Projects  >   Interaction Design
It seems that the more a computer can do, the more it can't do what we want. To leverage the strengths of computers without involving the weaknesses of humans, these projects address the technical limits of computing, the biological limits of human perception and cognition, and the cultural limits of communication.
 
Engaged
Along with a team from the Northwestern University Department of Behavioral Medicine, I collaborated with a student team and a software engineer to prevent diabetes with less doctor input through a mobile device.
The effectiveness of our interface will be tested in a controlled study with 64 participants. The study participants will compete in teams of 8 for a cash prize for losing the most weight.
Scoop
Teammates Radhika Gupta and Yixiu Wu and I set out to encourage informal learning in the urban landscape. Through research on technical and social opportunities, interviews with high school students, and multiple rounds of prototyping, we developed a mobile-phone and physical tag platform.

This project was among 5 selected from an international pool of student work to display at Interaction 10, the 2010 IxDA Conference. Download a project summary.

End User Programming
End User Programming allows untrained users to create an interactive application or to add functionality to an existing program. In this research report, I show how techniques for visualizing abstractions developed in animation and rendering programs have migrated to other domains, showing up first in context-specific applications. I extrapolate this trend to predict the appearance of broadly accessible Extensible Software, AI Learning, and Visual Programming. Download the report.
Phase Zero Visualization
In the 'fuzzy front-end' of the design process - where all assumptions are left behind - the designer relies heavily on intuition. To build a more robust set of tools to help put a problem in context, I worked with Apeksha Garga, Payaal Patel, and Nikhil Mathew to develop a trend graphing method that will let designers aggregate contextual research across projects. We developed a software platform plan to enable web-based team collaboration. Download the full report (12 MB).