UX Researcher | Ph.D. in Informatics-HCI
Narrative Research
Diary Studies
Informational Practices in Brain Injury Self-Management
Fall 2016 - Present | Advisors - Dr. Erin Brady and Dr. Andrew Miller
Committee - Dr. Tammy Toscos, Dr. Tracy Gunter, Prof. Younbok Hong
Brain injury, a leading cause of death and disability around the world, was traditionally perceived to be localized damage with physicians primarily focusing on acute recovery. However, personal recovery lasts long after clinical recovery and has biopsychosocial effects. This work involves investigating technology-agnostic techniques using narrative research and formulating heuristics for designing effective data collection techniques for brain injury personal recovery.
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Wireframes of individualized data collection tools for brain injury self-management
Artifact analysis
Card Sort
Health Information Management in Informal Caregiving
Summer 2016 - Fall 2018 | Advisor - Dr. Richard Holden
Millions of Americans providing unpaid informal care to adult care recipients experience multiple unmet information needs and information management challenges. Managing health information for adult care recipients is an important part of this process as it is key to daily care management, communication, and decision-making on behalf of care recipients.
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This project used artifact analysis within design thinking framework to understand the current personal health information management (PHIM) practices in informal caregiving for adults with and without dementia and provide requirements for the design of informal caregiver health information management information technology (CHIM IT).
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Questionnaires
Interviews
Personality-targeted Gamification for Behavior Change
Spring 2014 - Summer 2016 | Advisor - Dr. Steve Voida
Gamified systems employ the use of motivational affordances in an effort to invoke positive, intrinsically motivating 'gameful' experiences that can result in altered behaviors. Prior research suggests that engagement by gamification may depend on personality traits such as introvert/ extrovert, emotional stability etc.
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This project used questionnaires to investigate the relationships among individuals’ personality traits and perceived preferences for various motivational affordances used in gamification to provide design suggestions for persuasive and gamified apps on targeting specific audiences based on personality traits.
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Shadowing
Questionnaires
ICU Data Visualization for Clinical Decision Support  Â
Fall 2013 - Spring 2016 | Advisor - Dr. Anthony Faiola
The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) has the highest annual mortality rate of any hospital unit. Studies show a relationship between clinician cognitive load and workflow, and their impact on patient safety and the subsequent occurrence of medical mishaps due to diagnostic error - in spite of advances in health information technology, e.g., bedside and clinical decision support (CDS) systems. This project aims to investigate the root causes of ICU error related to the effects of clinical workflow through shadowing and construct and validate a novel workflow model that supports improved clinical workflow, with goals to decrease adverse events, increase safety, and reduce intensivist time, effort, and cognitive resources.
The long-term objective is to apply this data to design the next generation of diagnostic visualization-communication (VizCom) system that improves intensive care workflow, communication, and effectiveness in healthcare.
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Immersion
Co-Design
Research and Design Intern
Summer 2016 | Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (Indianapolis IN)
I had a hybrid role between Exhibit research and evaluation and Interactive design departments with mentors from both the departments to guide me through the re-design of interactive digital exhibits. My job responsibilities:
Planning and implementing user experience and usage evaluation studies for four digital exhibits from Dinosphere.
Translate findings from evaluations into requirements, ideate design changes, create wireframes, and conduct a formative evaluation to guide the visual design.
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ESM
Report Writing
Effect of Smartphones on Flow in Everyday Life
Spring 2014 | Advisor - Dr. Anthony Faiola
Flow or optimal experience is a mental state of intrinsically rewarding concentration resulting in disappearing distractions, the disappearance of self-consciousness, and a distorted sense of time. To observe for the existence of smartphone dependency and its relationship to flow, mood, and the transformation of consciousness in everyday life, this study used Experiential Sampling Method (ESM) to collect subjective experiences of participants on items related to the three measures.
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