Open Video Toolkit

I have been working with Gary Geisler on his IMLS-funded Open Video Toolkit Project for the last year. I am chiefly responsible for managing the systems used to develop the tool and my work on this project overlaps with my work as a systems administrator's assistant at the iSchool. This tool is being developed in Ruby on Rails and I run our test server Fusion, which supports several Rails-run applications using the Lighttpd Web sever, a SubVersion repository, and the Trac project management tool. In addition to the work on the servers, I also have been working on the project team doing interface planning and design and will be one of the people building the application in Ruby on Rails once we get futher along in the project.

Technologies include:
      

YouTube

I have been utilizing the YouTube API to gather data from over 1 million YouTube videos. I am working with Gary Geisler on a project to analyze the tagging behaviors and conventions employed by YouTube video submitters. YouTube tags, unlike some of the other tagging systems, are explicitly for sharing videos with other users. Our question is, what exactly are YouTube video contributors including in their tags and how much of the rich semantic qualities of video are being captured by these tags? The data gathering phase of this research has now concluded and we are currently working on analyzing the data and designing additional user studies.

Online Teaching, Learning & Collaboration

For the last few years I have been teaching and am now the developer for i312 Information in Cyberspace, a fully online team-taught course teaching technology and information fluency instruction to UT undergraduates. The course provides an overview of the history of the Internet and related networked technologies and their social impact, with an emphasis on technology self-sufficiency and information fluency. The course incorporates:

• Modular content development
• A variety of communication and presentation approaches
• Management and evaluation of course technologies
• Multiple levels and formats of student support
• Access to a dedicated course server and Web space

My research interests related to this course revolve around finding optimal solutions for designing online instructional materials and services and presenting multimedia instructional technologies online, in particular, streaming media tutorials. I am the systems administrator for the course and applications developer for the course. We are currently moving all of the course content into the Drupal content management system.

• Educause 2005 Southwest Regional Conference Presentation

Technologies include:
      

Collection Understanding

Patrick Williams and I have conducted a full-scale usability evaluation of a tool developed by a former Texas A&M computer science graduate student named Michelle Chang whose working under the direction of Dr. John Leggett. This "Collection Understanding" tool uses different visualization techniques to enhance a user's understanding of large image collections. The usability evaluation was conducted with support from Randolph Bias and the tool itself is based on the work of Andruid Kerne.

Chang, Leggett, Furuta, Kerne, Williams, Burns & Bias (2004). Collection Understanding. ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Tucson, Arizona. June, 2004.

Burns, S., Williams, J.P. (2004). How do we perform usability testing when the tasks are so novel that users don´t even know they want to perform them? Conference presentation at the 2004 Usability Professionals Association Conference.

IBM Pervasive Computing Lab

I worked with Randolph Bias on a project conducting research on innovative human factors and usability-based technology and its applicability to various devices being researched, developed, and integrated by the IBM-Austin Pervasive Computing Lab. We studied the information content structure of pervasive computing environments and developed usability methods required to study migrating transactions.

• User Interface Design, Transaction Measurement, and Usability Engineering for Remote Devices
• Pervasive Computing Lab usability test mock designs

Microsoft Cleartype®

I have worked with Randolph Bias to study the effects of Microsoft ClearType® on user performance in programming tasks. ClearType® is a font-rendering technology designed to make on-screen text easier to read.

• The Influence of Microsoft's ClearType on Programmer Productivity

Usability Testing | Web Design | Information Architecture

• I co-created and designed a Web resources site for the Urban Design program within the UT School of Architecture. This work was performed in fulfillment of a FAST TEX appointment to help develop a site for the UT School of Architecture.
• I worked with Randolph Bias on a freelance usability test for a Web application developed by the University of Texas at Austin Distance Education Center (UTDEC) Continuing Education & Extension Online Mathematics Initiative team.
• I was offered one of two graduate internships for fall 2003 to work on a team that created the information architecture for the UTOPIA project. UTOPIA was an extremely compelling (sadly ultimately failed) initiative launched by UT President Larry R. Faulkner, which was to offer Web resource intended to "open the university's vast reservoir of knowledge and cultural assets to all Texans". The effort was both a large scale digitization project and a project to create a unique and new form of Web interface that would incorporate advanced personalization functionality and create tailored online experiences for targeted audience groups using thousands of curated digital assets.