This was a project created by Julia Pavone, Lauren Meoli, Klare Frank, and Jian Li Zheng surrounding research and assessing the market for a new human-centered venture for the graduate-level class HCDE 538: Designing a Human Centered Venture.

Designing a New Venture – Wisdom Care

Remote work, or working from locations other than an organization or company’s main location is becoming increasingly common in the workplace today. The rapid development of communication and information technologies have only escalated the pervasiveness of remote work practices. Much about the experience of remote work from remote workers’ perspective, however, has yet to be understood especially when workers collaborate with one another.

Research Project – Collaboration in Remote Work

Last Fall I got to delve into the world of physical computing via Arduino for one of my grad school classes at the University of Washington. For this class, everyone got to choose their own project to work on (with most all of these being individual projects).

Building a physical git device with Arduino

The last major release of WCAG was in December 2008, probably around the time many of us were getting our first smartphones if you were really on top of new technology. (I didn't even get an iPhone until 2011). Jump to now, and most people, including my grandparents, have a smartphone and maybe an iPad.

WCAG 2.1: What’s new and why does it matter?

Fly Happy, a flight booking system, allows travelers to search flights by criteria such as available window seats, more legroom, and outlets available at seats. This method allows travelers to exclude uncomfortable or inconvenient flights.

Redesigning the flight booking experience

Treehouse Techdegrees is an in-depth program aimed at getting students skills to land jobs in the tech industry. Over the course of the program, students complete 12 peer-reviewed projects to create a polished portfolio.

Project-based Learning & the Techdegree Program

We’ve largely been tricked into this notion that a low point in creativity is a block, like an impassible boulder in a trail, and that great work comes from moments of divine inspiration. When we don’t have that inspiration we sit around, lost and frustrated, waiting for it to appear in a lightning-like moment that’ll bring about clarity. In reality, these aha moments strike about as often as lightning and most of us don’t have the luxury of waiting.

Being Creative When You’re Just Not Feeling It

It’s been a little over a year since I started working for Treehouse, which meant giving up the office lifestyle. My previous experience working remotely was relegated to a few snow days stuck in southern Delaware and days before holidays. Here’s what I’ve learned so far to keep me happy outside of an office.

How to Work Remotely Without Losing Your Mind

You’ve probably experienced a time you’ve had a developer just sigh and take your computer from you instead of watching you entering in code to a scary looking terminal window. Wouldn’t you rather know a little bit of what they’re up to? Wouldn’t you rather figure out the basic commands of knowing how to use git (which you’ll inevitably have to use at some point)?

The Top 10 Terminal Commands Every New Designer Should Know

We’ve all been on a project that seems to take a life of it’s own and morph into something unrecognizable. Projects like this soon have no clear goals and are like buildings that keep being built on top of buildings. Team members change over time, features may change over time, but design direction should stay solid throughout all this change. Designing for scale is about predicting the future of a site that’ll live on after the team is done initially building and designing.

Designing for Scale

Paying for College is tool to help prospective college students and their families decipher how much a college degree actually costs. The cost comparison worksheet computes the actual cost of the chosen schools by comparing tuition, books, and other expenses, and estimates post-school debt and overall debt burden.

CFPB – College Cost Comparison Tool

Our team at CodePen decided to redo our social feeds to increase engaging content displayed, both from all users and from people a user follows.  
I led the team through goal refinement by conducting qualitative research, evaluating quantitative data, and designing a new homepage UI by using connected strategies and job stories as guiding methods. I also helped create react templates for new UI and feed data. After launch, our engagement increased across the board, with follower counts exploding as more users interacted with engaging users and content.

Case Studies

Designing an Intentional Social Network

Redesigning the flight booking experience

Project-based Learning & the Techdegree Program

CFPB – College Cost Comparison Tool