work
Apple - My Support Profile
I am the lead designer of My Support Profile, a web-application for managing the support activity of your Apple products. I was involved with the project from concept through implementation.
The following year, I was the lead designer for an effort to localize the site for eight different countries in five languages. Support offerings and content differ by country of residence and other customer attributes. I designed solutions enabling the application to only present relevant content to each customer. This way, all customers have an experience that feels like the site was designed specifically for them, rather than just translated for their country.
Apple - Troubleshooting Assistant Redesign
As a summer intern, my project was to redesign the online troubleshooting assistant (TSA) module. The old module was designed for one specific issue, but was being used for many. My design has expanded functionality and is both modular and scalable; it can accommodate most issues and many languages. Every new TSA will use this design .
Though I now focus on other projects, I continue to create all the images for new troubleshooting assistants, and work with other teams to make sure content is clear and helpful. So far, we have created more than 25 new TSAs.
Thesis Project: Snackbot Sound
The Snackbot is a snack delivering robot created by Carnegie Mellon University. For my thesis project, I designed two groups of sounds to be used by the Snackbot to interact with its customers. I also designed the accompanying gestures, scenarios and speaker enclosure. My goal was to use non-speech sounds to create a desirable product character that users enjoy interacting with in the long term. I then planned & executed a user study to evaluate my designs. This book details my process.
I co-authored a paper detailing the project with Jodi Forlizzi. I presented this paper at the Design and Emotion 2010 conference. This poster explains the project.
Mine Safety Appliances
I worked in a team of 7, comprised of engineers, product designers, industrial designers, and business people to develop safety equipment for firefighters. Our product prevents overexertion through the real time sensing, transmission, and display of biometric data for remote monitoring.
I was responsible for exploratory research, interviews, scenarios, personas, UI design and evaluative user research. I contributed to the user definition, problem finding, benchmarking, opportunity analysis, product definition, competitive analysis, patent research, concepts, prototyping and presentations.
Markit
Microsoft and Motorola challenged our team of four to design a mobile device application that helps people learn in context. We began by defining the problem and audience. Next we conducted exploratory research involving interviews, observation, and benchmarking. We then conducted generative research involving a participatory design session, participant journaling, personas and scenarios. We designed a paper prototype, and tested it with users in a usability lab. Finally, we refined the concept and visual design, along with crafting a video sketch illustrating the use of the product, and a final presentation.
The end result is a product called Markit, which is designed to help people make informed purchases while grocery shopping. I was responsible for personas, scenarios, product name and the script and audio for the video sketch. I contributed to the research, ideation, architecture, evaluation and presentation.
Flirtastic *2008 ADAA Finalist!*
I worked in a team of five to design a social networking website, utilizing video messaging to connect people and promote flirting.
I was responsible for interviews, evaluative research and the product name. Paul and I created the video sketch , for which I wrote the script, storyboard, found the actors, recorded and edited the videos and composed an original piece of music.
I contributed to the design, architecture, functionality, graphic design and presentation. Download our final presentation to see our process. We also made an interactive prototype.
sound
I am very interested in perception and psychoacoustics. These pieces are from an art class where we explored the connection between sound and vision.Dear Spaceship
My class was asked to create an audio track to accompany this video clip. I was thinking about some of the principles we had covered, like the use of offscreen (also known as non-diegetic) sound to give immersive realism to the audio. Offscreen sound allows you to shape the world around the action. Here I used it to continue action when the plane crashes, and to show that help is on the way, using the air-raid siren.
I enjoy creating sounds for things that don’t really exists. No one knows what spaceships and lasers sound like, so I came up with novel sounds that still fit within the expectations set by other alien movies.
Silence or music with no sound effects can help to emphasize moments in film. I think of it as switching to the emotional soundtrack of the characters. The song at the end is by Imogen Heap, and I must give SNL credit for inspiring me to use her song based on their sketch "dear sister" a parody of an episode on the OC.
Kung Fu Synchresis
When sound and image events occur in close temporal proximity, our minds automatically connect the events, even if it defies logic. This phenomena is often refered to as synchresis, a term created by film ciritc and composer Michel Chion.
My class was given a strange audio track to which we were to add dynamic image. I spent hours listening to the track on loop as I surfed youtube looking for something that exposed the phenomena.
Events only occasionally line up, but our minds fill in the rest to make the whole thing work. The audio was unedited, and the video was only slowed in one spot near the end.
Sound For Static Image
My class was asked to create sound for nine different static images. I used a combination of convention, association, and intuition to design these sounds.
Some sounds are samples from music and TV, like the knee joint and the transformers sounds. Others are from my personal sound library which I then manipulated, like the glass, explosion, bubbles, and heart beat. The rest I composed using Reason, like the drum, chord, and ants.
Interactive Giant Steps
With much help, I wrote my first computer program, using the Processing language. I created a unique visualization of music theory, mapping color to chord tone function, rather than the more traditional mapping of color to pitch. Further, I mapped time as a series of concentric ellipses radiating from the center out. To add clarity and interest, I made the visualization interactive, allowing the user to select individual chords and click to hear them. This pdf descirbes my process and what I learned in greater detail.
music
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Circle by New Spell 3:19
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Unstable Ground by New Spell 3:47
More can be found at the New Spell website.
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Composite Reel 4:01
This is a mix of eight tracks, in thirty second excerpt form.
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Finga' Breakin' 5:15
This tune is my favorite. Finga' Breakin' is a funky tune written with Reason. It involves samples I manipulated and features my upright playing, recorded direct via Pro Tools. In a live setting, I play my part with a DJ scratching, while another person manipulates the Reason tracks.
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Shadow Space :51
This ambient work was created entirely with Reason. It can repeat infinitely and could be used as a background.
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The Traveler 4:06
Written in an Arabic mode, this eastern flavored piece was created using Reason, Recycle, and Pro Tools. I used Reason to write everything except the bass. I recorded myself playing upright using microphones into Pro Tools. I then used Recycle to make samples of myself into an instrument in Reason. The guitar solo in the second section will be live, loosely based on that melody and continuing on, most likely flowing into another song.
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November 3:10
This piece was written entirely using Reason. Eventually, sampled live strings will replace the synthesizer. I wrote the vocoder melody with a human voice in mind. This composition was a percussive experiment; I wrote the drum parts by arranging samples from several drum kits together. The piece will continue on with improvisation and a return to the vocoder melody.
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O Christmas Tree 2:45
This is from a studio album, Rob Dorn’s Wonderland, I was hired to play on in 2006. It is a well recorded example of my upright playing with a quartet.
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Solar 2:27
This is a live Minidisk recording from a private party gig I did in 2007 with the incomparable Jeff Parker (Tortoise) on guitar. I try and record as many of my gigs as I can; it is a valuable learning tool.
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Armenaki 4:03
I have was a member of The Greek Tycoons for six years. This is from our live album, Greek Tycoons Live, recorded at a Greek festival in San Antonio, TX in 2005. I'm playing electric bass on this track, OPA!