Overview
Graduate Work That Goes Beyond the Portfolio
I earned my MS in HCI from DePaul with distinction, while working full-time and playing goalie for three soccer teams. These projects show a side of my practice not always visible in client work: rigorous academic research, accessibility thinking, emerging technology frameworks, and formal usability methodology. I served as project manager and key point of contact on every group project.
Projects
Selected Work
A Virtual Conference Platform for Meaningful Social Interaction & Networking
For our capstone project, our group explored the idea of creating a virtual conference platform. We conducted a literature review to initially guide us, then a competitor analysis to understand what currently exists in the market. From there, we conducted a series of interviews and surveys to identify the mental model of the conference-goer, and create a series of needs, potential problems, and features to drive personas and an initial prototype. We then conducted a usability evaluation on the prototype, refined based on qualitative and quantitative feedback, and ran a second round of testing. The 141-page final report received a 20% bonus for exceeding every rubric point, a first in the professor's 26+ classes.
UX Strategy
Augmented Reality: A Framework for Business, Marketing & UX Teams
For my Web Strategy and Analytics class, I decided to explore Augmented Reality, something I had little prior experience with. I conducted a literature review of 15 academic sources and used them to create a framework around implementing AR in a business environment. This covered the elements that make up an AR experience, types of experiences, use cases and benefits, risks, AR-specific usability principles, and logistics around business implementation. The resulting framework works as a step-by-step guide for working across teams to create a lasting and successful AR experience in a variety of industries.
Accessibility
Best Practices for Audio Descriptions in Visual Media for People with Visual Impairments
Accessibility was one of the most eye opening classes I took at DePaul, and has remained a UX practice I hold incredibly important to this day. We first conducted a literature review to narrow down a topic, deciding to explore audio descriptions: narrative voice-overs added to movies to provide missing context for blind viewers. We then conducted interviews with four participants, all of whom were blind and used video-on-demand services frequently. Our report synthesized interview findings into a best-practices framework for producing audio descriptions for film and television, an area with little standardization and significant impact on accessibility.
Foundations of HCI
Motivation and Behavior in Identified vs. Anonymous Online Communities
For this assignment, I wanted to figure out why I spend so much time on Reddit. In all seriousness though, I find online forums fascinating and wanted to dive more into the motivations and behaviors around contributions to online communities. This paper explores nine published articles on what motivates people to interact with and contribute to online communities, their resulting behavior, and whether personal identification (being named vs. posting anonymously) contributes to that behavior. While a more academic project, this was a great exercise in peer-reviewed research with genuinely interesting implications for product and community design.
Inquiry Methods
Book Readers and Enthusiasts — User Research Study
This group project for Inquiry Methods and Analysis had our team conducting observations, interviews, and surveys to see how participants research and select books, and how this information can be applied to a potential future product. This was an interesting project where I learned a lot about user research, and arguably even more about teamwork and people management.
IxD & Analysis
Four IxD Projects: Complex Systems, E-Commerce, AI & Voice AI
For this class, my group created four different projects, each focused on a different area and exploring new technologies. Our projects covered complex systems, e-commerce, AI, and Voice AI. Each involved a prototype and a presentation. View links to all four below:
"A truly exceptional effort. In the 26 or 27 instances of this class, I have never had as thorough and detailed a Final Report as this — even the Appendices were exceptional. I have had perhaps 1 or 2 that are in the same league of quality, but 141 pages is a new record — I think it breaks the old record of about 70 pages by a factor of 2!
This Report is truly an amazing achievement, especially under the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 situation. Somewhere around p. 40 or so, I decided that I needed to change the D2L grade item to allow it to exceed 40 points, since this Report goes so far beyond even my greatest expectations. Congratulations on the SUS score, the page count record, and being the first team to receive more than the maximum number of rubric points! I figured a 20% bonus was a reasonable award."
— Professor Hank Streeter, DePaul University