Storyteller • Engineer •

Designer • Adventurer

I am a user interaction designer and engineer, with a background in sound and video production and education research. I'm passionate about personal informatics and data visualization. I am a rock climber and photographer, personally, and am dedicated to expanding my abilities and making myself uncomfortable. I surround myself with people who know more than I do, and grow every day because of it.

See examples of my past work.


About me

Early in life, physics inspired me most – learning about systems and relationships in the natural world drew me to engineering. I first encountered user-centered design through sound engineering and the design challenge of optimizing recordings for varied listening contexts – developing empathy through personal experience by listening to the same sounds in fundamentally different spaces. This background and my work developing websites and online courses lead me to user experience design.

Empathy, and the degree to which we're (un)able to experience it for others is a fundamentally rich concept, rife with uncertainty and potential for philosophical discussion. The link between empathy and meaningful design, however, is forgivingly more straightforward.

As a user experience designer I contribute to knowledge-based, goal-driven product development. It is meaningful and measurable, with clear stages – developing understanding from research, ideas from understanding, and testing and iterating on those ideas. I look at UX as the work of turning empathy into action.

Portfolio

Mira

Magic Mira

Smart mirror interactive prototype

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606vis

A LIFE IN LIGHT

Weighted visualization of one week using panorama photos

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Metropolis

Metropolis

City building game to encourage fitness

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Membox

Memory Museum

Interactive, audible, RFID keepsake box

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Visual Design

Visual Design

Selected graphic design work

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Detroit

Demolition Data

Data visuzalization with ArcGIS and Tableau

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NYTREK

Innovation Trek

Beautiful hearing aids, startup incubator

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Pardner

Pardner App

Partner-sport focused gym-buddy finder

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Math Lab

Math Lab

High quality recording for high profile event

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AWARE

AWARE @HOME

Home electricity monitoring interface design

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Apple Music

Apple Music

Conjoint analysis user research for music servce

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EXPERIENCE

User Experience Designer – Akamai Technologies »

Cambridge, MA – August 2017 to Present

I hit the ground running as the sole designer responsible for the redesign of a financial data analysis application. My team consists of forty people across multiple programs and business units within Akamai. We deliver functionality that serves user needs – supported by research – with every release.

I also collaborate with a team of designers to build Akamai’s design system - contributing to working groups developing design nomenclature for data visualization, content layouts, and application navigation. I support projects migrating to the new system’s style, aided by my past experience with web design.

Research Technician Intermediate – University of Michigan »

Ann Arbor, MI – September 2010 to August 2017

At the University of Michigan, I was a technology and media guru. I designed media-rich websites, Moodle / SCORM courses, automated processes using Python, and managed a small staff responsible for archiving student data sets [of approx. 10,000 media files]. I brought expertise with audio/video recording and editing, compression, and streaming distribution to my work to create high production value video.

In my final summer with the University, I lead a usability study for a video player based course for mathematics educators at the University of Hawaii.

User Experience Intern – Gale: Cengage Learning »

Farmington Hills, MI – May 2016 to December 2016

At Gale, I gained valuable perspective working with motivated leaders evangelizing for increased focus on user centered design within an established company. I created low-fi interactive prototypes, interviewed users and stakeholders, analyzed research data, and performed competitive analysis and heuristic evaluation in my role.

Desktop Support Specialist Associate – University of Michigan »

Ann Arbor, MI – January 2007 to August 2010

I managed a temp staff digitizing multimedia artifacts – providing instruction, troubleshooting assistance and workflows to the group. I provided hardware and software technical support - managing 25 computer stations and laptops and configuring three Apple servers with file sharing, video streaming, wiki, and web services.


EDUCATION

University of Michigan School of Information »

Master of Science in Information, April 2017
Specialization: Human-Computer Interaction »

University of Michigan College of Engineering »

Bachelor of Science in Engineering, magna cum laude, May 2006
Bachelor of Arts in English, magna cum laude, May 2006

AWARDS


SERVICE & EXTRACURRICULARS

Code for Boston, Aashiyaan »

January 2018 - Present

Aashiyaan (nest/home) – is both an interactive mobile documentary and a living archive. The project, developed by filmmaker Anandana Kapur, presents the lives of the women of Dehli through their own eyes – recorded through their mobile phones. Our group meets weekly, and I contribute UX design, user testing, visuals, storyboarding, and concept wireframing.

The Designers of Interactive, Intelligent, Internet of Things (DoIIIT) »

January 2017 - August 2017

Creator-member of a student-run research collective and design studio that pushes design past traditional mobile and desktop applications and fosters connections with international makerspaces

Data Refuge »

January 2017 - August 2017

Organizer, volunteer coordinator, and coder for local branch of national organization devoted to the preservation of government-funded research data

Social Impact Challenge »

January 2016 - March 2016

With a four-person interdisciplinary team, partnered with local stakeholders to develop a proposal for community land use on the original site of Tiger Stadium

New York Innovation Trek, Entrepreneurship Program »

Fall 2015

Created a design idea to pitch to New York City startups through fast-paced 5 week program


SKILLS

UX/UI

  • Wireframes
  • Design thinking
  • Prototyping
  • Heuristic evaluation
  • Sketch with Craft / Invision
  • Adobe CC
  • Framer.js
  • Tableau

Research

  • Usability testing
  • Interviews
  • Survey design
  • Human subject research
  • Responsive web design

Front End

  • HTML5 / CSS3 / JavaScript
  • Bootstrap / Responsive design
  • git / CLI
  • Python3 / REST APIs

Digital Media

  • Sound engineering
  • Compression
  • Kaltura
  • Final Cut Suite
  • RX4

Hardware

  • Arduino / Raspberry Pi
  • RFID
  • Rhino / laser cutter