Picture of Me!
Hey there!
Welcome to my website. I'm a User Experience Designer and Developer. I'm looking for roles that allow me to craft incredible user experiences. I believe in lifelong learning and an education for all and I find myself working on projects that promote this. And now, you ask yourself, "So what? Why would I want to hire you?"
Allow me to explain
I'm the kind of person that has always loved creating whether it's playing with Legos, building a sprawling metropolis in SimCity, or designing the future of mobile education and executing it. I'm excited about learning both in terms of helping others and the pursuit of lifelong learning for myself. I love to travel and explore. It's always amazing to take on a new adventure, experience new cultures, and meet new people. All this to say: I have the skills and passion you need to take your user experience to a place of joy for your users.
the skills
You need someone that can get at what your users need. I've spent time watching, interviewing, and interacting with some of the most demanding (and rightfully so) users in the world: students and teachers. Teachers are balls of energy that have too much to do with too little time and need designs that work for them, quickly and intuitively. Students are balls of energy that can't wait to explore and as such are absolutely incredible at finding the flaws in your design. Users are always going to present a challenge but that's exactly what I want to tackle. Let me show you.
what I do
To make the best experience for your users, there's a lot of work to be done and I'm the man for the job.
I interview, observe, and analyze users.
Affinity Wall for a student portfolio system Cultural Model of a school using a student portfolio system
I create scenarios and personas to focus the designs.
Primary persona & scenario for a university website Persona Map with primary, secondary, and tertiary users
I develop an understanding of the experience through interaction maps and user flow diagrams.
Interaction Map of Sweetland Writing Center's Website
I test designs and iterate them through wireframes...
Wireframes for a student portfolio system Wireframes for a student portfolio system
... and interactive prototypes.
Prototype made with HTML5/CSS3 & jQuery Prototype made with Axure RP
I run usability tests with users and heuristic evaluations when users aren't available.
Heuristic Evaluation of GooruLearning.org
And I deliver usable, enjoyable software.
Students in Singapore using myDesk on their Windows Phones Students in Singapore using myDesk on their Windows Phones Students in Singapore using myDesk on their Windows Phones
what I want
Whoa, right? I have demands of my own?! Well, that's because it's important for us to find out if I match up with your company's culture and personality. I want to work for a company and team that share my passion for a great user experience. I'm as comfortable working independently as I am working directly with another person, collaborating all day. What I love is a place that values teamwork, regardless of the mode of work for each team member. I love a place that expects I'll help you whenever you need it and you'll do the same for me. Where mistakes are made faster in order to prevent the BIG one later on and we aren't afraid to "run the experiment" when we don't know the answer. I want to work hard for a company that's making a difference and making the world a better place.
Sound Good?
If I've intrigued you at all, then I invite you to connect with me. I also invite you to take a look at the projects I've worked on in my portfolio and to take a look at my resumé.
Instagram
Pictures of life... which means a lot of food.
Reading...
The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard
Read
Dune by Frank Herbert
Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Penpal by Dathan Auerbach
Blackout / All Clear by Connie Willis
Little Bee by Chris Cleeve
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out by Mimi Ito
Wool by Hugh Howey
CLOSE
UX Designer Developer Education Team Project
myDesk
MyDesk is a project developed for schools to encourage a more constructivist learning environment using mobile phones and deployed to over 350 students at a primary school in Singapore. As the project lead in Singapore, I was the point person between the school and our developers, ran observations and interviews, and developed the apps further.
Winter 2012

