Cheryl Platz Portfolio: Interaction Design
PerceptOR: Operator Control for Off-Road Robots
For my senior project in Human-Computer Interaction, I was given the opportunity to work on a team of 5 students as subcontractors for the National Robotics Engineering Consortium (NREC) and their "PerceptOR" team. The PerceptOR project was a DARPA-funded initiative to develop efficient unmanned military reconnaissance robots. Our team was asked to design and prototype an improved interface for remote operators of the PerceptOR rovers. Our proposed design was integrated into the functional robot prototypes (example at left).
On this project, I served as the project lead and participated in all stages of the interaction design process.
Closing Presentation [PPT]
Detailed Findings [DOC]
Full Design Document [PDF, 10MB]
Palm Pilot Evaluation & Re-Design
For my coursework in Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction at the Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute, I worked in a team of five interface designers to perform a semester-long evaluation and redesign of the Palm V handheld PDA. During the course of the evaluation, we conducted and thoroughly documented a number of evaluations of the system, including heuristic evaluations, contextual inquiries, and the like. At the end of the semester, we formulated proposed design changes into a final deliverable, which was submitted for a class grade and evaluation by the Palm Corporation.
View the full report and recommendations [HTML & DOC]
Virpets (Children's Museum of Pittsburgh)
During my graduate study at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, I spent the Spring 2003 semester working on the initial Virpets Theatre team (later renamed Animateering). Our team worked with the Pittsburgh Children's Museum to create an early prototype of an interactive virtual puppetry exhibit for permanent installation opening in the Fall of 2004. The exhibit would allow children to puppeteer digitized 3D models of select puppets from the Museum's collection in real time, creating and performing stories for their family and friends.
During my time on the project, I served as the Virpets Technical Director and Lead Usability Specialist. My duties included orchestrating user tests, improving and extending the existing software architecture, and creating a new front-end and signage for children.
For more information on later extensions of our work, see the Animateering website.
Additional Work
Unfortunately, much of my work for MAYA Design, Walt Disney World, and Microsoft cannot be shared in this forum. Please contact me directly to discuss my past experience in more detail.
