Goal for this project:

Understand problems faced by two different organizations and work together with other academics to tackle real world problems.

Time frame:  1 day.

One of the cool things about my past conference experiences has definitely been what is known as #CHI4Good. In this experience, people from around the world come together at this conference, and in a matter of a few hours, strangers from different disciplines tackle and try to solve a real world problem.  The two times that I conducted this were with the Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, an organization for engaging children in outdoor activities, and Share4Cures, a site dedicated to solving medical problems through anonymized data.

Both of these projects required coming together with other PhD students and trying to solve a problem. This involved working with clients, understanding their needs on a short basis, and creating a basic prototype. Based on the client’s needs, I conducted card sorting with the group to figure out how to group the relevant information on the website.

I then helped in creating a clickable paper prototype based on the needs of the client, showcasing how the app would work. I used my knowledge of mobile design in combination with input from previous iterations of the paper prototype in order to come up with a final mobile prototype. While we did not have enough time during that day to program the app, the planning that we conducted during that day created a strong foundation that could be later used for designing a revamped mobile app.