Roles: Project Lead, UX Designer, Developer

Technology: Illustrator, Photoshop, Visual Studio, C#, Silverlight, Git

Project Length: 4 Months
What is it?
MyDesk is a Windows Phone app with six mini-apps designed for students to engage in multi-modal learning anytime and anywhere. SketchBook, KWL, MapIt, Recorder, Blurb, and NotePad mini-apps can all be set up with assignments by teachers and turned in by students. Currently in use by 700 3rd and 4th graders at Nan Chiau Primary School in Singapore, the initial results are promising. We've seen a major shift from top down lecturing to a more constructivist learning style with discussion and exploration.
What did I do?
I was in Singapore at our pilot school for 4 months, supporting the application, interviewing administrators, teachers and students, observing classes, and redesigning the platform based on these experiences. I also helped further develop the platform and successfully launched updates to the app with new features and bug fixes.
See it!
The app is currently available in the Windows Marketplace now, though it requires a username and password only available through the pilot schools. You can learn more about it here.
UX Designer Developer Education Team Project
messageBoard
MessageBoard is a forum system developed for Windows Phone 7 to help students and teachers discuss relevant topics in and out of the classroom. It is part of the Cosmos Mobile Learning Platform.
Winter 2012 - Present

Roles: Project Lead, UX Designer, Developer

Technology: Visual Studio, C#, Silverlight, Git, Photoshop, Illustrator

Project Length: 4 Months
What is it?
MessageBoard, a forum system, was designed to be very simple and allow for easy control by administrators. Teachers and administrators are able to setup classroom groups that then have their own set of boards, posts, and comments. Currently in use at Nan Chiau Primary School in Singapore, teachers and students have used to easily communicate with each other when in and out of class. The platform was built with a web-based backend so that eventually, clients for the Android and iOS platforms can be built.
What did I do?
I completely designed and developed the Windows Phone 7 app. My teammate developed the backend web system and the two of us collaborated on the design of the API. I managed the deployment of the app to the school students and performed classroom observations along with analysis of the usage data for further design improvements.
See it!
Available in the Windows Marketplace now, though it requires a username and password available only available to the pilot schools. You can learn more about it the whole Cosmos Mobile Learning Platform here.
UX Designer Education Team Project
Finalist
Elementary STEM Teacher Mastery Badges
As part of a competition at the 2012 Digital Media & Learning Conference, I helped design a badging system to help teachers improve their teaching skills centered around STEM topics.
Winter 2012

Role: UX Designer

Technology: Illustrator, Photoshop

Project Length: 1 Month
What is it?
This is the design of a system intended to provide better training to teachers in both a real world and digital environment. During real-world teacher development classes, teachers would receive instruction and enact the things they learn in the classroom. Then, they would come back at a later date with evidence of their use of new concepts in the classroom and would discuss their experiences with other teachers and instructors. Their evidence and discussion would be added to the online system and the teachers would build up a backpack of badges that represent the things they've learned. Most importantly, they have the real world evidence and discussion to back up the badges that prove the hard work they've put in to earning the badges and learning new skills.
What did I do?
My team and I competed in the Badges for Lifelong Learning: Teacher Mastery competition at the 2012 Digital Media & Learning Conference in San Francisco, CA. As a finalist, my team was paired with a content expert and together we pitched a system to distribute badges to teachers in recognition of their mastery over particular skills. As one of the designers, I helped fit the system to the content that would be taught.
See it!
Here is the poster created for our system here.
Graphic Designer Solo Project
Nam June Paik Life Timeline
As part of my Graphic Design class, we were asked to choose an artist and create a visual timeline of their life and work. I chose Nam June Paik and his exploration of digital technology.
Winter 2012

Role: Graphic Designer

Technology: Illustrator, Photoshop

Project Length: 1 Week
What is it?
As an assignment meant to honor an artist's life and work, I felt the best tribute was to adapt his own style. Nam June Paik was interested in how technology and the internet have shaped us as a people. Much of his work incorporates TVs, robots, and other electronics to express that we are integrating technology into our lives more and more. The design of this poster highlights some of his most famous works. The timeline takes the shape of one of his often used robots and is made up of the same TVs he used in his artwork.
See it!
View the full poster here.
Graphic Designer Solo Project
Digital Signage
As a client project for the University of Michigan's Shapiro Undergraduate Library, students were asked to create a set of digital signs that advertised for library services.
Winter 2012

