(Year long, independent HCI capstone project)

Most information in several neighborhoods and educational campuses is generally available in many different ways like flyers, bulletin boards or online like social media sites, mailing lists etc. but is often delivered very late or in a manner that is easy to ignore. Another bottleneck is that most often, users only pay attention or are limited to information relevant to their workplace/building/school etc. and might miss out on several fun/important activities being held elsewhere on the premises.

Inspired from Apple's iBeacon tech and location/context aware research, Prox is a design concept that aims at rapid and context aware information disimmination via a localized network of LE Bluetooth beacons. ‘Prox’ runs on smartphones as a native app and listens for incoming notifications when the user is in proximity of a beacon.

Design Process

• Conceptual Design
• Personas and User Scenarios
• User Research and Requirements
• Gathering
• Rapid Sketching
• Participatory Design
• Iterative Wireframing and Paper Prototyping
• Cognitive Walkthroughs and User Testing
• Iterative High Fidelity Prototypes
• User Evaluation

Deliverable

A highly interactive prototype that has been refined over the course of the course timeline through multiple interations of design and feedback from real users, and detailed usability reports documenting the design process applied and findings from user evaluations.

Home Turf is a mobile app concept inspired from conventional “community notice boards” that allow people to connect with each other within a local community. Users in the proposed system will be able to request for shared rides, share /buy / sell items, display notices, seek help or relevant information with others in the community in the context any of the following settings: college dorm, workplace, apartment complex etc. Users can choose to remain selectively anonymous and participate in instant communication with neighbors which may to mutual exchange of personal details to facilitate an exchange or transaction.

Design Process

• Conceptualization
• Requiremets Gathering (Surveys, Informal interviews)
• Sketching
• Low-fidelity protyping (paper)
• Cognitive Walkthroughs
• Interactive Prototype (programmed using Android SDK + Eclipse)
• Usability Testing
• Evaluation and design recommendations

Deliverable

A detailed report documenting the entire design process from initial concept building to evaluation results from testing an interactive prototype with relevant users and proposed changes to fix design issues.

DressWiser is a smart-mirror concept that aims to serve as a personalised and effective assistant that helps overcome everyday dressing-up and related decision-making. With this goal in mind, the target audience includes all members of a household with an active lifestyle, average to high social interaction and who commute to work, school or social events. DressWiser is context and location aware and offers dressing recommendations, destination updates etc. based on the context of use and user's wardrobe. The “Primary” user group is young professionals and students, especially women (owing to a relatively larger wardrobe inventory to choose from). Users should ideally be somewhat familiar with smart device interaction using touch and gesture commands.

Design Process

• Conceptualization
• Requiremets Gathering (Surveys, Informal interviews)
• Sketching
• Low-fidelity protyping (paper)
• Cognitive Walkthroughs
• Interactive Prototype (HTML/CSS/JavaScript)
• Usability Testing
• Evaluation and design recommendations

Deliverable

A detailed report documenting the entire design process from initial concept building to evaluation results from testing an interactive prototype with relevant users and proposed changes to fix design issues.

This 3 week project was geared towards learning and designing a physical product prototype using the Arduino redboard. The focus of the project was on physical protottyping skills and using Arduino components. )

A number of table top games use multi-sided dice and it can really be annoying to deal with a number of die, specially in games such as Dungeons&Dragons etc. Our solution was a univeral die concept that could be rolled as any X-sided dice (2,4,6,8,10,20 etc).

The retain the experience of rolling an actual die, the product was designed such that it would offer a novel, yet slightly familiar experience. This was facilitated by simulating the rolling experience with a flex sensor to detect and measure a roll, audio feedback and an affordance that the device could be held and even used as a prop in the game.

Design Process

• Design Ideation
• Sketching
• Story boarding
• Gathering
• Physical Prototyping (with Arduino)
• User Testing

Deliverable

An interactive physical prototype that sufficiently demonstrates the use of physical prototyping skiils, usage of arduino components and tested with some users representing the target user profile.

This 3 week project was geared towards designing an interactive product prototype and while doing so, documenting the entire design process with a special focus at explaining design considerations, decisions and iterative prototyping to address key issues.

Wallfie is a large screen interactive photo wall, which can be used at the theme parks, malls' resting areas, or points of interests. The screen allows users to take personal and group photos with customizable selected backgrounds and accessories that can be selected and cycled through with gestures. To take a photo, all users on the screen say “Cheese!”. At the end of each session, the system prints a paper photo card with QR code that allows users to download their digital photo, and information how to receive a printed photograph. When no users are taking photos, the display defaults to a slideshow of photos of people who took pictures previously with the system.

Design Process

• Sketching
• Story boarding
• Paper Prototyping
• Cognitive Walkthroughs
• Interactive prototyping using Axure (and HTML/CSS)
• User Testing and Evaluation

Deliverable

An interactive physical prototype that sufficiently demonstrates the use of diverse prototyping skiils, a working interactive prototype refined over the course of the project duration with iterative testing and feedback.

Webapp prototype created as part of the online HCI course offered by Coursera and taught by Prof. Scott Klemmer (Stanford University) in 2012.

The online course served as a valuable introduction to HCI fundamentals and techniues. The course curriculum was as under:

• Heuristic Evaluation
• Introduction to HCI (HCI, Power of Prototyping, Evaluating Designs)
• Needfinding (Participant Observation, Interviewing, Other strategies)
• Rapid Prototyping (Paper prototypes, Wizard of Oz, Videos, Comparing Alternatives)
• Heuristic Evaluation
• Direct Manipulations and Representations (Mental models, Direct manipulation, Distributing cognition)
• Visual and Information Design (Typography, Reading and Navigating, Grids and Alignment, Visual Design)

Deliverable

An interactive prototype demonstrating the main screens and core funtionality of the proposed product.