Academics
I am a part-time undergraduate student at Case, pursuing a BA in both cognitive science and communication studies. I am scheduled for graduation in May of 2008 and am considering graduate school.

Research
I am fascinated by technology and its ability to empower the individual, so I am intrigued by the specific circumstances that lead people to be frustrated with technology. This winter I plan on doing formal research on website usability.

Website usability can be analyzed by measuring affective responses in the user, such as heart rate, galvanic skin response, and skin temperature. These variables provide information about the level of physiological arousal and parasympathetic functioning of the participant. Facial expressions can be filmed and affects coded based on the facial action coding system (FACS). In the past, capturing data for this type of analysis involved expensive, complex setups in a lab environment, but recent technological advances have lowered the price of these tools to the point of individual accessibility and perhaps more importantly, portability.

My goal is four-fold. First, I want to build my experiential base for understanding how people respond physiologically to design. Second, I want to offer up data that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each site that I examine. Third, I want to experience first-hand collecting, coding, and analyzing complex data. Fourth, I want to build awareness of usability analysis at Case. Web design is very technical while its reception is very cognitive. Only by interconnecting the research and teaching resources from both fields can we understand usability. My hope is that this exploratory research will spur interest in usability and interface analysis, a technological/cognitive interaction that is special to human beings.