Role: Graphic Designer

Technology: Illustrator, Photoshop

Project Length: 2 Weeks
What is it?
Meant to advertise services offered to students at the library, the illustrations for each poster are meant to be fun and inviting so that students aren't afraid of asking for help. I felt this was the best direction because asking for help, especially as a new student, can be intimidating. A big challenge in this project was that each poster would be stretched across 4 LCD screens. This meant that part of each advertisement would get cutoff where the 4 monitors joined. So, a plus shaped area of each poster would not be visible on the TV screens. The design I created deals with this by ensuring that the important information appears within the visible bounds. The larger text however sometimes gets cutoff in places. I made sure that anything that gets cutoff was still easily decipherable by testing the design with multiple people. I asked 10 students if they could tell me what each poster said without providing any context.
See it!
View all 12 advertisements here.
Graphic Designer Solo Project
School of Information Website Redesign
Unhappy with the look of their newly released website, the University of Michigan's School of Information came to our Graphic Design class for ideas on how to improve the look and rework the layout.
Winter 2012

Role: Graphic Designer

Technology: Illustrator, Photoshop

Project Length: 1 Week
What is it?
This assignment required we take the old website and leave it mostly intact. However, they wanted the University's colors (Maize and Blue) used instead of what was in use (Red and Blue). They also wanted us to use some of their analytics data to reorder and redesign some of the information layouts. So, with this knowledge, I created a design that is both in tune with the desired University of Michigan School of Information branding and has a better layout for the information. Graphically, the background uses the University colors and relates to the School of Information with a Stream Graph data visualization. The information laid out focuses more directly on getting the heaviest users of the site to the information they need. This meant giving better links to students, such as direct access to courses and timetables along with graduation requirements.
See it!
View the full redesign here.
UX Designer Education Team Project
Athenaeum
As part of my Personal Informatics class, my team developed a prototype for a reading app that would help track how and when you read and offer analytics to increase awareness of reading habits and suggest ways of improving comprehension.
Winter 2012
Role: UX Designer

Technology: Photoshop, Eclipse, Git, HTML5

Project Length: 2 Months
What is it?
Athenaeum is a design for a tablet app with the primary goal of helping users understand and improve their reading habits. The prototype shows a very analytical approach to reading data. The app would collect many different data points such as reading session information (location, time of day, time spent reading) along with an aggregate "comprehension" score derived from factors such as highlights made, notes taken, traversal of the reading, time spent reading, number of reading sessions, and more. This was developed with a team of four, including myself.
What did I do?
In designing this product, multiple stages were necessary. As a team, we evaluated the need for something like this through a survey of our fellow students which I contributed questions to and then helped analyze the data. We each recorded information on our own reading sessions and were able to determine factors we thought conducive to successful reading sessions. Each team member then tested their own drawn prototypes with students in our school, iterated with the group, and did further testing. After determining the best features, one other group member and I developed our final high fidelity prototype using HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, JQuery, and Google Charts.
See it!
View the prototype here.
UX Designer Developer Education Team Project
Gooru
As a User Experience Design Intern with Gooru, I helped develop their online presence, designed new features, and supported staff with internal tools.
2011 - 2012

Roles: UX Designer, Developer

Technology: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Camtasia, Eclipse, SVN

Time at Position: 4 Months
What is it?
Gooru is an educational technology company that's developed a web platform that allows teachers and students to share and learn from the best learning resources. Teachers and students can search for resources, quizzes, or full collections of resources and quizzes all organized around the Common Core State Standards. Teachers are encouraged to create collections to map out their full curriculum with collections as their lessons. Students are encouraged to learn topics through viewing collections and also creating their own.
What did I do?
In the summer of 2011, I interned at Gooru as a User Experience Designer. While there, I had the opportunity to work on many different projects. One of my big projects was designing and developing the organization's website which provided information about Gooru and the company. Another of the projects I worked on was a tool for Gooru Administrators to edit large amounts of content in a quick and efficient manner. I also performed heuristic evaluations on Gooru in order to determine our areas of greatest need. Once those areas were determined, I ran usability tests with teachers to get a sense of where they were having trouble and we also tested new designs with them for the trouble areas found in the heuristic evaluations.
See it!
Give Gooru a try.
Developer Team Project
Menlo Innovations
Menlo is a software contractor where I've been a Developer, Quality Advocate, and High-Tech Anthropologist. I developed strong communication skills with teammates and clients in an agile, test driven development, and extreme programming environment. The project range has included many different technologies.
2008 - 2012

