eBay Reviews & Guides
As the UI lead on the project, I was responsible for designing a system that would allow the eBay community to share their knowledge with others in the community. Through research, wireframes, focus groups, and user testing, the team delivered a highly scalable product that houses the hundres of thousands of guides and product reviews contributed by the community.

Sun Microsystems Team Mail
With a five person team of HCI masters students, we set out to explore the realm of collaborative email. Through the use of contextual inquiries, diary studies, focus groups, personas, usability testing, and other techniques, we developed a functional product that allowed knowledge workers to more efficiently work together.

Squeeze Drop MP3 Player
Working with two other HCI masters students I developed an wearable MP3 player targeted for teenage girls that would develop an emotional tie with the user. Through contextual inquiries, focus groups and other methods, we created a device that resonated well with teenage girls. The use of a squeeze based interface and a yin-yang style synching interaction created a device that was elegant, sexy and achieved a "cool" from our finicky audience.

Virtual Personal Trainer
Myself and three other students investigated how a personal agent could act as a personal trainer. We created a short video that paints a picture of interactions with a virtual trainer.

Wine Recommendations
A small team of HCI students looked into the recommendation process with our focus being on wine. Through many interviews we gained an understanding of the hurdles are that people must go through in the process of selecting a wine.

Palm V Redesign
Myself and three other Master's students in HCI addressed improvements that could be made to the Palm Pilot to improve the ease of use and overall usability of the interface. The following methods were employed in evaluating and designing a new interface:

• Contextual Interview and Design
• Heuristic Evaluations
• GOMS KLM
• Think Aloud
• Cognitive Walkthroughs

The final designed boasted a more efficient and intuitive design that cleaned up many inconsistencies and cleared away many of the pitfalls users of the Palm V face. Email me if you are interested in the final paper.

Personal Universal Controller
Myself and three other Master's students explored the use of a Personal Universal Controller (PUC) within a household environment. A PUC is a universal remote control to be used to control devices in a home. After performing several contextual interviews in several families homes we focused our attention on the entertainment center as the area most ripe for improvement. We discovered several breakdowns with the current system and incorporated many of these into our design.

We explored how paradigms associated with other devices could enhance the user's experience while interacting with their TV and stereo. For example, the use of channel numbers to navigate through the tv is similar to navigating the web using IP addresses.

The following HCI methods were performed on early prototypes to gain insight to usability issued with the design.

• Heuristic Evaluation
• GOMS KLM
• Cognitive Walkthrough

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Tightrope Walker
I created an interactive tightrope walker for a show in the Ellis Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University. The tightrope walker follows the participant as they move under the tightrope.

How it Works
It was created using a Basic Stamp micro controller, an ultrasound sensor, a servo, a handful of resistors, and an old bike rim. I programmed the Basic Stamp using PBasic to take an ultrasound reading several times per second (the sensor is located at the bottom of the extended wire in the photo). Using a servo, the micro controller adjusts the angle of the wheel which in turn either raises or lowers the rope, making the tightrope walker move toward or away from the wall depending upon the distance the participant is away from the sensor. In this fashion, the tightrope walker is able to follow a participant when they walk under the rope.