My MSIS had a heavy research focus. I focused my education on understanding how to assess usability and research user needs, concentrating in Human-Computer Interaction. These classes prepared me to conduct UX research.
These two classes gave me the opportunity to propose and conduct an experience. Read about it here!
Highlights:
I worked on a group project to test the usability of IKEA Place, a mobile Augmented Reality app that allows users to try furniture out by placing virtual furniture in their space, such as a room in their house or an office. We designed and conducted a usability test to assess key tasks within the app. I was a moderator for our usability test.
For our final project we analyzed the data (measuring participant success, issues, and satisfaction) and made recommendations on how to improve the usability. My primary responsibility in the analysis phase was analyzing the results of the After Scenario Questionnaire, calculating confidence intervals for the results, and drawing conclusions about participant satisfaction for the IKEA place app. See the final report here and the final presentation here.
This class allowed me to collaborate with a group to redesign the interface of the forum tool for the educational content management system, Sakai. For the project, my group created personas for users of the system, analyzed the tasks that could be completed through the forum tool, describe scenarios of use for the tool, conducted usability tests, made decisions on how to improve the interface, described the architecture of the system, and conducted a usability test of the redesigned system.
See our final report here and our final presentation here.
This class taught me methods for social science research so that I could design and conduct experiments. We focused on learning how to design experiments by choosing measurable variables, asking specific research questions, and choosing the best methodology to use.
Assignments for this class were focused on identifying measurable variables, developing research questions, and identifying methods to measure the variables.
For the first assignment, I identified seven variables that would be measures of user experience. Read it here.
For the second assignment, I selected five variables and found academic papers that used those variables as a measurement in their studies. Read it here.
For the third assignment, I selected four of those five variables and developed a research question for each. I also identified that methodology used to study that variable in the articles I identified in the previous assignment. Read it here.
This class gave me experience analyzing and redesigning a system. The main project of the class was to work with an organization to redesign a system to meet stakeholder needs. Contextual Inquiry was emphasized as a methodology in this class, along with exposure and practice with other research methods helpful for understanding systems and their users.
My group did our project on East Asian Resources collection within the UNC libraries. We researched the work of the librarian and graduate assistants with qualitative methods (interviews, artifact models), and identified problems they faced in their workflow. We recommended solutions to help solves these problems.
Read our final report here and see our presentation here.
Human Factors allowed me to learn about the significance of human factors and how they affect user experience. I collaborated with a group all semester to work on three projects:
For this class I had to make 2 PechaKucha presentations (20 slides, each slide presented in 20 seconds or less) on human factors in relation to a specific technology. My first presentation was on human factors in virtual reality art (see it here), and my second presentation was on human factors in music streaming services (see it here).