User Experience Research Ph.D. Intern

Google

Summer 2023

METHODS: Systematic literature review of 576 academic publications distilled into a corpus of 60 papers containing examples, case studies, and prototypes related to discovery and learnability of assistive technology (AT) with AI/ML and semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight people with disabilities.

RESEARCH GOALS:  Through this research, PwD expressed experiences, insights, thoughts, and possibilities for AI/ML risks and harms for themselves and/or their community.  

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: This study aimed to explore the perceptions of people with disabilities (PwD) on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and how both could impact or improve the discovery and learnability of assistive technology (AT).  

RESEARCH INSIGHTS: Issues with discovering AT or accessibility options in addition to AT with poor learnability prevent or disrupt adoption, ease of use, and continued use as needed/desired for PwD who use AT.  Determining how to leverage AI/ML to improve discoverability and learnability in AT while taking into consideration how PwD understand and perceive them will make for higher rates of adoption and satisfaction with AT. 

Doctoral Candidate 

University of Colorado Boulder

Summer 2023 - Spring 2024

METHODS:  The research involved my facilitation of two sets of three speculative co-design workshops, six in total, pre-design activities, and a post-workshop questionnaire.  Read the dissertation here.

RESEARCH GOALS: My dissertation research allowed Black women, femmes, and non-binary people to examine current communication technologies and envision future iterations to provide themselves and their community with ideas, insights, and directions for better designs and experiences communicating with technology.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: How do Black women, femmes, and non-binary people imagine the future of technology? What are their ethical concerns for current technologies?

RESEARCH INSIGHTS: Community members together developed digital prototype artifacts that represented the vision and value of future technologies that serve them and their communities which can also inspire affordances and designs for other marginalized communities.

Community members also examined current communication technology and envision future iterations to provide ideas, insights, and directions for better designs and experiences.  Members crafted a narrative based on the Black Mirror series and reacted to the aforementioned artifacts. 

UX Design Research Intern

Substantial

Summer 2022

METHODS: I facilitated a 45 minute Black Mirror Writers Room Exercise group workshop with seven designers and researchers from Substantial.

RESEARCH GOALS:  Guide the technologists in ethical speculation to envision near future sociotechnical harms in the style of a Black Mirror episode synopsis. 

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: How might today’s technologies distribute societal harms, which people or groups will be most impacted, and how might we avoid these futures?

RESEARCH INSIGHTS:  The researchers and designers left the workshop having acquired a new framework and tool for assessing the technologies they build and contribute to for potential harm and outsized impact.

UX Design Research Intern

Substantial

Summer 2022

METHODS: Recruited seven undergraduate STEM faculty who taught marginalized students across Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Tribal Colleges, and Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). The research involved an hour-long interview and a half-hour follow-up interview with all seven faculty, and a speculative co-design session with six of the seven faculty.

RESEARCH GOALS: The EdTech company wanted to create professional development for faculty who teach marginalized students. 

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: What current professional development exists for faculty that aligns with the needs of their student populations?  What professional development do the faculty wish they had?   

RESEARCH INSIGHTS: STEM faculty wanted discipline specific and affordable teaching resources that help students learn the material without requiring too much time or effort to incorporate into the classroom. When asked to consider ideal teaching resources for themselves, faculty overwhelmingly gravitate toward in-class teaching tools that directly benefit students, support curriculum, or provide peer to peer or peer to faculty activities.

UX Design Research Intern

Substantial

Summer 2022

METHODS: Desk research and preliminary interviews with Substantial staff to determine what Equity-Centered Design (ECD) is and distill its pertinent elements. After synthesizing their responses, we began developing a prototype.  We received feedback from the design team between the low, mid, and high-fidelity prototypes before presenting our assessment at the end of the summer.  We used Figma and FigJam for the design, Miro for affinity mapping and synthesis, and Google Slides to share our completed project.

RESEARCH GOALS:  Work with design intern Sami Foell to create an ECD Maturity Assessment to assist designers and technologists in determining the alignment of their work to ECD.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: What is ECD? How can designers and teams measure their existing or potential work against an ECD framework? What is the best metric for assessing ECD?

RESEARCH INSIGHTS:  We created a tool that teams could use to gauge their alignment or lack thereof with ECD.  Here is the LinkedIn post from Substantial about our work.

Research Project Lead

University of Colorado Boulder

Spring and Summer 2020

METHODS: I led a team of four researchers to explore Black Twitter and the Negro Motorist Green Book.  18 participants were interviewed and over 75,000 tweets were collected using MAXQDA.  We also thematically analyzed 4 editions of the Green Book.  We used Taguette to conduct open coding and content analysis on the tweets.  

RESEARCH GOALS: This research explored the temporal and thematic connections between the Negro Motorist Green Book first published in 1936 - 1966 and the digital community of Black Twitter with a juxtaposition of the Green Book as a historical artifact and Black Twitter as its contemporary counterpart.  

