uxmelina

**I’m in the process of redoing my profolio to include all the new and exciting projects in recent months. It will be posted soon, in the mean time, here are a few things I had a lot of fun designing! Please check back later**

Disney ImagiNations Competition

Problem: Long queues and line-ups are common occurrences in theme parks and other tourist locations where there is a large demand for an attraction or service. Park patrons have their park experience negatively impacted by boredom, discomfort, a feeling of wasted time and money, and isolation from the park experience that is caused by long wait-times. This project set out to improve the line-up experience by creating an feeling of community with the people in the line up and park.

Methods Applied: State-of-the-art and user research, interviews, needs assessments, brainstorming, iterative design, paper prototyping, user testing.

Solution: The solution used the collaborative nature of large touch screen displays mounted in lines to promote interaction between patrons. Details of the medium fidelity prototype are shown below.

(1) Information Bubble Patrons are able to access auxiliary information, such as information about park attractions, refreshment stands, and gift shops, by tapping their location on the map. This creates a direct mapping between the displayed location and the information relating to the location. Bubbles could be moved by sliding them and viewed by multiple patrons at once.

(2) Fading Information Bubble After a period of inactivity, the information bubble will slowly fade away and disappear. Users could simply retouch the bubble to continue viewing the content.

(3) Weather Cloud Used to display real time information about the weather for that day as well as time to sunset, the cloud would continually “float” over the map, and could be moved by the user sliding it out of the way. Low and medium fidelities are shown below.

(4) & (5) Icon Legend, Persistent Icons The bottom left corner of the map display shows the map legend. Tapping on an icon in the legend causes all instances of that icon on the map to glow. This took advantage of pre-attentive processing to draw the users attention to the areas on the map

(6) Scrolling News Ticker A scrolling news ticker was embedded into the lower information bar. The ticker is a compact method of showing live news events that affect portions of the park that are not shown on the map display.

(7) Colour Team Scoreboard Instead of providing individual identities for users to relate with, four colour teams were created. Each self selected colour team has a set of Disney characters associated with them (not shown), which provides each team with a unique feel (ie Team Mickey, Team Winnie the Pooh, etc). The points from the game are added to the park-wide scoreboard. In higher fidelity prototypes these bars would include indicators to their character team to aid patrons with visual impairment in identifying their colour team.

(8) Time

(9) Game Button The game button is one of 2 methods for the users to initiate a game activity. When the user taps the game button, a Disney character will appear on the screen and ask the users if they wish to play a game. Since the game transforms the entire display, the question is displayed in a dialog box large enough that all the users of the display will be affected by it. This provides a strong cue to the users that group consensus is required before a game can be started. Also If no users have interacted with the display in the last minute, then a Disney character will walk out and ask if someone would like to play a game. This novel activity on the screen will encourage users to interact with the display. Below is a medium fidelity design of a sample game. A few key changes would be included in higher fidelities including multiple indicators to distinguish colour boxes and improved visual design.

During this game, users had to find the toys that mashed the greyed out toys in their box, and tap the toy on the screen. This was very collaborative in nature since one person could not reach the entire screen. Below are some of the changes seen as the design team moved from low to medium fidelity.

Improving Hygiene in Alzheimer’s Patients

Problem: The inhibiting nature of semantic and short-term memory loss caused by Alzheimer’s disease (AD) severely impedes the ability of an individual to perform routine tasks. Patients struggle with sequential tasks as individual steps can be repeated unnecessarily or forgotten. Due to the sensitive nature of performing daily hygiene tasks the problem scope was defined to this area.

Methods Applied: State-of-the-art and user research, surveys, needs assessments, brainstorming, sketching, 3D modeling, prototyping, user testing.

Solution: A modular set of storage containers designed for the bathroom counter that uses high-contrast lighting in order to visually prompt individuals. The system is complemented by an LCD screen that features an animated character that provides both audio and visual prompts. Modules could be purchased individually or in sets to support certain tasks, such as hand washing (see prototype), hair brushing, teeth cleaning, etc. The entire system was prompted by a pressure sensing mat, which would decide tasks required based on time of day and what the user had performed previously.

Publication: McLarty, M., Migicovsky, E., Gopal, A., Marchwica, P., Gawne, C., Srikantha, P., Yu, P., and Zelek, J. (2007) A Reminder System for Memory Loss. Proceedings of the Fourth IASTED International Conference. 619:205-243

Prototype:

Design Team: Melina McLarty Eric Migicovsky Pirathayini Srikantha Archana Gopal Paul Marchwica Caleb Gawne