Roles: Developer / Quality Advocate / High-Tech Anthropologist

Technology: Eclipse, XCode, Visual Studio, SVN, Balsamiq, Photoshop, Illustrator, C#, Objective-C, Java, LAMP, WordPress, xUnit Testing

Time at Position: 3 Years
What is it?
Menlo Innovations is one of the coolest and most unique custom software development firms you're going to find. They're unique because they develop software using agile methodologies and everyone is required to be paired with a partner at all times. This forces everyone to be constantly talking with each other and thus teaching and trading information. They also use test-driven development which helps ensure fewer BIG problems down the road. They also work closely with the clients, requiring them to come see and try the software being developed for them at least once a week.
What did I do?
I first joined Menlo as a Software Development Intern in the summer of 2008. Since then, I've worked for them full-time and part-time, and in different roles such as Quality Assurance and their designer role called High-Tech Anthropology™. While working there, I worked on many different projects:
  • Developed industry-leading flow cytometry software in Java
  • Developed their website using WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, HTML/CSS
  • Designed and developed a prescription management app for the iOS
  • Developed survey tracking software in C#
  • Developed patient tracking software using Visual Basic
Learn more!
Check them out at menloinnovations.com.
UX Designer Developer Team Project
IGN Video Game Popularity Visualization
A class project for a client that helps visualize the popularity of a selected set of video games based on genre and platform.
Fall 2011

Roles: UX Designer, Developer

Course: Information Visualization

Technology: d3.js, Eclipse

Project Length: 1 Month
What is it?
Video Game Popularity Visualization is like the title says and uses site traffic data provided by IGN to let users explore the popularity of video games over time on IGN.com. Choosing from a large array of games, users can look at the popularity chronologically or normalized around release date. This allows users to better compare popularity of games across a series (like the Halo games) or across platform (ex: comparing XBOX to PS3). The idea for this came out of the desire to further explore information presented in a graphic on IGN.com here.
What did I do?
As a team, we prototyped our designs on paper first and then presented them to the team at IGN. After getting feedback, we refined the designs and began implementing the design. We used d3.js for its powerful visualization capabilities and the DataTables jQuery plug-in for game selection. I handled implementation of the stream graph (the top one) and part of the selection tool while putting together the CSS and jQuery for the look and feel.
See it!
Try it out here. Please note that it takes a while to load. It works best in Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
UX Designer Developer Solo Project
Commute Time Visualization
A visualization to help explore when and what transportation to and from school and work take the least time.
Fall 2011

Roles: UX Designer, Developer

Course: Information Visualization

Technology: Protovis.js, Eclipse

Project Length: 1 Week
What is it?
This is a visualization of my commute time for one month as I traveled to and from downtown Ann Arbor by bus and car. This was done for my Information Visualization class and we were tasked with taking tracking personal data and visualizing it in a meaningful way. I chose to track my various trips to and from downtown Ann Arbor. I wondered how consistent the buses were in getting me to and from where I needed to be. Unsurprisingly, driving was the quickest. Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, I found that my trip length was almost always the same time (about 26 minutes) except for around rush hour (4 - 6 PM) where trips could take up to an hour. This particular visualization was meant to allow exploration between different factors. Updating the smaller graphs as options changed was also a key part of making the visualization engaging and meaningful.
See it!
Try it out here.
UX Designer Education Team Project
Super Readers
A design document for a game that teaches elementary school students how to read. The system continues to support learners from Kindergarten through 5th grade and grows with the student, always providing learning objectives that map to real world use. Students become superheroes and help their city gain their stolen words back from a nefarious villain.
Winter 2011

