My interest is in writing, education, and communication in context in higher education. In this context, I hope my work can play a small part in creating a better world for diverse people. I am passionate about designing for both educational contexts and advocating for diverse peoples within them.
The Miami Writing Institute, is an online, asynchronous writing course for people of all ages and stages of life. This institute was built on principles of evidence-based writing, such as the principle that “all writers have more to learn” and that “ethics is an essential part of good writing.” Teaching writing in an evidence-based way also means not teaching it as Standard American English (e.g., a focus on simple grammar, mechanics, and correctness), which only reinforces white supremacist views of language and people.
While my lead UX researcher role is highlighted here, I also served as project manager and as one of the learning designers.
The UX team began by designing an initial prototype of the institute using the platforms and structures we wanted to test with our target audience: working professionals. We created this prototype in Articulate Rise and designed a variety of interactive activities and multimedia elements that could be used to gauge user experiences.
We partnered with Miami University's alumni relations office to recruit working professionals from the alumni base. Users were diverse in terms of age, profession, and race.
We conducted remote usability tests with users to gauge their first impressions of, frustrations with, and interest in an online writing institute.
Major findings were that users wanted more diverse representation and that they wanted more interactive elements. We used these insights to design the rest of the Miami Writing Institute.
The equity dashboard I am currently designing for writing program administration helps us visualize data in response to questions like: What are the experiences of diverse students in our courses and why? Do teachers have enough resources to be able to meet their own survival needs as well as their students’ educational needs?
Often, applications of analytics are simplistic and potentially harmful, at best flattening the complexity of human experiences and at worst reinforcing social and cultural biases. Instead, my approach takes a humanist perspective on data, data visualization, and the assessment of education. This project is an attempt to use innovative technology and design to promote equity and evidence-based practice.
This project is still in development, but the process so far is detailed below.
I interviewed writing program administrators to learn about their experiences with analytics, their perceptions of analytics, and how they would want analytics to function in their programs.
Using Adobe XD, I developed an interactive prototype equity dashboard.
After recruiting users who were currently or previously involved in writing program administration, I tested the prototype to validate the concept.
This project is in development and developing on a weekly basis throughout 2023.
The #MiamiGradsWork campaign was a research-based advocacy campaign for Miami University's Graduate Student Association. While I was a PhD student at Miami University, I developed this campaign in response to threatened cuts to graduate student funding during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the graduate students at the university are multiply marginalized—women, students of color, international students. The campaign was successful in ensuring a commitment to continuing to fund graduate students over the summer and in helping organize graduate students under a common banner and cause.
I designed the branding for this campaign, conducted research to support the numbers-based content strategy, and distributed the campaign across social media.
Research for this data-based advocacy consisted of gathering information from a variety of online and local sources. For example, public university salary information is available online. The team also cultivated and maintained relationships with stakeholders who could give us insider info into budgetary matters at the university.
I designed content from scratch using Adobe Creative Cloud suite (largely Photoshop) and according to the brand guidelines I had developed previously for the graduate student association. I created content that was suitable for the various genres of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
I distributed the posts across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter and monitored the feedback and interactions.
👾 View prototype
"Vaporwave & Chill" is an experimental app that I designed with the goal of creating an app that would show Vaporwave images and gifs and play lo-fi hip-hop music—kind of a "vibes app."
This was an experimental project that I did to flex my skills and experiment with collaging in a fun aesthetic—Vaporwave, which draws on digital, retro, nostalgia from the 80s and Y2K. It features bright, neon colors, retrofuturistic imagery, and references popular media (e.g., TV, music) from the 80s and Y2K.
I have enjoyed the vaporwave aesthetic for a long time, in addition to consuming lots of lo-fi hip hop music while working. I was influenced by media I consumed across platforms like YouTube and Tiktok. I came to the idea for this fun "vibes app" that would allow me to experiment with interface design and a fun aesthetic.
I searched across a variety of media—Pinterest, Google, Youtube, Giphy—to find and combine various images. I used Photoshop to alter images so they could be combined with the gifs in the prototype.
I built the interface, animations, and interactions in Figma, seeking to create a simple but "aesthetic" interface. This was an exercise in fun and experimentation that allowed me to take a break from more serious UI projects.
fin 🌱