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: What are the similarities and differences in how Black people built community and supported each other through the medium of the Green Book and Black Twitter? 

RESEARCH INSIGHTS: The Green Book and Black Twitter share benefits (such as community building, empowerment, and activism) and challenges (like dealing with racism, appropriation, and outsiders). Our design suggestions included audience segmentation, privacy controls, and involving historically disenfranchised perspectives into the technological design process. Four academic publications resulted from this research for Interactions Magazine, GROUP, CSCW, and Social Media + Society.

Research Assistant

NCWIT

Spring 2021

METHODS:  I synthesized the most used resources on the NCWIT site using Google Analytics.  Resources were then analyzed for corrections, updates, typos, inclusive language, broken links, and suggestions for fixes were made.  

RESEARCH GOALS: Revamp NCWIT resources and webpages, clean up broken links, errors, and exclusive language.   

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: What resources need to be updated and how?  

RESEARCH INSIGHTS:  I supported NCWIT in updating the resources and research on their website.  Mock-ups of suggestions for improving specific online resources were created using Google Drawings.  Finally, presentations to two different stakeholder groups within the organization were made to outline my process, progress, and suggestions.

Research Consultant

City of Boulder, CO

Fall 2021

METHODS: Assisted project manager and project team with qualitative research design for data analysis.  After outlining an open coding protocol and training the group to use it as a process, a timeline was created and I led the team in discussions about codes.  I and Samantha Dalal, another graduate student, facilitated code collapsing into themes for the project manager to use in the report for the first stage of engagement.  Finally, a draft survey tool was designed for the second engagement window of the project using the Likert scale, multiple-choice, and open-ended questions.

RESEARCH GOALS: Assess and analyze survey responses from Boulder citizens about their values, hopes and concerns with law enforcement. 

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: How can Boulder county approach police reform in consideration of the community’s needs and perspectives?

RESEARCH INSIGHTS: The qualitative data for the survey highlighted safety concerns and altercations with police in Boulder County that were compliments to quantitative research in the development of values and focus areas for the project.  Here is a link to the Reimagine Policing project.

“C-mail” is not an app and cannot be added to your phone that way.  It is a website designed to be used from a desktop or laptop computer and not mobile devices in order to discourage the constant pressure of always on and available email.  This feature begins by taking input from the person using the product and allows them to set working hours.  When emails come in outside of working hours, they are “held” until working hours begin.  When emails are sent outside of working hours, the option to schedule send that email for a time within working hours is offered.  Also, a signature message is created in all emails with helper default text that can be edited which helps to manage expectations around sending and receiving emails for this person.

The retirement app is an app that allows people to save for retirement and track how they are aligning with their retirement savings goals.  The app takes in information like desired retirement age and annual retirement savings and calculates an estimate for the annual, monthly, and weekly amount that person would need to save in order to reach their retirement goal.  The app displays a meter that denotes the number of consecutive contributions the person has made to their retirement savings as a streak.  The longer the streak, the more animated the meter becomes.  The app also displays statistics about the person’s current retirement savings and their relation to their retirement goal.  Finally, the savings goals and statistics of other people who have opted in to share their stories with others on the app are available to see as inspiration.  The person using the app can connect with friends and family to see whatever information their friends and family have opted in to share.

Notifications from the Get Out and Vote app will remind people who use the app several times before voter registration is due if they are not registered.  Once registered, the app will notify the person using the app when their ballot has been mailed or in places without mail ballots provide a map of all polling locations within their area as soon as those details are available.

A “game” that actually has people training a data set for a machine learning algorithm which essentially puts Re-CAPTCHA images and text for people to categorize. The “game” is designed to keep people playing as long as possible and actually earn the game designer money. Each image or text will have a “worth up to value” that completing it will be worth. After a random number of categorizations, the person would receive a random payout from the amount banked from each Re-CAPTCHA completed. The “game” would also include a ranking for the person playing against all other players determined by a combination of the number of Re-CAPTCHAs completed and the number of payouts received. I would sell the categorized Re-CAPTCHA images to companies like Google and Meta which would fund the random payouts and set up the game’s backend to never payout the full amount of the banked payout (only up to 60%).

Using introjected regulation and social norms, this intervention motivates students not to skip class by having an attendance buddy system. Each student is paired with another student throughout the entire class. If both students are present for a class session, the professor looks to build intrinsic motivation by providing positive verbal feedback to the pair. The pair are meant to motivate each other to attend classes and encourage one another to overcome demotivation and make it to class. The intervention is an addition to Canvas under “People” with a tab labeled “Attendance Partner”. A message shows the pair how well they are doing with attendance compared to their classmates. If they are doing Good or Better, there is an audio message from the professor that the students can listen to.