Other Projects
& Experiences
Getting involved with the things I care about is one of my core values. I am proud of the work I have done in my career, certainly. But, I am even more proud to contribute to and lead projects and events that can bring joy or improve people’s personal experiences in ways that are meaningful to me.
I led my own capstone project group at UW after successfully pitching the concept, getting to experience being a project manager. I was able to partner with Xbox studios to conduct early research on online gaming communities and investigate how to limit player toxicity from spreading. And I became the event lead for an annual charity dance competition in Reno, organizing live performances in front of thousands of attendees and stream viewers.
BLFC Dance Competition - Event Lead
Since it was established in 2013, the Biggest Little Fur Con in Reno, Nevada has held an annual Dance Competition as part of its headliner programming. The con helps to raise tens of thousands of dollars for various charities each year, and the Dance Competition is one of the most attended events of the convention.
For years, I participated both as a dancer (winning the novice category in 2014) as well as staff. I helped to judge both preliminary rounds as well as the main event finals. In 2019, I shadowed the current lead and in 2020 took over as event lead.
After organizing a purely online dance competition during Covid 19 lockdowns, I reestablished the in-person event in 2021, 2022, and 2023 amid myriad new restrictions and uncertainties.
As event lead, it was my duty to be the social media outreach and help drive dancer applications. It was my duty to review, alter, and publish the new competition rules and sign-up sheets. It was my duty to ensure all participants could perform in preliminary rounds as easily as possible. It was my duty to ensure Main Stage and AV crews were prepared for a 2-hour live performance. It was my duty to ensure the event stayed on time and met all safety standards. And it was my duty to reward the top performers with meaningful prizes they could cherish.
While I was set-up for success by my predecessor, I pushed the event forward by creating templates for judging and sign-up sheets and by creating systems for efficiently running the live events. Some of these templates and systems are now in use at other conventions in their own dance competitions, helping organizers be more efficient and reducing the chance of show-stopping mistakes.
Xbox Player Toxicity
& PAX West Panel
Video games have played an important role in much of my life, beginning with Atari, Nintendo, and Sega at an early age. Gaming has since become a social outlet as well as a pathway into larger communities with shared interests.
During my time at UW, I joined a Directed Research Group led by Prof. Mark Haselkorn and sponsored by Xbox Studios to investigate the nature of player toxicity and identify opportunities to remedy bad online behavior.
Through reviews of dozens of journal papers, interviewing game managers from popular games at the time, and observing contemporary attempts to curb toxicity, the group proposed fifteen recommendations to Xbox researchers to reduce player toxicity on the Xbox Live platform.
Several of these recommendations were quickly adopted, although more thorough design and research was needed before most could be implemented.
In 2014, Xbox published some of the findings, indirectly inspiring a comic strip from Penny Arcade as seen on the left. My fellow student researchers and I were then invited to present our research as panelists later that year at PAX Prime (Penny Arcade Expo - a major gaming industry event held annually in Seattle).
Bixcreen Capstone
In 2013, movie theaters had not yet embraced many digital advancements. Patrons would purchase tickets from kiosks with extremely inefficient interfaces, and the experience was widely regarded as a required chore for the entertainment experience.
As part of the Capstone project for the Human Centered Design and Engineering graduate program at UW, I pitched a group project idea to rethink and redesign the ticket purchasing experience. To my surprise four fellow students were inspired to join me in making the movie ticket purchasing experience more reliable, more efficient, more visual, and more appealing.
I acted as project manager, establishing goals and milestone timelines early in the project. I had never led a diverse team with designers, researchers, and even our own software developer. I had to put aside the bias towards my own ideas as leader and be open to the group’s designs based on our initial rounds of research.
The group was torn between two ideas in the design phase: a mobile app or an interactive poster-sized digital screen with gesture recognition. I consulted with the team, determined we could work in parallel, and in the end decided to ambitiously pursue both.
After creating prototypes, I organized a round of research to compare our designs with contemporary solutions. Both our designs were objectively more efficient, and rated much more engaging and entertaining among participants.
At the department Capstone Open House, we presented our innovative new point-of-sale experience in front of fellow students, teachers, and industry professionals. Attendees would select and purchase movie tickets using gestures observed via a Microsoft Kinect or on our mobile app. I am proud to have led my team to the People’s Choice award in 2014.
