This past summer I did an internship in human-computer interaction at the main Human Factors department at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY. I worked on several different projects involving the development of both software and hardware products.
The first project I worked on was a pugh session for evaluating several
different digital camera systems. I was responsible for integrating the
results of that session with the results of a heuristic evaluation of
each system that had been conducted earlier. I was first author of the
report that summarized these results, and based on these results, made
specific recommendations regarding the design of future generations of
Kodak digital cameras.
I then participated in a heuristic evaluation of the main Kodak web site. Several persons performed
independent cognitive walkthroughs of the first three levels of the site
and noted any ways in which the design and/or organization of the site
might not match different user's needs and expectations. The results of
these independent walkthroughs were then integrated into a single set of
recommendations for how the site should be redesigned.
For about a week or so I didn't have much to do, so I taught myself the
basics of how to use Macromind Director 5.0. I managed to produce some
simple animations of my own in that time. It helped that I was already
very familiar with HyperTalk (the scripting language for HyperCard),
which is similar to Lingo (the scripting language for Director).
Then I spent most of my time for the rest of the summer assisting in
redesigning and prototyping some software that will be used for
downloading, altering, and distributing digital images. I was responsible
for generating several high-fidelity Visual Basic prototypes for several
different modules of the program. Toward the end of my internship I also
assisted in designing and building a VB prototype for a program designed
to manipulate and print digital images through a television-based interface.
I worked for a year and a half on a half-time basis as a Human Factors intern in the Science and Technology department at BellSouth in Atlanta. My primary responsibility was maintaining a very large Visual Basic prototype of a service management software program that BellSouth used to provide service and subscription information to its wholesale and retail customers. The prototype involved over 300 windows, and served as the foundation from which the semi-annual system specifications documents (SSDs) were generated. This was a pretty challenging project for me to do on a half-time basis. It was a good experience though because I learned quite a bit about the software development process during this time.
I also worked for a while on developing an object-oriented model of the service management system that was to be used to produce a library of reusable interface components. The idea was that developers of the actual system could pull most of the code for new and revised windows (two-thirds of which was identical across windows) directly from this library, and thus cut down on a lot of the design errors and inconsistencies that plagued the system. So I produced the first draft of the model over a period of about two months (please remember I was only working half-time!), then I passed it on to the developer in charge of this library project.
I also participated in the initial design and prototype of the intranet web site for the Science and Techology department. This involved researching a number of on-line and hard copy sources of information for recommendations involving all aspects of web site design, from web page style guides to site organization and navigational techniques. We used this information to design the first iteration of the site. I also created a Java animation that we included on the front page of the site. I don't know if they ever used it in the final version however.
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This page last updated June 28, 1998.