About Me

A gathering of my best work

Click here to learn more about design competencies featured in my portfolio

Alt Context

A service integrated with Instagram aimed at providing visually impaired users with self-sufficient access to comprehension of the visual context of media in posts.

Alt Context is intended to expand on alt-text and create a community …

Point Locus

A wearable, tactile GPS garment that allows visually impaired people to travel independently.

“Point Locus” uses tactile sensations on the user’s triceps to communicate directions from a GPS. Its language is a simple series of vibrations: …

Micro-Mobility As A Service

A speculative inquiry into the future of urban mobility with an aging population in mind, using a systemic design process

This class project at OCAD University used a systemic design approach to respond to a design …

Augmented Physical Learning

A business design project proposal intended to strategically partner Myant’s textile computing technology with AR for training, rehab, athlete markets

As part of OCAD’s industrial design professional preparation class, I developed a business design project …

Tactifoam Rods

A sensory toy designed for children with developmental disabilities that adds more diversity of visual, tactile and auditory stimulation to their playtime activities.

This project was conducted in OCAD University’s undergraduate Design for Health class. Its …

GOBikeT/O

An app aimed at helping cyclists in Toronto feel genuinely confident to ride in the city.

GOBikeT/O is an app concept resulting from an upper level design research course at OCAD University. It tackles the question …

Thermal Conceptual Metaphors

A study of metaphorical meanings associated with thermal sensations in an interactive context

This is a design research project that I conducted alongside an undergraduate student from Simon Fraser University’s Interactive Arts & Technology program, from …

VanHero Rainshields

A reusable, conveniently-located weather protection service to help travellers in Vancouver keep themselves safe from the rain

VanHero Rain Shields is a conceptual service that my teammates and I designed for Vancouver Global Service Design Jam …

Noster Nostri

An interactive, touch-controlled light exhibit that creates a shared experience

The installation creates an abstraction of the participants’ presence, used to control the brightness of the central lighting. That presence is represented by strands of white …

Job Postings CMS

A customizable job postings CMS for Career Services/Co-op staff and students.

The “Career Services Manager” (CSM) system, created by Symplicity, is a customizable job postings system for university career services and cooperative …

NHL Alignment and Playoff Format Re-Designs

This is a broad design research project aimed at optimizing the National Hockey League’s playoff format, as well as its division and conference alignments.

As a long time fan of the league, I have been able …

NHL Jersey Re-Designs

My visions for the visual identity of all 32 NHL teams’ jerseys.

Although I am hardly an artist, I seem to have at least some level of creativity for NHL jersey design. …

Services I provide and their value

Interaction Design

IxD shapes human behaviour in interaction with technology (anything created by humans). I have an understanding of behaviour, needs, available technology, and an ability to observe interactions, to refine concepts based on those observations and to constantly improve what I create, resulting in great interaction design and a competitive advantage.

Design Research

Knowledge is my ultimate drive, and design research is my outlet. Innovation occurs through cross-pollination of ideas from different disciplines, thus, by researching different areas of study in design, I fuel my ability to innovate and combine concepts in new, unexplored ways.

User Research

With user research, I focus on gathering requirements and learning all the constraints involved in solving a problem. I conduct usability studies to observe errors, pauses in interactions when users do not understand what to do or how, and needs that the object, service or system clearly has not provided, in order to inform design decisions.

User Experience Design

My UX design skills create value by representing experiences in as cost-minimizing a form as possible. Through combining user research, wireframing and prototyping, I anticipate problems and unmet needs, and test the effectiveness of intended solutions before they are put into production.

Systemic Design

Systemic design challenges designers to tackle maximum complexity and ambiguity. It is an approach of fluid, dynamic scale, perspectives, and dimensions, aiming to map a complete vision of stakeholders, policies, services, communication channels, products, data, materials, and more. Such maps reveal leverage points: opportunities of maximum impact towards new, desired outcomes.

Service Design

Service design is the more holistic, “intangible” interaction design, as it concerns not just users, but providers as well. How providers deliver services and how they are used by people are key. This creates dual experiences that need to be designed, despite being intangible structures of provider-user touchpoints shaped and offered in specific ways.

Work I accomplished at past positions

System Design Consultant (3)

Kwantlen Polytechnic University (2010-2013)

Second internship working on the CSM system for a university, following my success at SFU. At Kwantlen, the system was already live and being used by the Co-op department, but there were services that needed to be improved, and the career services department needed to integrate into the system.

I was able to learn about the department’s processes, and use my knowledge of the system and observations from user studies to optimize it according to requirements. I also initiated changes in other processes to better suit the system’s capabilities. The finished product was an improved and expanded Career Services and Co-op department, with an effective job postings system for the staff and students at Kwantlen to use.

Usability Specialist

Research in Motion (Jan.-Apr. 2009)

For my second Co-op job at Research In Motion (now BlackBerry), I was hired as a usability specialist for the team that develops internal software tools. Several tools needed UI improvements, most notably the build request logging system, which was switching to a new software system (Electric Commander), necessitating an entirely new UI built within the constraints of the software.

I led the charge on successfully integrating UX practices into the Agile development cycles in my team. Much of my job was self-directed, since the team lacked experience in UX. I created the framework for making user research, wireframing and testing my solutions a part of the team’s process, with their support.

Web Coordinator

Research in Motion (Sept.-Dec. 2009)

My responsibilities as a web coordinator in the Platform Product Management Group were to manage and update the team intranet’s content (such as product release dates, product information, banners, and the information architecture of the menus, any time a change was necessary, or something was added or removed from the site), and to produce a bi-weekly HTML newsletter that was e-mailed to over 3,000 RIM employees.

Both the website content updates and product newsletter updates involved talking to the product managers in my team, either in person or via phone or email, to find out what to report for each manager’s product(s). The newsletter was created from an HTML template in Dreamweaver, but it required frequent editing to accommodate the information that needed to be produced, which I was able to handle with my HTML knowledge.

System Design Consultant (2)

SFU Segal School of Business (Jan.-Apr. 2009)

Following my success with the Symplicity CSM at SFU, the Segal (now Beedie) School of Business hired me to improve their existing CSM system, and share my expertise.
I conducted user studies one-on-one and in groups, identifying the department’s greatest areas of need, and gave feedback on what kinds of solutions I believed were possible. My efforts led to creative appropriations of several features in the CSM to accomplish their goals.