Usability and Experience Design
Usability and Experience Design
My interest in Usability Engineering and Experience Design has resulted in the following projects and articles.
My Projects in Usability and Experience Design
My History with Usability and Experience Design
Creating usable systems is a strong interest of mine. I particularly enjoy the coupling between cognitive science and software design, but my interest in usability even extends out of software and into devices like your kitchen appliances or automobiles. I talk a lot about usability on my blog.
I assimilate everything I can about usability: I read AlertBox, Jakob Nielsen's bi-weekly column on Web usability, as well as other work and books by him; I have followed Alan Cooper through The Inmates are Running the Asylum, personas, and interaction design, as well as his earlier stuff on general user interface design; and I keep up with Jared Spool's articles and the work of his company, User Interface Engineering.
My big interest right now is end-user programming, which has a huge role in Project Antares. I'm also interested in new notions of file systems; and innovative UI components that may improve productivity, such as pie menus (which I was into way before The Sims came out).
Experience Design is a broad topic. For me, it means creating interactive environments where people become a part of the action. I have previously used my experience design skill in creating Quadhazard, a theme for WPI's 5th Quadfest (the website doesn't reflect the theme), and The Unity Conspiracy, a theme and storyline for Midnight Madness, as well as other smaller venues where the point is to create a suspension of disbelief and a feeling of being immersed in a unique environment.