About Brian
Hi! I'm Brian, an Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction double major from Carnegie Mellon University. This is a small collection of my work.
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BoredCast Helping make CMU a little more fun.
Goal: Create a central place where students can find events.
BoredCast was born from a simple question: "Is Carnegie Mellon fun?"
You can visit a quick prototype of BoredCast here, or view the current progress of the actual implementation on Github.
Technologies Used
Ruby on Rails
JavaScript (jQuery)
HTML/CSS
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Jumpstart Using games to teach.
Goal: Help users learn how to use complicated software using games.
Key Findings:
Providing feedback for a process is incredibly important - and people love filling progress bars.
During my summer 2010 internship, I lead the development of Jumpstart, an experimental program to teach users complicated software by using games. One of IBM’s flagship products, DataStudio is an incredibly powerful database management tool. But for new users it is incredibly intimidating, so my task over the summer was to find innovative ways of teaching new users the ropes - using games.
The first two weeks were spent researching. I was primarily interested in how to motivate people to work their way through a series of long, complicated tasks. By framing the exercises in the form of a story (“hero” DBAs, delivering assistance for disaster relief), the game and its characters motivated users to complete guided tasks.
Working directly with designers, mockups were generated and I created an interactive Flex prototype. In the very last week, I was able to run a user test on actual DBAs, gathering valuable data and compiling a final report that was used at IBM’s OnDemand conference in Las Vegas.
Methodologies Used
Think-Aloud Testing
Rapid Prototyping
Technologies Used
Adobe Flex
ActionScript 3.0
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COMMUTEnity Building community and promoting good riding habits.
Goal: Make a service to improve the experience of taking public transit in Pittsburgh, with focus on students.
Key Findings:
There were distinct 'groups' within PAT ridership, but students were always the outsiders.
This group project was centered around designing a service to improve public transit in Pittsburgh, specifically for college students. We started by interviewing riders, both students and residents, and bus drivers. By mapping out the findings from these interviews, we developed a solution to teach new student riders how to ride the bus and learn a little bit about Pittsburgh at the same time.
Download the final presentation (8.34mb PDF).
Methodologies Used
Persona Creation
Storyboarding and Journey Mapping
User Scenarios
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Reefbot Web Putting HCI research into practice.
Goal: Find a way for the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium to extend the museum experience at home, encouraging parent-child interaction.
Key Findings:
The best way to remember an experience doesn't necessarily need to be a branded object.
Kids don't read (not that they can't, but they won't - beautiful typography aside).
Toddlers are incredibly enthusiastic. If they like what a button does, it will be pushed a hundred more times.
My team was focused on creating a take-home user experience for the visitors of the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium. To do this, we conducted contextual inquiries on shoppers in the aquarium’s gift store, looking the way people pick out things to remember their experiences by. With that data, we mocked up interfaces, tested them with users and transitioned into high-fidelity mock-ups.
Download the final presentation (6.08mb PDF).
Methodologies Used
Affinity Diagramming
Contextual Inquiry
Persona Creation
Think-Aloud Testing
Rapid Prototyping
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Hairbop.com Coding web and mobile apps.
Goal: Make an incredibly user-friendly, touch-based mobile interface.
Key Findings:
Mobile users can't take advantage of hover states, so you need to use alternate feedback (show all options, or modal pop-ups).
Hairbop is a mobile application with a very specific audience. A focused CRM for hair stylists and salon owners, it is designed to be incredibly user friendly for potentially non-tech-savvy users.
It’s also a mobile application, so I got experience in creating sites that are compatible both on desktop screens and tiny mobile views (albeit for Webkit browsers, which makes things much easier.)
I personalized the landing pages for the website, optimized to attract new users. For example, a large call-to-action draws the user’s attention, while the less visible, but still important login remains in view.
Technologies Used
Ruby on Rails 3
HAML/SASS