I have recently finished my Master's degree in Human Computer Interaction Design at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. I graduated in May of 2008. My research interests center mainly around creating useful, usable interactions with technology using a human centered design methodology.
I spent most of last semester reflecting on who I am as a designer as part of a course and also as personal quest. After much exploration I came to the conclusion that I am a human centered designer. If you are interested in my final paper, which contains my personal design reflections, you can find it here.
This year as group facilitator I helped lead my team to a semifinalist selection in the CHI student design competition in Florence, Italy. Our team was one of 12 selected from a pool of 40 submissions. We presented our project in early April at the CHI conference. You can read more about our project aSister - Scheduling for Homeless Women with Special Needs in my portfolio.
My capstone project started with the issue of international students are hesitant to interact in class. I see this as a problem since these students came to the U.S. to learn and they are not getting the most out of their U.S. education by not speaking up in class. I used surveys and one on one interviews to collect information about this population. I built out and tested one concept and implemented another one. You can read more about my research in this area on my capstone blog.
In May of 2002 I received my bachelor's degree in Journalism with a concentration in Online Media from the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida.
Until August of 2006 I was employed by the New York Times Regional Media Group at the corporate office in Tampa, FL as the Senior Technical Producer. In this position I was responsible for developing and implementing new web products, training for new employees in our content management system and supervising a team of technical producers. Our department worked with the 15 papers that belong to the regional media group.
Prior to taking this position I was employed by The Ledger in Lakeland, FL as the Electronic Media Producer. In this position I was responsible for most of the programming and design of the core site along with designing and developing new projects.
While at the University of Florida I worked for the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project as the webmaster.