Role: Designer

Course: Principles of Software Design for Learning

Technology: Photoshop

Project Length: 4 Months (semester-long project)
What is it?
The Adventures of the Super Readers is the design for a touch-enabled game that allows students to improve their reading skills. Students become super heroes that help a city that's had all of its words scrambled by a nefarious villain. It is intended to be an aide to teachers and parents, engaging students from Kindergarten through 5th Grade. The game grows with the children and continues to work on skills that the Common Core State Standards recommend.
What did I do?
As a team, we all designed word games that could be used in the game to teach word skills. We researched the Common Core State Standards and what students would learn at each grade. We also did comparisons with other games we found that aimed to teach similar things. We created sketches for our game including the setup interface, the game world, game characters, and for the mini-games.
See it!
Read more about it at the design blog.
UX Designer Education Team Project
Sweetland Center for Writing Website Evaluation
A class project for a client that wanted their website evaluated. This project involved user surveys, interviews,
Winter 2011

Roles: Project Manager, Interviewer, Usability Tester

Course: Evaluation of Systems & Services

Client: Sweetland Center for Writing

Technology: Illustrator, Photoshop, Camtasia

Project Length: 4 Months (semester-long project)
What is it?
The Sweetland Center for Writing is a department at the University of Michigan that offers services and classes to students that focus on improving their writing skills. The website serves as a portal for students to sign up for advising appointments and to learn more about writing requirements and classes. My team evaluated their site by performing many different usability studies. We created an interaction map, developed scenarios and personas, performed interviews, ran a comparative analysis, heuristic evaluations, conducted a survey with more than 2,100 responses, carried out usability tests with current students, and developed mock ups for potential site enhancements.
See it!
View the full interaction map here.
UX Designer Education Team Project
Summers-Knoll Digital Portfolio
A class project for a client that desired a system for student portfolios. This project involved contextual inquiry, user interviews, sketched lo-fi prototypes, a working hi-fi prototype, and user testing.
Fall 2010

Roles: UX Designer, Interviewer, Usability Tester

Course: Interaction and Interface Design

Client: Summers Knoll Elementary School

Technology: Axure RP, Photoshop, SVN

Project Length: 4 Months (semester-long project)
What is it?
The Summers-Knoll Digital Portfolio is a system designed to allow teachers to easily save students works into a digital portfolio. The system is designed with the teacher in mind, allowing them to easily manage each portfolio, the media associated with it, the student's own reflections, and the teacher's assessment of the work. The system was designed over the course of one semester at the behest of Summers-Knoll Elementary administration. The Hi-Fi prototype was created using Axure RP.
What did I do?
I participated in each step with my team, crafting interview questions, putting together the affinity wall, developing personas and scenarios, sketching parts of the lo-fi prototype, and leading development of the hi-fi prototype because of my experience with development.
See it!
Try the Hi-Fi prototype here and view all of the deliverables here (Affinity Wall, Personas & Scenarios, Lo-Fi Prototype, User Testing).
Education Solo Project
Touch Screens in Education
This is an exploration of current use of touch screens in education. Not much research is available yet because its use in classrooms is relatively new but already there are encouraging uses.
Fall 2010

Course: Transformative Technology in the Classroom

Project Length: 3 Weeks
What is it?
Throughout the semester, my class explored the use of technology in the classroom. What we found out is that a lot of different technologies claim to aid learning but what we found is that most can't live up to this claim. For my final paper, I examined touch screen technology and its educational promise. What I found is that for the most part, touch screens are not yet transforming the way we learn. There is a lot of promise though, especially in the realm of group collaboration and for special needs students, particularly those with Autism.
Read it!
Get the paper here. You can also read my Conceptual Framework exploring what I think makes a technology truly transformative.
UX Designer Developer Solo Project
Kerrytown BookFest
As a volunteer, I helped design and develop the BookFest's web presence while providing admin features that helped the BookFest Council stay organized.
Fall 2009

