Towards clarity
User Experience Design and Research Portfolio (Work in progress...)
About me
“It makes me feel guilty that anybody should have such a good time doing what they are supposed to do. ”
- Charles Eames
For me, the process of starting with a hazy picture, working through it as a process of observation, reflection and intention to achieve greater clarity is very a engaging challenge. Design and Design research give me plenty of opportunities to tackle such ambiguity. As I am a student of design, this is something I look forward to do over and over again in my career.
A bit about my background: In June 2010 I graduated with a Masters in Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. Prior to that, I was a design intern at Yahoo! Bangalore. I also have a post grad diploma in User Interface design. With that and my undergrad background in information and communication technologies, I possess a good mix of design skills, an understanding of technology and how people use it .
- Pallavi Damera
skills
Courses
Design & Research
- Prototyping
- Iterative design process
- Data visualization
- Information architecture
- Verbal protocol analysis
- Usability testing
- Survey design
- Field studies
- Interviews
- Content analysis
- Basic statistics
Technical
- Flash
- Photoshop
- InDesign
- xHTML
- CSS
- jQuery
- SPSS
- Audacity(sound editing)
projects
GreenBean
Goal: Iterative design and test of a mobile app that helps shoppers make greener buying decisions.
Method: Iterative design and evaluation using several prototyping (Flash to Android application) and evaluation methods.(Heuristic evaluation, online testing, in lab usability tests)
My role: Group (of 5) project, involved in designing, developing help content, user testing and documenting.
SwitchBack
(Work in progress...)
Goal: Creating document model for reading between easy to read 'lite' material and indepth 'study' material.
Method: Design phase, writing phase followed by user testing of paper prototypes.
My role: Doing this project as a Research group member as well as an individual class project. Done: brainstorming, lo-fi prototyping, design specs and video prototype
Abilities of Robots
Goal: Study public perception of capabilities of robots, and how they are shown in movies.
Method: In-lab surveys and content analysis of robot characters.
My role: Research group(of 4) member. Was part of study design, data coding, collection and writing.
HRI and Arts workshop 2010: Kriz, S., Damera, P., & Porter, J., A place for fictional robots in HRI research?
[Accepted] 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication:Kriz, S., Ferro, T., Damera, P., & Porter, J. Evaluating Interactional Expectations: The Influence of Fictional Depictions of Robots
Expert Intelligence Analysis
(Work in progress...)
Goal: Study the cognitive patterns in an expert's intelligence analysis.
Method: Took a case study and grounded theory approach. Validated observed themes by double coding.
My role: Research assistant, involved in literature review, experimental design, collecting and coding data and writing the paper.
KMyMoney
Goal: Find the usability issues in 2 features (transactions and budget) of an open source personal finance management tool.
Method: In-lab usability testing
My role: Group(of 2) project.Involved in the end to end process of usability testing.
Mentions in opensource community: On KDE Promo , on Money master Alvaro
FlickrFame
(Work in progress...)
Goal: To understand what methods people use on Flickr to gain visibility to their photos.
Method: Structured interviews- transcribed and analyzed.
My role: This is a class (group of 5) project in a course on Computer mediated communication. Every member is involved in all aspects of the project from writing the project proposal to presenting the findings.
Search Behaviors
Goal: Find patterns in user behaviors and users strategies in vertical search (job, shopping and travel search).
Method: In context, think-aloud studies on participant's current search interests in these verticals.
My role: Design research intern, at Yahoo! Bangalore. Independently conducted entire research.
Railway Information Kiosk
Goal: Design a touch-screen rail route information kiosk.
Method: Field observations and iterative design with peer critique.
My role: Group (of 3) project. Involved in user studies, landscape analysis, design process and developing flash prototypes.
iPad for AAC device
Goal: To study how iPad could be useful as an Augmentative and Assistive Communication(AAC) device for people with motor and speech imapairments.
Method: 4 Case studies, in the field, semi structured interviews and observation of task perfomance.
My role: Group (of 2) project. Involved in all aspects.
Microsoft Firenze Competition'10
Goal: The project briefs cannot be disclosed due to NDA. They dealt with problem solving as a collaborative effort between Business, Design and Technology.
Method: We worked on 2 projects: one was for 5 weeks, with a team of 4 students from across UW and second was a day long project, with a team formed of university winners (top 20 finalists of 150 participants) from 5 different universities.
My role: In both the projects, I contributed to design (ideation, wireframes) and design research (design of protocols) and handled the Technical aspects completely.
Quantum Cryptography: Enhancement of Shor's Algorithm
Goal: I worked on how wavelet transform can enhance Shors algorithm.
Method: A big part of this project has been understanding various quantum computation algorithms.
My role: I tried to bring in my understanding of linear algebra and matrices, signal processing and physics all together to think about quantum computation.
ECG derived respiratory signals
Goal: Using signal processing techniques to derive respiratory signal out of the ECG signal.
Method: The different methods studied were: 1. Angle of Mean Cardiac Electrical Axis by multi lead ECGs, 2. Wavelet Transform of ECG and, 3. Adaptive Filtering Techniques. Each of the methods were implemented using Matlab.
My role: I worked on Adaptive Filtering Techniques.