These are some of the projects I’ve worked on over the last few years. For more information, you can also view my formal résumé.
SmashReel (Stanford S356, 2007)
SmashReel is an educational video sharing website we created for the Stanford GSB course “Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities”. We researched and created a comprehensive business plan, and developed a thorough product rollout strategy. We only had time to build a rough prototype, but it was enough to attracted positive attention from the Silicon Valley venture capital community. We were a semi-finalist in the Stanford BASES eChallenge competition.
Empa-T-Bear (Stanford CS247, 2007)
For the Stanford “Interaction Design Studio” course, my teammates and I created an interactive teddy bear that was designed to teach children about empathy. The teddy bear used Stanford’s d.tools toolkit to respond to the user’s actions, such as rubbing its tummy or petting its ear. We also used RFID technology to sense when the user “fed” the bear or used the toy syringe. In addition to the physical interaction, we built an Adobe Flash-based computer program which communicated with the physical sensors to provide visual and audio feedback.
iEARN Digital Storytelling (Stanford CS247, 2007)
For another Interaction Design Studio project, my partner and I worked with Kathy Hearn, a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow, to supplement her work at iEARN. One of iEARN’s projects is a teddy bear exchange between schools in different countries. My partner and I created a digital storytelling tool in Adobe Flash to supplement their project. Our application allowed children to record stories about their life, attach digital photos, and animate the teddy bear’s facial expressions. Our prototype was designed to help fulfill iEARN’s mission of teaching foreign language and cross-cultural communication skills to young children.
Adresca (2005-06)
Adresca is an online address book that I created in 2005. It was my first venture into web development using Ruby on Rails and modern AJAX toolkits. Adresca used a free-form data schema which gave the user significantly more flexibility in structuring their data, based on the design of the Mac OS X Address Book. Although I never released it to the public, Adresca had many features of modern Web 2.0 applications, including an easy-to-use demonstration mode, and publishing iCal and RSS feeds for its users.
AMCAS (2004-06)
While working at the non-profit AAMC, I was the technical lead on AMCAS, the online application for admission to all but 3 medical schools in the United States. I was in charge of a full redesign of the student-facing web application, for which usability was a top priority. I conducted usability reviews on the software, and later worked with a consultant to perform user testing and identify the remaining issues. I was also in charge of some tools for the AAMC staff, which used pre-AJAX technologies (IFRAMEs and JavaScript) to emulate a desktop data entry application. I worked with our internal customers every day, as the first line of communication between the AMCAS program staff and the software development team. The AMCAS front-end was developed in Macromedia ColdFusion, and back-end components were created with extensive use of Java, Oracle, and even a little C#!
Prometheus (1999-2002)
Prometheus was an online course management system which allowed professors and students to collaborate over the web. It was originally developed as an in-house application by The George Washington University, but it was later commercialized and adopted by over 60 colleges and universities. I was the lead developer on four major releases of the application. During this time I implemented an online portal, a spell checker, updated file management tools, enhanced access controls, and various other content management tools. I integrated various third-party technologies including enterprise data systems, a web-based equation editor and access to commercial publications. Prometheus was also developed in Macromedia ColdFusion, and was written to work with either Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server as a back-end data store.
My Personal Website (1995-2007)
I have maintained a personal website in various forms since 1995. It started as a very utilitarian website, but evolved into a blog when I saw the power of the medium. I’ve blogged with Blogger, Movable Type and WordPress. I’ve written quite a bit of custom code and visual designs over the years, and adopted the most recent design in September 2007. I also conducted a thorough usability review in 2006 to ensure the site was friendly to new visitors.
