User Interfaces

The Project

This project was to provide a tool that would let people visually infer patterns and outliers from vast amounts of census data.

The design is based on Ben Shneiderman's mantra for data visualization: "Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on demand." The software comes with three interactive views: The colored map and scatterplots provide visual overviews. The sliders provide a way to filter out states based on value ranges. The visualizations coordinate: selecting states in one view selects them correspondingly in the other two views. One can answer questions such as "which states had unemployment ranging from 10%-20% ?"

The Clients

U.S Census Bureau

My role

Debugging and testing

Programming

Analysis of video taped user sessions for design improvements (usability)

Technologies/Resources

Visual Basic 6.0

Visual Fox Pro

ESRI map objects

VHS tapes of recorded user think aloud sessions

2 programmers

Usability Methods

Benchmark tasks

Think aloud sessions

Video of users

Screen capture

Cognitive walkthroughs

Heuristic evaluation

Technologies/Resources

Panda 3D game engine

Python scripting

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Audition

Final Cut

Team of three - Research and design (me), compositor and programmer

Methods

Scenario based design

Searched several layouts for inspiration

Paper prototypes

Expert reviews

Census Data Visualization

Methods

Technologies/Resources

Participant and monitor rooms

Techsmith Morae for testing

Benchmark tasks for users to complete

C# .Net/ Visual Studio .Net

Visual Foxpro data tables (Census Bureau)

ESRI Map Objects 2.0

Methods

Think aloud testing

Benchmark tasks

Screen captures

Comparitive studies of versions

Heuristic evaluations

Developed framework to analyze relational visualization tools

IRB procedures

Methods

The Project

This was for a science museum kiosk featuring educational games. My observations showed that adults skim through exhibits quickly to understand enough about it to explain to children and lead them through activities.

So I designed browsable material that was split into short chunks corresponding to the different games in the kiosk, accessible from the game screens. This balanced contrived game rules (fun for children) versus more realistic representations of the science (understanding for adults)

The Clients

Duquesne University, Carnegie Science Museum

My role

Information and interaction design

Hardware and software procurement

Production

Layouts and some of the video compositing

5 rounds of field and lab testing

2d and 3d art assets using maya, photoshop

The Project

A study revealed that novices to data visualization software resorted to reading tables of numbers to spot outliers or patterns in the data, instead of quickly glancing at visual patterns which is much faster and easier. Why did this happen?

I hypothesized reasons, designed and prototyped a proof-of-concept visualization tool geared towards novices. The video shows a novice user successfully using the colored map in the new prototype.

Client

Virginia Tech. Done as my Master's thesis.

My role

Iterative testing, design and development

Making a framework to analyze interactive visualizations in terms of their "learnable" elements

Derivation of design principles for learbability

Publication: Learnability of Interactive Coordinated-view visualizations

Technologies/Resources

SPSS statistics package

Methods

Objective metrics from Alexa.com

Subjective ratings from participants

Controlled experimental design

Multidimensional scaling and clustering of data with SPSS

Methods

The Project

How do people perceive similarities between websites? Are Facebook and Blogger more similar or Facebook and Youtube? In this preliminary experiment, 10 popular websites were studied using objective and subjective metrics, and analysed using statistical packages.

Hierarchial clusters emerged in the data. For instance, Facebook and Youtube are in a cluster. The facebook-youtube cluster and Blogger form a bigger cluster. The users also seemed to be using two dimensions while comparing websites for similarity. Dimension 1 is likely to be "credibility." Dimension 2 was unexpected, and perhaps it is "commercial-ness." All subjective data was analysed using statistical packages.

My role

Making hypotheses

Running statistical analyses

Facilitating tests - instructing users

Interpretation of results

Documentation and presentation

Technologies/Resources

Paper prototyping, powerpoint, HTML and flash for rapid prototyping

Methods:

Scenario based design process

Schneiderman's Visualization Mantra as design philosphy

Likert scales

rapid prototyping

scenarios and personas

analyses using GOMS NGOMSL

Independent usability consultants gave comparitive evaluation against six competing designs

Highest user ratings among 7 designs

Methods

The Project

The Grapevine project was in response to a challenge thrown to 7 usability teams to create a visual form of news headline notification. People want to do their tasks and see news when they want to take a break.In keeping with this workflow, Grapevine icon glows in the task-bar if there is a new headline. Upon clicking the icon, the Grapevine window opens.

News categories are present as stacked bars. Headlines appear as tool tips. Clicking the bar opens the news page. This was rapidly prototyped in HTML to show functionality and tested with users.

My role

Usability - Information and interaction design

Personas and scenarios

Post-test results processing

Documentation

Browsable text and movie clips on a touch screen kiosk, for a science museum

A user thinks aloud while using the proof-of-concept visualization tool.

People perceived clusters of similar websites - shown as circles. They also rated similarities based on two dimensions, as the plot shows.

Grapevine visual news notification system - prototype

These are projects in which I worked as one or more of the following: interface designer, programmer, or researcher. I list full development projects, prototype design projects, or pure research projects.

Census Data Visualization Tool: Development & Testing

Census data visualization tool with color-coded map, histograms, and 2D scatter plot

Methods

Museum kiosk content: Design, Development, & Testing

Visualization for novices: Design, Development & Testing

User perception of website similarities: Research

Visual News Notification: Design, Prototyping & Testing

Sujatha "Sue" Krishnamoorthy

USER EXPERIENCE DESIGNER

User interfaces

Methods

The Project

You can talk with a librarian in a physical library. But you get instant access to remote content in a digital library. Can we combine the best of both worlds?

The OCKHAM initiative, a large undertaking of four Universities, aimed to combine traditional and digital library services into a peer to peer network.

I researched NSDL, and various existing digital library models including OAIS and OAI . I also conducted focus group interviews with educational technologists and traditional librarians. I used these inputs to recommend an architecture for OCKHAM.

Clients