Welcome. I am currently a second-year master's student at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. I am also usability engineer and UI and Interaction designer. As you will see by looking through my web pages, I have a strong background and expertise in usability, mobile interfaces, UI design for multimodal application and interactive system, online communities, and game . I also have research experience in many areas of HCI, human factors and CSCW.

Upon completion of my graduate program, I plan to go back to work in the HCI industry as usability lead, product designer, and senior UI and interaction designer focusing on educational / commercial software, multimodal mobile interfaces, online communities, and games.

Posted: Monday | 5.13.2003 | 11:29 pm

We have a baby GIRL!
Last Tuesday (5/6) at 2:45pm at the UPMC Shadyside hospital, Michele was born.

Posted: Friday |5.30.2003 | 1:30 am


1) I am working as a usability consultant at Carnegie Speech this summer.

2) CSCW Research Project: a new project site is up (not complete but you'll get the feel of it! - I'll update it ASAP)

3) General Motors project is underway

4) I accepted the position as principal UI designer and usability lead for the upcoming Robocup 03 American Open by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I was responsible for managing UI implementation process and developing UI of control screen for Rescue Robot built at the Robotic Institute.

5) My previous BBoard is no longer working. Instead, I started a new BBoard. Feel free to jot down your thoughts.

Last week during the CHI 03 conference in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, I led a team of 6 MHCI students (Kelli, Abby, Kevin Fox, Neema, Andrew) as the captain and competed against two other teams from Eindhoven Technical University and Nokia Research during the Interactionary Panel. FYI: the basic gist is that each team had ten minutes to complete an interface/product design. Each team was judged on four categories: Process, Teamwork, User Focus, and Design. The design challenge given to us was to develop a kiosk that allows access and helps plan activities at an amusement park.

Result:
1st place: Collegium (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA)
2nd place: USI-group (Technical University of Eindhoven, Netherlands)
3rd place: Nokia Options (Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland)

Preparation was a ton of work, but the end result was worth it. Our team rose to the challenge and won! I had a great time working together with my team members. Click here for more pics.

Look! Wearable computing is at your fingertip for $500! Apple recently released a ski jacket with iPod controls built into it. Personally I am interested in designing and developing wearable computing that incorporates 3G techonlogy but I am not that fascinated by this for various reasons. It's nothing more than just protecting your iPod from bad weather (i.e., rain and snow). You still have to carry your iPod inside of this jacket. Can you call this futuristic design of wearable computing? Maybe not...

Okay...so unlike the traditional navigation system which usually located in the center dashboard, Chrysler introduced a new SUV model, "Pacifica" with a navigation system, "cleverly placed right in the middle of the instrument panel" as some critics called it. Is it really? This new location of the navigation system does not dominate the car unlike the current navigation systems. I will have to give a point for this. And yes, it is located within 10-15 degrees of eye level for optimum visibility in terms of the Human Factors guidelines. But this new design surely takes the driver's eye off the road and diverts the driver's attention from his or her primary task-safe driving.

What happened to the user-centric, user-friendly, and usable design?

I've been working on MMORPGs project for almost 10 months now and I've put together a few key moments of the virtual world of Internet gaming that lasted more than 30 years. So here it goes:

[1971] First public demonstration of ARPANET, which evloved to what we now call the Internet.
[1979] University of Essex students Roy and Richard got down with the first text-only MUD.
[1995] "Avatars" for Internet communication first appeared in Worlds Chat, one of the earliest 3-D online chat rooms.
[1996] Release of Quake, a first-person shooter that also allows users to create their own levels, which are called modifications or mods.
[1997] The first truly successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), Ultima Online.
]1998] Sony's EverQuest and MS's Asheron's Call made their debut.
[2001] Dark Age of Camelot successfully entered the MMORPG arena.
[2002] Sony's PlayStation 2, MS's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube all go broadband. PS2 and GameCube support 56K connections.
[2003] Upcoming MMORPGs-Final Fantasy XI, Star Wars Galaxies, and the comic book-inspired City of Heroes along with a sequel to the current leader, EverQuest.

The UI of the Fifth Revolution is here!!! Read this article.

Basically the new UI will be message oriented, smaller not BIGGER, controllable by voice for both input/output, more profiling on menus to diminish choices, etc.

In summary, the new UI will be both more sophisticated and simpler than anything that exists right now. However there is a sting in the tail. Whenever a new UI emerges, all existing applications have to adapt and this is usually a painful process. It is going to be exceptionally difficult in this case because this includes all the web sites that exist out there. To have much of a chance of leveraging the new mobile devices they will have to move into XML and they will have to be able to exploit whatever interface finally emerges.

Here's an interesting yet helpful introductory article about METADATA. This article on Mappa Mundi entitled Demystifying Metadata provides a good overview of the basic techniques for using metadata (i.e. data about data) to maintain control of databases as they grow in size. There is also an overview of some ongoing efforts to classify online data, such as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, which provides semantic descriptions for fifteen basic descriptive elements. These methods will become increasingly important as systems start using XML to evolve from merely crunching data to managing "knowledge."

Hmm, whatever happened to virtual reality? We have a research team working on creating virtual world (Entertainment Technology) here at HCII, but can we get there? What's the future holding for the virtual reality? With augmented reality, you still have your relationship with the real world, and it is still largely some distance from widespread adoption...Overall, VR will rule!!! BUT the key is for the researchers to stop building just "cool toys" and start developing "tools" to enhance experiences in VR.

Posted: Tuesday |9.03.2002 | 3:33 pm
I have a CHI paper deadline in less than 2 weeks...and another research project which had begun in March...I need to get IRB approval some time in the next two weeks in order to run experiments...Ouch! It is challenging to be a part-time research assistant with a full course load! I need a winter break already!!

Here's an interesting HCI UI design issue: According to Rosalind Picard's experiment at MIT's Media Lab, users in the experiment are asked to use the mouse to check each box in UI website. This mouse has a system to detect the user's pressure on the mouse. During the experiment, as users go through the site and get error messages, they are adding more pressure to the mouse, showing Picard and the research team at MIT's Media Lab a way to improve UI for web sites.

One of my solutions which can be done now: UI designers must consider user emotions as interactive factors in design process.

One of my other solutions which can be done in the future: Interfaces can actively sense and support user's emotion by detecting an embedded chip in user's body!!

Just thought I share this information with you if you haven't heard it.

Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University has been ranked third in the top research lab after Microsoft Research (MSR) and Xerox PARC took 1st and 2nd.