Online Portfolio
Welcome!
My name is Hitee Chandra and I am a Carnegie Mellon graduate student majoring in Human Computer Interaction. I am also an experienced software engineer with a passion for programming and enhancing user experience.
My enthusiasm for engineering and technology and my very desire to gain as much as I can is what has always inspired me to give my best. An aversion to give up no matter how impossible the situation seems, conviction in human values, and my ability to foster a sense of camaraderie are a few of my qualities that I feel made me an asset to any institution, group or department I was a part of.
At present, I am actively seeking for internships in the summer of 2011 that would help me employ my software development and user experience design skills
My portfolio serves as a portal to my previous works, my accomplishments, my current ventures and also a means to contact me. I really appreciate you stopping by and having a look at it.
Thank you!
My skills can be better explained by dividing my projects into the below two categories. For each project I will try to explain the process as a learning adventure and the end product as the final outcome of my effort. Please click on the project links to learn more!
Recipe Book
Capstone Novabase
Room Rescue
Touch Guitar
Kidney Transplant
Serendipity
Geo Reveal
SimStudent
Quality Assurance
Sketch Chair
Brochure Design
Illustration
OOP Tutor
KidneyTransplant
System
Paintings
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Hitee Chandra - Resume
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Feel free to contact me with your comments and queries. You can use the contact form or email me at
I will try to get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks!
hitee.c_gmail.com
Room Rescue is an iPad application designed to support parents who are transitioning from parents of dependent children to parents of independent adult children. While gathering data about the work
practice of transitioning parents, we found that the user was familiar with the iPhone. Our next-gen iPad-based design solution leverages the users knowledge of touch screen devices, but better supports the cleanup process because of its larger screen size and camera features. To firmly ground our proposed design, we present how our design is driven from data, describe specific HCI methods and principles that motivated our design choices, and what discuss tradeoffs involved in our design decisions. Room Rescue helps parents make decisions about what to keep, what to throw away, and what to give away by supporting communication with their child.
As Carnegie Mellon University students pursuing Masters degrees in Human Computer Interaction, my team brought a diverse set of skills in computer science, engineering, design and psychology to our project group. Using Contextual Inquiry, Contextual Design, CogTool, Heuristic Evaluation, and Think Aloud studies, we were able to understand and design for parents’ needs. The process section explains how each of the method influenced the final design.
Focus setting is the first step of contextual design and helped scope the inquiry that the team conducted in the later phases. The affinity diagram proved to be an intense and rapid way to establish focus, giving the entire team a shared perspective. By individually brainstorming questions about the work context and then grouping them into a hierarchy of themes in an intensive group meeting, the group was able to rapidly establish a focus for further inquiry.
The focus setting activity for this project was of limited use since the subsequent parts of the design process had a predetermined focus set by outside stakeholders [the instructors]. But, focus setting did help in giving our team a shared understanding of the problem space.
Contextual interviews were a significant step in the contextual design process that focuses on the collection and representation of information about the user’s workflow in the field. Interpreting the contextual interview footage we were provided was a time consuming process, but the information we gained was extremely valuable to our design process and helped our team better understand the work process we were designing for. It helped us understand the difficulty of involving distant children in the cleaning process and the current techniques in use to enable such involvement. It also introduces us to the details of the FlyLady cleaning philosophy and fifteen minute room rescue technique which we later incorporated in our design.
The flow model is a subjective and qualitative model depicting the movement of information and work artifacts during contextual inquiry. Our group used the flow model extensively in envisioning an application to assist the user in the decluttering process. The flow model helped to compact the movements of articles and interactions of people into a concise and readable form. It also revealed role strains and role isolations which were important to consider in developing a design. Breakdowns depicted on the model were at the heart of our design effort.
The artifact model singles out and highlights important artifacts used by the user in the course of their work, identifying the functionality provided by the item and breakdowns related to it. Since the model is derived from field data gathered during contextual inquiry, it is both qualitative and subjective. The user we observed carried an iPhone and used the “Notes” application during the clean-up process. Since our proposed application is for the iPad, the artifact model highlighted important issues that had to be considered during the design process. For example, our group decided to avoid manual text entry in our application because the artifact model revealed several breakdowns related to text entry on the iPhone.
The cultural model codifies the social pressures and interactions that influence the user during their work. Since the model was generated during the interpretation of a contextual interview, it is highly qualitative and relies on subjective interpretation of field data. Our group used the cultural model to discern the interactions between the user and their child, It helped us understand how the child influenced the cleanup process and provided insight into the parent’s internal values that drove their decisions during the room rescue. Our group incorporated the Kirk and Sellerman and John Zimmerman material on clean-up process into the cultural model so it was a useful reference to that information as well.
