DePaul University - mHCI

Getting Into Research

Overview

At DePaul I had the opportunity to build on skills I developed at 3D Systems and Appalachian State (B.S. Industrial Design). I focused on my user research skills, dipping my toes in ethnography, observation and interviewing, and synthesis. Below you will find an overview of my favorite project. I designed an eLearning course to teach students linear perspective drawing, where I utilized Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives. Be sure to check out my research papers as well.
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Teaching Perspective

This lesson was aimed at college freshmen who are entering the design field. This typically includes architecture, engineering, and product design students. This course was intended to be a foundation course, to be taken prior to CADD classes. Traditional drafting skills, like linear perspective, teach students to craft designs with a critical eye and an understanding of three dimensional representation in two dimensional space. Students were evaluated with a simple Google form, comparing pre-course test results to post-course.

Course design

I developed learning objectives using Bloom's Taxonomy:
  • Recognize the types of linear perspective.
  • Recall the meaning of vanishing points, the horizon line, and orthogonal lines.
  • Recall procedures to produce a perspective drawing.
  • Interpret the type of perspective used in works of other artists / designers / engineers.
  • Execute a drawing in perspective.
The content of the lesson was guided by these objectives with a goal of having a measurable impact on my students perspective drawing abilities and knowledge. The Taxonomy is built on years of research and helps an instructor to organize and target educational content. The look and feel of the site was designed around the principles of the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning from Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer’s “eLearning and the Science of Instruction”.

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I built the site from scratch, writing all the HTML, CSS and Javascript - quirks, bugs and all. All content and drawings are my own. Check out the site yourself! (It is not mobile friendly)
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Here's a link to my project write up with evaluation results. You'll find some animations from the course below.

Hurricane Decision Making

As a part of my degree, I conducted exploratory research examining how people to inform their decisions when hurricanes are imminent. Through interviews, observation, affinity diagramming and a literature review I developed a working model of how people make decisions. I created personas for a future product in the space.
Take a deeper look at the paper here.

See the Pen HighFive by josh (@jcrow) on CodePen.

Authentication literature review

I have a personal interest in the user experience of authenticating users and information security. For a class at DePaul, I wrote an academic style literature review entitled “Authenticating Users: Effects of Cyber Security on User Experience in Software Applications”.

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Here's a link to the full paper.

Check out some of my other work .

CarMax

I'm currently an embedded designer at CarMax working in the b2b space. Over the past year, I've helped standup a new CRM (and team) and have been leaning in to help teams in the Logistics space.

Snagajob

At Snagajob I went from intern to UX / Product designer. I had the opportunity to work on the Shifts product, as well as many other projects during my time there.

3D Systems Healthcare

During my time at 3D Systems, I designed and 3D printed thousands of patient specific surgical splints and models. I learned how to be meticulous and the importance of process at scale.

Portfolio Classic

Check out my old portfolio site. Here you will find more of my grad school work in addition to some Industrial Design work from undergrad. I wrote all the code and I think it's pretty neat.

Josh Crow