No/nope/nah/narp/nuh-uh" - Confirm/deny
  • "Go back/forward", "Close this tab/window", "Email this to..." - General navigation
  • "What was that?", "Do/Show that again", "Huh?" - Repeat last indication or alert
  • "Whoa", "hang on", "hold on", "hey" - Induce a pause in animation or process
  • "Never mind", "Oops", "Whoops", "Scratch that" - Undo
  • "Shh", "Shut up", "Be quiet" - Mute volume
  • "Goodbye/Good night", "Later", "See ya" - Close or log out
  • "Hey [computer name]", "Hang on", "I'm back" - Toggle listening on/off
  • "Oh crap, it's the Feds" - Repeatedly write random data to hard drive
Yelling at your computer never really accomplished anything except maybe make you feel better, but maybe one day it could serve an actual purpose.  It'll still make you feel better too.
March 17, 01:25 PM
Hot-bliggity blog

Welcome to Argh-onomics.  It's my new blog for musings on interaction design, user experience design, usability, ergonomics, user-centric design, human factors, user interface design, or anything that may fit in, on, near, or under any of those categories.  Here's a Venn diagram for those who are confused:


It works just as well in four-dimensional space.

The name of the blog is derived from the term "ergonomics", which is the study of work.  The Greek root -nomos means "laws", while "erg" is the sound I make when I work.  Hence, understanding the laws of work becomes the field of ergonomics.  When I get frustrated while working, I make the sound "argh", and that's where we get our blog name.

I've got plenty of thoughts on interaction design and the pursuit of the ever-elusive smiling user, so if you can count on one thing, it's that there will always be things to talk about for as long as there are people who want to throw their computers out the window.  I hope you enjoy your time here and I hope I manage to update consistently enough to make you want to come back.  Cheers!
argh-onomics · my blog about ux

Profile

Colin Butler
User Experience and Interaction Design
Computer Software | Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Area, US

Summary

I am a User Experience Specialist with a broad background in computer science and human-computer interaction as well as experience in aspects of graphic design, writing, and many other fields. I have worked in development as well as design, but am currently fully dedicated to the path of UX/Interaction Designer.
Specialties: User experience design, Interaction design, Usability, Balsamiq, Axure, Photoshop, C++, C#, Javascript, jQuery, CSS, HTML

Experience

  • Jul 2011 - Present
    User Experience Specialist / Atlantic BT
    Perform discovery, analysis, and design on various web and mobile app projects. Create documentation, user personas and stories, wireframes, interactive prototypes, and other tools to guide development and visual design. Help develop and mature the User Experience department as a primary focus of the Atlantic BT creation process.
  • Mar 2010 - Present
    User Experience Designer / Freelance
    Provide full-spectrum, pro-bono user experience design for commercial and non-profit web ventures.
  • Jul 2009 - Present
    Web Developer / Measurement Incorporated
    Design and develop websites for computer-based student testing while ensuring a high level of usability and consistency in the user interface.
  • Sept 2004 - Present
    Software Developer / Signalscape, Inc
    Work closely in small teams and deal directly with the customer to serve as user advocate on $1m+ projects. Provide human factors design, user interface design, usability analysis, usability testing, wireframing, mockups, graphic design, and functional prototypes for many diverse programs. Write technical documentation, proposals, and white papers for government and other contracts. Implement, test, and deploy software projects and integrated software/hardware solutions.
  • Nov 2001 - Present
    Research Assistant / NC State University
    Research and develop projects related to usability, intelligent user interfaces, tool-using agents, bimanual interaction, and novel user interfaces. Author a thesis as well as presentations at UIST and CHI conferences.

Education

  • 2002 - 2004
    North Carolina State University
    Master of Science in Human-Computer Interaction and AI
  • 1998 - 2002
    North Carolina State University
    Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Additional Information

Websites:
Personal Website, Blog
Interests:
User experience, interaction design, usability, photography, swing dancing, movies, books
linkedin · my professional ego
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