Usability Engineering
INTERNSHIP AT LUNA IMAGING INCORPORATED
The company, interested in incorporating usability engineering into their existing application development cycle, hired me to create and execute an evaluation of the usability of their Internet application, LUNA, which was designed for Visual Resource Libraries, and museums. I evaluated the application according to the following research questions:
- How easy is the application to adopt?
- How easy is it to learn how to use the application?
To answer these questions I first established baseline of information about their users. This involved using the information collected from interviews and company statistics to develop user profiles, personas, and new survey instruments. Based on my findings I wrote and conducted phone interviews with clients about their patrons i.e. the application's end users. I then recruited a pool of representative end users and then using another survey I identified potential test participants. I wrote, conducted, analyzed an one-hour usability test of the application using UserVue and Morae Manager software packages. Synthesizing the test results with other information I collected, I made several design recommendations to the company. The company is making changes to LUNA before its second release in 2009. This internship is an example of my familiarity with usability engineering methods as well as my ability to devise and conduct research projects over several months, to draw conclusions and to document and present my results.
INTERNSHIP AT THE ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART
I worked with the Information Technology staff at the archive for five weeks in Washington D.C.. My supervisor conducted usability testing early in the year; my work dovetailed her efforts as most of my projects related to improving site usability. The projects ranged from writing a comprehensive usability report used to confirm test results, designing advanced search interfaces, revising a surveys for Smithsonian wide distribution, and designing an information system for use with the Smithsonian Photograph Initiative's Flickr account.