Computing under Constraint
fall 2010 - present
When you only have a fixed amount of bandwidth per month, how does that change how you browse the web? I've been studying how home users use their broadband connections in "capped" bandwidth situations. This project began with fieldwork completed in Cape Town, South Africa in 2010. I am currently building on my formative work to create a prototype application for viewing and managing bandwidth caps. The research goals are to more deeply investigate how to represent network concepts to end-users and to overcome the technical challenges of creating a working system. I will also use the prototype as a lens to study and understand access control within the home as well as how constraints (such as cost) affect Internet use.
Revealing the Invisible in the Home
fall 2007 - spring 2011
Ever wonder why your home internet connection is slowing down? Or if your neighbors are 'borrowing' your wireless connection? I've studied homes in Atlanta, Seattle and Cambridge, UK and found that people have a hard time understanding what's going on on their home networks. I have completed an evaluation of Kermit, a visual home networking tool to see how this affects how people manage their home networking resources and how this increased visibility affects household dynamics.
Threads for Africa
fall 2006 - spring 2007
As part of a GVU Seed grant with Rebecca Grinter, Michael Best and Mark Guzdial, I explored whether Threads would be appropriate for an African context. As part of the groundwork for this study, we surveyed various Computer Science (CS) educators across Sub-Saharan Africa to find out more about current CS curricula offerings.
Fotofit
fall 2005
In this project, we wanted to create a lightweight diet and exercise monitoring system for college students. We designed and evaluated an interface using an iterative design process that allows students to get a quick overview of their health habits visually.
HCI4D
2003 - 2005
In my masters project in rural South Africa, I designed and test a software prototype that enabled communication between a rural clinic and a hospital. I also commented on how legislation affects the type of technologies you can use in rural areas, specifically looking at Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Wireless Fidelity (WiFi). Read more about it in my thesis document.
VOIP before the Hype
2002
In my undergraduate degree, I worked in a team of four to create Chattabox - a Voice over Internet Protocol Chat Client when VoIP was fairly new. I designed and implemented the the client side of the system based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and helped create the user interface.