Envelope

Envelope inbox. One in a series of early wireframes exploring various possibilities for displaying mail. Higher fidelity mockup with a shift in design direction to "bubbles," encouraging direct manipulation of messages. Flexible label organization and viewing. Wireframes for A/B testing of new features, such as attachments. GitHub page to help market open source release.

Envelope is a new open source webmail client that will compete in the market on better usability and productivity. As the Design Lead, I am responsible for UI design, front-end development, and usability testing.

Teammates: Dominic Cerminara, Seth Vargo, Xun Wang

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SilverLining

Default dashboard view of the SilverLining UI. Competitive analysis of UI patterns in various cloud administration products. Early concepts exploring many different layouts and interactions. Early concepts exploring many different layouts and interactions. First implementation of My Cloud space with user's vApps represented as flippable cards. First implementation of Library space with templates listed in a simple table. Faceted search syntax is demonstrated. Change in design direction for My Cloud based on focus group feedback expressing that the object hierarchy needed to be better represented. Change in design direction for Library based on focus group feedback expressing that choosing templates needed to be more of a "shopping experience". Final design: a system of sliding panels to navigate the hierarchy in the user's Cloud. Final design: slide-out Library with "featured" metadata and options for both one-click and custom vApp creation. Final design: faceted search filter in the Library, with simple search and faceted syntax available as alternatives for different user skill levels. Final design: responsive layout for smaller resolutions.

SilverLining was my intern project during my 2012 summer internship at VMware. It is a tenant UI for vCloud Director with the goal of simplifying interactions for non-technical users. Throughout the summer, I conducted a competitive analysis of UI patterns in existing cloud products, created alternative designs through sketching and wireframing, and developed the front end for a working interface that can be deployed on a real vCD cell. I worked on this project in conjunction with a fellow intern, Jason Fedor, who created a JavaScript SDK for creating such vCD UIs.

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Samasource Video Transcription

Video transcription interface with typing area at bottom left and information panel at right. Sketches of playback (review) mode. Sketches of inline editing of text segments. Sketches of information panel.

My student consulting team in Development Solutions Organization developed a video transcription module for Samasource's microwork web platform, SamaHub. I contributed UI design sketches, HTML/CSS code, and usability testing for the final Ruby on Rails application. My team used the Scrum methodology during development. The main challenge we encountered was a lack of real users to test our application on, since the target users reside in other continents and have lower English and computer skills. However, we worked around these challenges by seeking local testing participants with a variety of technical backgrounds and transcription experience.

Teammates: Adi Veerubhotla, Tanushree Chellam, Karan Sikka

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Improving E-Learning Systems

Mockup of instructor-facing Course Schedule page with editable components. Excerpt of contextual inquiry with faculty member. Storyboard for the process of adding content to a course website. Mockup of Assignments page. Mockup of Add Assignment page. Mockup of Actions menu.

This individual project was completed in Fall 2011 for the course User-Centered Research and Design. I chose to investigate usability issues in the instructor-facing side of e-learning systems, with a focus on Blackboard, the learning management system used at Carnegie Mellon. I started the project by conducting research using interviews and contextual inquiry with faculty members at the university. Using this data, I designed a competing interface with the goals of making course management simpler and more efficient. Finally, I evaluated my design by having a classmate do a heuristic evaluation and conducting think-aloud tests with faculty members.

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Hulsen Varding POS System

Point-of-sale UI to facilitate in-store transactions. Buttons optimized for touchscreen. Back-end inventory management system. Dialog for editing product information.

This project was completed in fall 2010 for the course The Information Systems Milieux. My team acted as consultants to the fake motorcycle company Hulsen Varding. After analyzing the company's information systems problems, we developed a new touchscreen point-of-sale and inventory management system for them using Ruby on Rails to help the company better manage its data. I was the team member in charge of UI design, usability testing, and project management.

Teammates: Nolan Carroll, Seth Vargo, Adam Weis