Kwerk
Kwerk is my passion at the moment, and still very much a work in progress. Inspired by my own difficulties structuring my time and keeping track of all of my goals when I began working from home, Kwerk is a self-employment game that doubles as a mindmapping tool. By color coding activities according to the kind of energy that it takes to get them done - maintenance energy, creative energy, intellectual energy, or spiritual energy - Kwerk enables you to see patterns in your actions in a manner similar to the way that Quicken enables you to see patterns in your spending. The point structure of the game is designed to reward balance and collaboration - tasks are worth more if they are a part of a balanced set, and if you combine forces with other people to form a set that is larger than you could have formed alone, the point value is multiplied. My goal is to design a tool that people can use to figure out a way to get over the fear of following their dreams, and begin seeing work as play.

The One Hour Essay Project
Inspired by my own difficulty finding time to write on topics of current events, politics, and culture, the One Hour Essay Project is an experiment with the following basic premise: a group of people commit to write one essay a month on a shared topic. They further commit to take only one hour to write this essay, with the full understanding that everyone involved is doing the same - so punch, not polish, is the point of the exercise. They can write at any time during the month, but they agree to submit their essay by the end-of-month deadline, and to adhere to the time limit. Once all of the essays are received, they are published side by side, and discussion will hopefully ensue.

Crowdisplay
The product of my participation in the Convivio Interaction Design Summer School in Edinburgh, Scotland, Crowdisplay is a distributed display framework intended for large festival environments. The idea is to scatter a collection of displays of various resolutions - from wall-sized high-resolution information portals to pixel-size lights on the sides of buildings and in the hands of individuals themselves - in order to create a new medium within which information can be transmitted and interaction facilitated at a variety of levels of engagement.

We explored several ways that such a framework could be used, and one prototype - of a game for crowd members to play - is shown below.

Click anywhere in the animation to begin.

Thinking Outside the Inbox (Master's Capstone Research)
Tagging systems provide the potential building blocks for a versatile, multi-dimensional email categorization system, but the idea of tagging does not come naturally to users with a lifelong familiarity with the hierarchical folder model, and the task of tagging is time-intensive and potentially overwhelming, even to users who understand what they are doing. For my capstone research, I explored ways that the burden of tagging might be reduced through thoughtful interface design, and suggested strategies that designers should consider when prototyping and building tagging systems in the email environment.

Don't Leave Home Without Me!
Conceived in response to a series of surveys which revealed that many people have a difficult time remembering to bring everything with them when they leave the house, Don't Leave Home Without Me is a context-sensitive reminder system that alerts you when you are leaving the house without everything you need. By combining a simple doorside interface for tagging necessary objects and a user-driven signaling system to avoid false alarms when simply going outside to enjoy the view, Don't Leave Home Without Me explores a new way of tackling an old problem by leveraging pervasive scanner technologies that will likely soon be a part of all of our lives. The full design document, with a summary of our process and conclusions as well as sample sketches, can be seen here.

Computer Lab Usage Visualization
In response to requests from the University Information Technology Services department at Indiana University, I was one of a team of designers who conceived of and prototyped a range of Information Visualization strategies for helping to better assess the computer lab usage across campus in order to inform future decisions regarding lab size and placement. I was responsible for the development of a Javascript/DHTML prototype of one of our concepts, and our work was published as a part of the SPIE 2007 Electronic Imaging conference.

i-you
After extensive observations of the administrative and secretarial staff at Indiana University, I learned that a common issue facing the community is a difficulty with remembering and retrieving web addresses. Several websites across campus are used on an occasional basis for a variety of services, but their names are often difficult to remember, they sometimes move between uses, and the built-in search capabilities for the IU web system are weak. "I-you" was develeoped as an experiment in social bookmarking that was designed to address this problem by allowing users to associate specific search results with a query string of their choice. If, for instance, an office worker refers to a site as "check pickup", i-you will associate the site with that string rather than requiring the worker to remember "accountable mail" or a complex "mailsvcs.iu.edu" address. Keeping this association in a search engine context rather than requiring users to maintain a personal record reduces workload and creates the potential for information to disperse across the community.

Meeteetse: Social Wellbeing through Place Attachment
My team submission to the SIG CHI International Student Design Competition, where we were invited to present at the annual conference as semi-finalists, Meeteetse builds a connection between individual homes and a local community center that is designed to encourage active involvement in community events and create a support network for those who might otherwise be isolated by the effects of old age. The design consists of several parts that work together to build this connection. A location-aware digital camera and a large public display are integrated into the community center to strengthen shared identity. A touch-screen scheduling device and a digital picture frame create a tangible community presence in seniors' homes. Together, these components enhance social well-being and lower the barrier for participation in the community. Our final conference paper is viewable here.