Summer Internship at Nokia

map of finland shows location of Oulu

 

 

This summer (2006) I was fortunate enough to obtain an internship working at Nokia's Multimedia Experience UI group in the city of Oulu, Finland (location shown on map). Collaborating with a cross-disciplinary team of interaction designers, graphic designers, sound designers, and usability experts, I had an unique opportunity to work on a variety of projects that helped me to exercise skills and techniques I had learned during the first year of my Masters program, in addition to acquiring new ones. Projects included:

Flash simulations

I was responsible for using UI specifications to create Flash simulations of new mobile applications. One simulation was fairly large-scale, encompassing a large feature-set, and required extensive use of ActionScript coding. The simulations were used both for communicating design concepts to those in other departments, as well as serving as the basis for formative usability testing.

recipeviewer logoMobile application development

Using the Python programming language port for the Linux-based Maemo platform, I developed a recipe-viewing application that runs on the Nokia 770 internet tablet. Conceived by a co-worker, the original idea was to come up with a system that lets you easily display recipes that were captured by taking a cameraphone photo of a written recipe screenshot of recipeviewer applicationcard. The 'RecipeViewer'application receives pictures sent to it via MMS message, and can sort photos into different albums based on MMS subject line tags. The application is open-source, and available on the Maemo garage application hosting site. In addition to developing the application, I also explored the use of mobile, large-screen devices such as the Nokia 770 as situated displays in a workshop paper for the 2006 Mobile HCI Conference. The workshop was unfortunately canceled due to a lack of paper submissions.

Qualitative user studies

I was also responsible for designing and conducting qualitative user studies. The results of one study about physical tags (second author, 'User Perceptions on Mobile Interaction with Visual and RFID Tags') will be presented at a 2006 Mobile HCI conference workshop entitled Mobile Interaction with the Real World. Along with another intern, I designed a questionnaire, and administering it during short fifteen-minute semi-structured interviews conducted with passersby in a local outdoor pedestrian mall.

For a different study, I was responsible for designing an online survey examining technology use in social networking activities. I was also responsible for coordinating all logistical activities, including participant recruitment, interview scheduling, and other administrative considerations.