Roles: UX Designer, Developer

Client: Kerrytown BookFest Board

Technology: WordPress, PHP, MySQL, Eclipse

Project Length: 1 Month
What is it?
The Kerrytown BookFest is an annual celebration of books. It goes beyond just what we read, but also the science behind binding, the authors behind the books, explorations of the paper used to print on, and so much more. In 2009, the Kerrytown BookFest was looking to upgrade their web presence. As a volunteer, I remade their website with a custom WordPress theme and a custom back-end to help the Board track exhibitors, speakers, volunteers, and events. This project involved using Flash, PHP, SQL, JavaScript, and HTML/CSS.
See it!
While the visuals have since changed by another's hand, much of the layout and backend remains in use. See it here.
UX Designer Developer Team Project
Typography
A class project about the use of Typography around Ann Arbor that explored how to use technology to present topics in an engaging manner.
Fall 2008

Roles: UX Designer, Lead Developer

Course: Technology and the Humanities

Technology: Photoshop, Flash, ActionScript

Project Length: 1 Month
What is it?
The goal of this project was to use technology to teach something in an interesting way. My group tackled typography and its use in signage. We took examples found around Ann Arbor, MI and created a map to navigate around to the examples. Each example names the font if we could find it and explains what feelings the font evokes. It also addresses the effectiveness of the font in relation to the message the business or building is trying to present.
What did I do?
Using Adobe Flash, I developed the website and co-designed the look and feel with one of my teammates as the others collected and refined the content of the site. Together, we created an interactive site that lets the user select different locations around the city to learn about the particular typography used.
See it!
See the site here.
UX Designer Developer Team Project
Squirrel Sense
A fast-paced multiplayer action game that has you defending your territory and stealing acorns from other squirrels.
Fall 2009

Roles: UX Designer, Developer, Graphics & Audio Designer

Course: Computer Game Design and Development

Technology: Photoshop, GarageBand, C++, Visual Studio, Zenilib, SVN

Project Length: 1 Month
What is it?
Squirrel Sense is a fast-paced action video game for the PC. You choose your squirrel and compete against up to three other players. The goal is to collect and hide as many acorns as you can. Helping you to do this is your Squirrel Sense, which reveals buried acorns in enemy territory and your Squirrel Scream which chases off other squirrels. The squirrel you choose affects the strength of those two powers and also the speed at which you can move and the number of acorns you can carry. Squirrel Sense was written in C/C++ and uses the proprietary ZeniLib engine.
What did I do?
I was in charge of the graphics, the user interface, and the user testing while all group members worked on the game design. In order to test it, we brought it in front of the University of Michigan's WolvSoft club of game developers multiple times. We recorded their actions and what they were saying as we had them play the game.
See it!
Learn more about the game here and get the game here.
UX Designer Developer Solo Project
GravEATy
An arcade-style game I developed centered around eating as much food as possible so that gravity pulls you back to earth before you float away forever!
Fall 2009

Roles: UX Designer, Developer

Course: Computer Game Design and Development

Technology: Visual Studio, C++, ZeniLib, Photoshop

Project Length: 2 Weeks
What is it?
GravEATy is an arcade game for the PC that pits you against the sudden loss of gravity's affect on you. The people on the ground are trying to help you by throwing food at you for you to eat. Why? Because you need to gain weight and fast before you're lost to space. GravEATy was written in C/C++ and uses the proprietary ZeniLib engine.
See it!
Get the game here.
UX Designer Developer Education Team Project
Vocabulearner
A Windows Desktop Widget intended to help users easily look up and remember definitions of words.
Winter 2009

