Engage
The Challenge: Pittsburgh Voyager
is a local non-profit organization that takes elementry, middle and high school students
on exploratory learning adventures on Pittsburgh's rivers. They currently have a new
green-engineered vessel which is under construction and will be added to their fleet
in the fall of 2006. Pittsburgh Voyager is in the process of revolutionizing their
whole experience, and they have asked our team to provide a technical solution for them
which enhances the pre-trip, onboard and/or post-trip experience.
Our Solution: The focus our group (Team Searchlight) chose was to discover how to capture, store,
manage and present data on and off the boat in order to enhance the teaching and learning
experience. We first conducted background reseach in order to understand the domain,
and employed several methods, such as contextual inquiries and design, bodystorming
and observations, centered on our focus. After brainstorming and creating scenarios for
different potential solutions, we decided on creating an on demand media application, which enhances the way that
students and instructors share information. Instructors can use our application, Engage to
dynamically present a variety of media. We went through an interative design cycle, which involved design and development, followed by user testing of
the prototypes which arose, from which we got results which we fed back into the next phase of design.
As the user testing lead, I was in charge of organizing and running user tests, which included concept validation,
think aloud user studies, participatory design and card sorting.
Software Demo |
Final Presentation |
Final Report |
Website
Team: Carl Angiolillo, Ricardo Marquez, Jonathan Terleski, Andy Tzou
Advisors: Bonnie John, Brad Myers
Semesters: Spring & Summer 2006
Duration: 6.5 months
Palm Pilot Redesign
The Challenge: Throughout the course of a semester we practiced the methods of
Contextual Inquiry and Design, Keystroke Level Modelling, Heuristic Evaluation,
Cognitive Walkthrough and Think Aloud in the context of the Palm IIIc interface.
We were then required to apply this knowledge to a redesign of the ToDo
and/or Datebook applications. We were also charged with creating a thoughful
retrospective account of the methods learned.
Our Solution: Our group identified several needs which the Palm could
meet, and focused on three main themes in our redesign: location
awareness, the splitting of ToDo items into small tasks and larger projects with
their own hierarchical structures and making Datebook event creation more
intuitive.
Final Report
Team: Anastassia Drofa, Ricardo Marquez, Rachel Shipman
Advisors: Christine Newarth, John Zimmerman
Semester: Fall 2005
Duration: 4 months
Web Survey Toolbox Redesign
The Challenge: Sara Keisler and Aaron Powers provide a service known as
Web Survey Toolbox.
This survey creation tool is very powerful, but they felt it had many usability issues,
especially for new users and initial survey creation. We were asked to apply the HCI
methods we learned and provide a prototype of a redesigned solution.
Our Solution: Our group decided to focus on two main things: Streamlining the survey
creation process for novices, and optimizing the tool and website for common tasks. We performed
Contextual Inquiries and Design, Keystroke Level Modelling, Heuristic Evaluations, Cognitive Walkthroughs
and Think Alouds. We delivered an HTML prototype for the new website, as well as Interface Builder
prototypes for a new survey wizard and question creation wizard.
Final Presentation
Team: Michele Clarke, Nicholas Jitkoff, Laura Treichler
Advisors: Christine Newarth, John Zimmerman
Semester: Fall 2005
Duration: 4 months
MP3 Player Redesign
The Challenge: I was charged with finding a device which had Human
Factors problems associated with it. I then had to analyze the device (including
task analyses from user studies) and suggest an appropriate redesign.
My Solution: The device I chose to study was the jWin JX-MP64 MP3 player
and voice recorder. Through personal experience, user studies, concepts learned
in class and research done by others, I identified several human factors issues
relating to the display and controls, and redesigned the buttons, labels, layout
and control interaction.
Final Presentation | Final Report
Advisor: Sara Keisler
Semester: Fall 2005
Duration: 4 months