The sequence model is a visual representation of the user’s work as a sequence of intents and actions. It illustrates work process as a logical tree with loops and decision points. Since it is derived from field data gathered during contextual inquiry, it is both qualitative and subjective. Creating the sequence model only requires a firm understanding of contextual design. The sequence model reveals breakdowns in the user’s workflow that impede their progress. We drew from these breakdowns heavily in architecting our iPad application, because we wanted the application to obviate the need for steps that involved breakdowns and limit the number of steps in loops shown in the work sequence.
The physical model is a representation of the user’s physical workspace that is assembled using data collected during contextual inquiry. It tracks the movement of the user and important artifacts through the environment, marking breakdowns related to the physical arrangement of the space. The physical model provided our group with one key insight. The user moves from room to room throughout the cleaning process, and they tend to move around the room as they look for ways to declutter. This insight prompted us to include key features in the application: The solution is a mobile application for the iPad that can be carried. It also allows the user to switch between rooms as they clean, enabling the behavior observed in the contextual inquiry.
Our first design idea was an iPhone application that implemented the Fly Lady Cleaning Philosophies, such as the Three-Box Technique and the 15 Minute Decluttering idea, reminding the user to clean at regular intervals. Our iPhone application was also intended to help tear down the communication barrier between the parent and children, allowing them to visually communicate what items are being considered for clean up and make decisions about these items remotely. We decided that the three box technique (give away, throw away, put away) is a good metaphor to apply to the GUI design of our application. To arrive at this design idea, we began by walking the data, reviewing the models and looking for manual roles, tasks, steps, et. that could be automated. We also looked through the breakdowns identified in each model.
We used think aloud usability testing to subjectively evaluate the ease with which novice users can interact with a system in a laboratory setting. Participants were asked to verbalize their thoughts, providing insight into what they are thinking, feeling, and looking at as they perform tasks. Incidents matching certain criteria are declared “critical” and consolidated into Usability Aspect Reports. Taking into consideration the critical incident identified in UAR 9 (the user rejects the “Tag FAQ page” link), our group chose to provide user support through a tutorial video and instructional bubbles. A quick tutorial video can effectively teach first-time users how to use RoomRescue, and instructional bubbles are a quick and engaging way to lead first-time users through the setup process.
Our group modeled the task of uploading and organizing photos in two photo uploading interfaces, Flickr and Picasa, and ran a calculation of execution time. Our CogTool analysis of Flickr and Picasa revealed that it took Flickr 8.5 seconds to share photos in Flickr, while it only took ~0.7 seconds in Picasa. This was a result of the design of Picasa. The “Share” button was presented to the user immediately after pictures were uploaded, instead of being hidden on another page. We incorporate this finding into our design by allowing items to be shared and synchronized between the child and parent interfaces continuously. This enables the parent and the child to view updates in real-time and share items without the costs of high tool time.
While gathering data about the work practice of transitioning parents, we found that the user was familiar with the iPhone. Our initial analysis suggested that the next-gen iPad-based design solution leverages the user’s knowledge of touch screen devices, but better supports the cleanup process because of its larger screen size and camera features. To create an initial representation of our design we used paper prototyping, a variation of usability testing where representative users perform realistic tasks by interacting with a paper version of the interface that is manipulated by a person ‘playing computer,’ who doesn’t explain how the interface is intended to work. There were several types of findings from paper prototype usability tests such as Usability issues, Missing and misspecificed functional requirements and priorities which guided our transition to the final design.
Heuristic evaluation is a discount engineering method in which the team evaluates the interface based on fundamental usability principles. Each member of the team evaluated the interface in terms of predefined heuristics, documenting problems and positive aspects they recognize. Afterwards, the incidents documented by the individual evaluators were consolidated and the group determined severity ratings. Neilsons ten heuristics were used to evaluate our interface.
These ten heuristics motivated our design and impacted the types of controls we selected (i.e. drop-down menu, buttons, etc.), the organization of our design elements (i.e. tabular navigation), the functionality of our application (i.e. voice recording, 360 view camera, etc.) and the interaction choices (i.e. tapping to add items).
The following major themes capture how Room Rescue supports parents discarding and archiving accumulated possessions of their child:
1. Integrating effective cleanup philosophy
2. Tagging items in the real world
3. Support archiving of sentimental items
4. Welcomes different user cleaning habits
5. Enabling asynchronous contribution
6. Smooth integration with workflow
