UX
I think of UX as the practice of ensuring that function, aesthetics, language and a deep understanding of others work together to make digital worlds people have faith in: it will work the way you expect it to work; it will forgive you when you make mistakes and show you how to find your way again; it will lead you down pathways you sought out and other ones you happily trot along because of (intentionally-designed) happenstance; all to make life easier, better, delightful.
My Process
Because I have come from an art practice, design, data analysis and data design background, I always find a way to translate complex ideas and clumsy research findings into crystal clear visual explanations so that the way to a solution is free of fog and uncertainty.
Every time I am working on an idea, or am trying to make sense of a lot of information, I try to turn it into a picture. Some people talk aloud to think through things. I doodle. It helps me work out how things are connected to one another while helping my team and clients understand context, problems and solutions at a deep level.
Skills
These are skills in my own toolkit. I also love helping others develop their own. See what I do for my design and technology community here.
User Research
User Research
Survey Design, Survey Analysis, Survey Reporting, Data Analysis, User Interviews, Contextual Inquiry, Usability Testing, Remote Testing
Ideation
Ideation
Feature Development, Facilitation, Requirements Gathering, Low-Fidelity Prototyping, Wireframing
Design
Design
High-Fidelity Prototyping, Interactive Prototyping, Interaction Design, User Interface Design, Data Visualisation, Data Journalism
Wordsmithing
Wordsmithing
Content Modeling, Content Strategy, Content Writing
Projects
Design a Superhero Team
FacilitationHot Air Balloon
FacilitationSelf Health
Design, User ResearchGuided Household Product Subscriptions
User Interface Design, User ResearchEtsy
Interaction Design, User ResearchHexey Reponsive Site
Interaction Design, User Interface Design, User ResearchHexey
Interaction Design, User Interface Design, User ResearchWake Up Dress Up
Logo Design, Mobile, User Interface Design, User Research, Visual DesignData Journalism
DataFloat
Interaction Design, Mobile, Museum Technology, User Interface Design, User Research, Visual DesignInformation Design
Data, Design
Awards
Shark’s Den Innovation Challenge Winner
September 2015. The University of Melbourne’s Research Bazaar hosted the Shark’s Den Innovation Challenge. As part of the challenge, participants from a diverse range of backgrounds (students, researchers, professionals) attended four weeks of 3D modeling training on Tinkercad. At the close of the training, groups of newly minted 3D modelers presented their designs at the 3D Printing Showcase to a panel of judges and a crowd of a few hundred people. Our team won the challenge with Self Health, an at-home cervical cancer test kit for women by women.
Fiddling around on Tinkercad
Alex Douglass-Bronner, Jackie Chang and I with Dr. Paul J. Mignone, the Shark’s Den Lead Organiser
Random Hacks of Kindness Winners
May 2015. Random Hacks of Kindness is Australia’s leading hackathon for social good. The group holds two annual hackathons for purpose-driven organisations to define social challenges for volunteer designers and technologists to solve. Our team of designers, developers won with Local Linguist, an Android app and a website, which allows on-the-ground researchers in East Timor-Leste to collect and analyze language data. The language samples that are collected are ultimately used to produce education resources for children whose primary language are not currently served by local schools.
Image by RHoK Australia
International Design and Communication Award
November 2014. Finalist in the Best App category of the 2014 International Design and Communication Awards for Float, an honor held for excellent design and communication initiatives across the museum sector throughout the world. Selected from among 96 applications from 76 candidates and 17 countries in 7 categories.
GovHack 2014 Awards
July 2014. GovHack is an annual Australia-wide hackathon which facilitates the mashup, reuse, and remix of open government data.
Our team was the Best Use of Victorian Government Data Runner-Up. We also won the Women of GovHack Award and The Best Crash Stats Hack Award for the interactive VicRoads platform we created with open data crash statistics through MapGuide, an open source mapping application. The Other Jackie on the team broke down our process and carried home the prizes for us while I was out of the country.
Toiling away. Cleaning open government data and trying our best to eat well…until we caved and ran out for a pile of fried chicken and fries.
She Hacks 2014
March 2014. Our team won the 2014 Runner-Up Prize at She Hacks, Australia’s first women and technology hackathon for creating Wake Up Dress Up, a mobile app concept that connected the morning weather to Melbourne’s design community. I spoke about my experience on The Fetch.
Jude, Quinnie and I finding our way with April’s guidance. Image by SheHacks.
Our beautiful 3D printed trophy, made with love by April Staines, the in-house 3D printing heroine.