B.S. in UX Design?
I graduated from Purdue University with a degree in UX Design in May of 2023. I began attending Purdue in 2019, originally seeking a degree in Industrial engineering, officially switching to a UX course load in the Spring of 2021.
Despite transferring majors, I graduated on-time with a 3.3 GPA.
Purdue established their UX Design program in 2015, and teaches its students user-centered design through two main courses: Learning Studio, in which students engage academically with UX principles and apply them to creative projects, and Experience Studio, in which students are assigned to work with a client company on a semester-long project.
Below are snapshots and brief descriptions of a few projects I was involved with during my time at Purdue. If you have any specific questions that aren’t answered in this showcase, please feel free to reach out.
All projects shown were collaborative efforts with classmates.
Quasi AI
The Context
As part of Purdue’s UX Design program, students are required to complete a group project with a client the team finds. Quasi AI is a company, founded by several Purdue students, which aims to streamline the experience of using generative AI tools.
The Prompt
At the time of the project, Quasi’s primary development was Quasi Fiction, an app which used conversational AI tools such as ChatGPT to write short stories based on a user’s interests. In addition to improving the look and feel of the app, we were tasked with finding interesting ways for users to engage with (and share) stories.
My Contribution
After we built out a prototype app in Figma, I proposed an interaction in which a user could determine the direction of a story in the style of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. This would simultaneously make the story creation a more interactive experience, highlight the strengths of the AI tools, and add personalization to stories in ways that promote sharing.
The Final Deliverable
With approval of the idea from Quasi, we built our app prototype with “Choose Your Own Adventure” as its primary feature. In addition to the interactive Figma prototype, we delivered our design with documentation of the process and proposed next steps, as well as a proposal for consistent brand colors, fonts and UI.
Sezzle, Inc.
The Context
This was my first Experience Studio project, working with the financial technology company Sezzle. A "Buy Now, Pay Later" (BNPL) service, Sezzle offers users the ability to purchase an item without paying in full, opting instead to pay for it over four equal, interest-free payments.
The Prompt
Sezzle had primarily established itself as a browser extension, only operating at checkout when the user shopped from a website that accepted Sezzle. Our task was to design a mobile app experience that would replace their existing (and very clunky) app. After discussion with the client about the scope of the redesign, we aimed to build an aspirational prototype that would take ~2 years to implement.
My Contribution
In our search for an interesting mobile shopping experience, we did an extensive amount of competitive and comparative analysis with about a dozen mobile apps. Surprisingly, we found the most inspiration in the Pinterest browsing experience, and I offered up a wireframe and mid-fidelity prototype that served as the base for the rest of the team’s design.
The Final Deliverable
At the end of the semester, as with all Experience Studio projects, we presented our designs to the whole UX department for feedback. After some final updates and redesigns, we delivered our prototype alongside extensive documentation of our research and design methodology. Sezzle would go on to sponsor several more Experience Studio projects after working with my team.
Above: My concept wireframes. Below: A sample of the final design.
