Inexperienced chess players fixate on small sectors of the board and individual pieces. Visualization is one key to better perception and understanding of a chess game. We present Chess Scouter, a digital chess application that dynamically overlays visualizations onto the board that emphasize and clarify the overall state of the board, pieces, and the relationships between them. We speculate that by visually emphasizing these details, novice chess players will be able to more quickly and meaningfully interpret important threats, patterns, and opportunities, and make better moves. Initial response to Chess Scouter indicates that users enjoy playing with the visualizations and are encouraged to examine the board as a result of them. We will conduct further investigation with a qualitative study on novice chess players to determine the clarity and utility of the visualizations in Chess Scouter.

Being productive and managing your schedule is difficult, more importantly time management shouldn’t take up more of what little time you already have.  Our team has built a smart scheduling app we like to call COG, which takes the existing events in your Google calendar and finds places you can fit in items from a task list you have created. Implementing the idea of smart scheduling means COG also learns from your scheduling patterns (overestimating time, frequented locations, recurring events) and refactoring those observations to create an even more accurate plan for you, even when you might not realize you could be more efficient. Finally, COG is a way for people to build self-awareness about their own scheduling habits and how they manage their time. Through preliminary user testing we have found that COG is not only beneficial but “quickly becomes an everyday part of [a user’s] life.

While people familiar with the field of Information Technology (IT) are able to understand new terms by associating them with previous knowledge or current context, those outside the industry struggle with new words and acronyms as they read dense technical documents. In these circumstances, people often rely on free resources like Wikipedia, but results often require disambiguation or a deeper search in order to find the appropriate definition for a term. Additionally, switching attention between reading and searching has been shown to increase cognitive load and perceived stress level, while reducing the effectiveness of both tasks. To address this problem, we created D//Jargonizer: an extension for the Google Chrome web browser that allows users to define technical terms in context with minimal distraction. When users right click a word on a web page, a brief version of the term’s Wikipedia entry is displayed in context. After testing our prototype with several individuals, we refined our initial design to deliver a seamless user experience. By limiting the need for rapid attention switching between windows or tabs, our solution reduces cognitive load and improves the overall user experience as people read jargon-heavy documents.

Most of us have experienced the frustration of not knowing what to order in a Chinese restaurant, due to limited information on their menus, and as a result, end up choosing the typical “Chicken Chow Mein” dish over and over. To solve this dilemma, we developed Dining Menu, a web based application that displays additional information of local Chinese restaurant menu items, to help consumers to be more informed before they decide on their order. Specifically, our web app supports filtering capabilities, displays ingredients used in a menu item, as well as other health and allergy related information, and can be accessed anywhere and anytime.

Ordering a drink in a busy bar is stressful, time-­‐consuming and claustrophobic. With Fastab, users order drinks from their mobile phones and receive push notifications when their orders are ready. This eliminates the need to wait in line and compete for the bartender’s attention. Because payments and tips are sent through Fastab, bartenders can spend more time making drinks and serving customers, and less time processing payments. After surveying 75 customers who frequent bars, 47% of them felt that their favorite bars were inadequately staffed. Fastab’s improved efficiency alleviates this pain point without the need for additional staffing.  While Fastab is designed for bar environments, there are several other applications for the technology including restaurants, nightclubs and sports arenas.

At Golder Associates (Golder), Business Information Services (BIS) have a diverse user population of over 9,000 employees and consulting clients located worldwide. BIS provide support in multiple business aspects such as general administration, communication and knowledge management. As a result of the organization’s rapid growth, user experience has become a critical requirement of BIS. In our strategy project, we work with Golder End User Relations Function on mapping methodologies and staffing needs of user experience requirements. We made recommendations on how the areas of user analytics, system usability, and information accessibility can be improved within BIS. Our strategy document informs Golder with up-to-date methodologies through example processes developed on real scenarios. With our strategy document, Golder will be able to build a professional user experience function that effectively connects people and technology.

Among the many online services that provide communication channels for groups, there is a lack of singular services that provide users a way to easily interact with each group in one place. In order to communicate with their respective groups, 25 out of 27 people we surveyed online use four or more services, including email and various social media sites. Coordinating so many different services across multiple groups is tedious, challenging, and often results in important information being overlooked or lost. GroupLoop is a single interface that integrates all of the functions users require to effectively communicate with each of their groups. Users can send private or group messages, access contact information for each group member, upload shared multimedia, add events in a group calendar, and participate in forums. They can even view information for multiple groups at once. Feedback from GroupLoop users who have tested these functions in order to communicate with their groups have found it to be “helpful,” “convenient,” and “a service they would like to use.”

Approximately 17 percent of American adults report some degree of hearing loss. Such hearing problems can lead to frustrations and inconveniences in everyday life while listening to or communicating with others. Our team has created a free mobile application, Hear Rite, which diagnoses hearing impairments and provides an economical alternative to costly hearing aids. The first segment of our application takes the user through a hearing assessment, analyzes the user’s hearing capacity and provides feedback on their results. The second part of our application functions as a hearing aid, filtering out undesired pitches and tones while adjusting sound output using a built-in equalizer. The hearing aid utilizes the hearing test results to provide a custom tailored hearing aid to the user along with presets that cater to general sound environments, such as a private conversation or a large lecture hall. Through a series of user studies, we have shown that Hear Rite could be a cost-free alternative hearing aid for people with simple hearing impairment.

Each year, approximately 2 million new immigrants from all over the world arrive in the United States. These newcomers can often find themselves feeling isolated due to language and cultural barriers, which make meeting new people and acclimating to their new environment especially challenging. We built an events based social networking website, called Immingle, designed specifically with the needs of this group in mind. Our solution helps immigrants who share a common language or homeland connect with one another through creating and attending local events. Events can range anywhere from small knitting group gatherings to large cultural music festivals, and can be created by new immigrants, established immigrants, or even local organizations. By providing a resource for both recent and established immigrants alike to connect with one another, Immingle helps newcomers meet friends who have shared similar experiences. These peers can help them overcome some of the challenges that transitioning to life in a new country can pose. Our solution aims to strengthen local immigrant communities by providing a platform with very low barriers to access that encourages making new friends, building support networks, and getting involved in the local community.

Mental health clinicians, researchers, and program managers require good data to make good decisions. The Mental Health Research Network (MHRN) has collected a significant quantity of population data, but action based on this data is hindered without extensive technical training and experience. This limits the data’s impact to improve health care outcomes and performance by preventing a wider audience from using the data to make high-level care and policy decisions. We worked with the Group Health Research Institute to design an interactive tool that transforms health care data into understandable visualizations, which are easy to explore.  Our tool will provide translational research; encourage people to ask questions; and promote data-driven healthcare improvements, ultimately impacting over 11 million patients across the United States currently served by the MHRN.