My capstone project at CMU involved a usability analysis and redesign of the PACS system used by Radiologists to analyze MRI and CAT scan imagery. We conducted extensive data collection and analysis in several hospital settings in Pennsylvania and Baltimore, did an extensive literature review to understand past work in the space, constructed paper and pencil prototypes for testing with Radiologists in their work environment, created a fully interactive prototype, and ultimately filed two patents with GE based on our work.
Tablet Math Whiz is a Tablet PC based math practice system for elementary schools. My team conducted a usability evaluation of the existing system in an elementary school in rural Pennsylvania. We applied contextual inquiry, heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, keystroke level modeling, think-aloud studies, and participatory design exercises to develop detailed models of the holistic context of use of the Math Whiz system, and redesigned the system based on our findings. Many of our recommendations have been incorporated into the deployed product and are now in use in elementary school classrooms every day.
Based on the application of a variety of both empirical and analytic usability methods, my team documented usability problems in Google's Blogger weblog software and redesigned the product based on our findings.
Armed with volumes of data from our analyses, we attempted to redesign Blogger to better support users’ workflow and to fix outstanding usability problems we uncovered. Notable observed problems included confusion about the difference between editing modes (raw HTML, WYSIWYG rich text, preview mode), general navigation problems within the site, and difficulties while inserting links and images into posts.