Roles: UX Designer, Developer

Course: Computer Science Major Design Project

Technology: HTML, CSS, Javascript, Microsoft SQL Server, Photoshop, SVN

Project Length: 1 Month
What is it?
Vocabulearner is a tool that aims to help you learn new vocabulary. It is a Windows Gadget that lets you look up definitions and save them or your own custom definition. Then, at user defined times, Vocabulearner pops up a little quiz to test what you've learned. It's also possible to look through your saved definitions for review. Vocabulearner was written using SQL, JavaScript, and HTML/CSS.
What did I do?
I designed the look and feel while implementing the front-end HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
UX Designer Education Team Project
The Ultimate Machine
A design document describing a game aimed at developing a student's sense of physics as they build machines, race, tweak their designs, and win.
Winter 2009

Role: UX Designer

Course: Video Games & Learning

Project Length: 1 Month
What is it?
The Ultimate Machine is a design document for a game that focuses on teaching middle school aged children about physics. The child builds a plane, boat, or car and races them against other children or computer players. A parental-figure provides advice to the player in order to make a better machine. There would also be an online community for children to discuss and share their designs.

The game takes advantage of different aspects of behavioral, cognitive, and constructivist learning theory in order to support the student's learning. Behavioral learning theory is employed through positive and negative reinforcement. Cognitive learning theory is also relied upon through tutorials and providing access to information on all the machine parts and physics topics. Most importantly, constructivism is used as continued success in the competitions relies on continuing to use knowledge learned from past competitions while new wrinkles are introduced.
See it!
Read it here.









Thomas J Piggott
thomas@thomaspiggott.com
Profile
User Experience Designer with a strong technical background. Passionate about crafting great user experiences. Interested in education and exploring how we can improve learning through technology.
Skills
  • Usability Testing
  • Heuristic Evaluation
  • Project Management
  • Prototyping
  • Wireframing
  • Contextual Inquiry
Software
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adobe Flash
  • Axure RP
  • Eclipse
  • Microsoft Visual Studio
Coursework
  • Interface & Interaction Design
  • Contextual Inquiry
  • Technology in the Classroom
  • Choice Architecture
  • Social Influence
  • Educational Software Design
  • Video Games & Learning
  • Video Game Development
  • Evaluation of Systems & Services
  • User Generated Content
  • Recommender Systems
  • Data Visualization
  • Personal Informatics
  • Game Theory & Microeconomics
Professional Experience
COSMOS MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM
Singapore Project Lead
2012-Present
  • Oversaw the design, development, and deployment of 2 apps to 350 students and 10 teachers for daily classroom use.
  • Performed classroom observations around student use of our two apps, MyDesk and MessageBoard
  • Performed interviews with teachers and students to better understand their use of our apps
GOORU
User Experience Design Intern
2011-2012
  • Helped design educational resource sharing platform “Gooru”
  • Designed and implemented system for administrators to create and edit content
  • Designed and developed the Ednovo.org website
  • Designed interactive tutorials and help center to aid users with system
  • Designed and developed Insights visualizations to help users improve their learning and use of the system
MENLO INNOVATIONS
Software Developer
2010-2012
Software Development Intern
2008-2009
  • Worked as part of an Agile software development team using extreme programming and test driven development practices
  • Assisted in implementation of a survey tracking system written in C#
  • Worked on industry-leading flow cytometry software written in Java
  • Developed internal iPhone project for drug prescription tracking
  • Developed company website using a heavily customized WordPress theme
  • Performed Quality Assurance. Devised functional, performance, load, and system integration tests
AMERICAN AXLE & MANUFACTURING
Quality Assurance Intern
2006-2007
  • Helped implement Oracle database system that identified rejected parts
  • Performed studies on manufacturing processes to improve productivity
  • Completed diagnostics on rejected parts to determine point of failure
Education
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - SCHOOL OF INFORMATION
Master of Science in Information
May 2012
Specialization in Human-Computer Interaction and Information Economics for Management
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
Bachelor of Science in Engineering
December 2009
Computer Science
Projects
See my portfolio