Hi! I'm Alissa. I design user experience and build web UIs in data analytics / research collaboration / open science / healthcare data projects. Employed by Purdue University, I'm based in West Lafayette, Indiana. This site is both my portfolio, and a story about me as a professional web designer, coder and artist.
I'll start the story from my most recent professional endeavour - UX design leadership role on REMEDI data analytics platform for medical professionals. I'm most excited about this project, and it gives a great illustration of my motivation, design process and skills.

REMEDI Project

Since Aug 2015 I've been leading the UX design of REMEDI by Purdue's Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering (RCHE). REMEDI is a data analytics platform for medical professionals, where clinicians from hospitals all around the US share data from medical devices like infusion pumps or ventilators, and use insight from REMEDI analytics to improve patient safety at their hospitals. Currently there are over 300 facilities across 24 US states using the site and providing data. The system is vendor-neutral and comes at no cost to participants. One participation rule - in order to see the data you must provide your data. Also, hospitals agree to share their data with medical researchers. It's a beautiful, public-good project, the winner of 2017 AAMI Foundation Health Care’s Clinical Solution Award and 2017 Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) Cheers Award.

Infusion Pump Compliance and Drug Limit Library apps. My work: UX/UI design (visual, composition, navitaion, user flow etc.), production-ready interactive mock-ups, D3.js programming, ClojureScript UI.

REMEDI User Experience

Users of REMEDI are clinicians busy working with patients in their day-to-day life. When they visit the web platform, they want to get answers to their questions quickly and efficiently. Many times they may not have exact questions and the intelligent analytics apps would point out intesting things in data and highlight areas of concern. When designing UX, you think of problems users are trying to solve and their tasks at hand, you consider how to smoothly guide them to answers, and make best use of their precious time.
There are things we want from users in turn. We want them to regularly upload their data and be more active community members. You work these needs into the design and think how to engage users in helping you and make the experience seamless and rewarding.

Above are samples of my work for REMEDI - final products. Click on individual thumbnails for screenshots and info. Next page shows examples of design work in progress.

Design Process: Initial Steps

My process starts with user research and collecting requirements. The research includes interviews with selected user groups whenever possible, review of user survey information collected by other team members and analysis of available usage data. This initial user data review and team brainstorming sessions that I organize and facilitate give ideas for first sketches. In new projects I like to start by sketching personas for key users and thinking through their journeys as they interact with the product I design. I use good old tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch or Pages to visualize ideas. The storyboards and idea sketches are then shared with small user focus groups and internally for early feedback and formalizing requirements.

Here are some examples of my early design sketches, wireframes, and other artifacts of the initial design process from several projects.

Design Process: Mocking It Up

I am a (UX) architect who builds. ;) While I love design and the thrill of creative process most, I also enjoy coding my vision into something functional. The fact that I can take an idea all the way to production-ready code gives me sense of empowerment. When it's time for interactive mock-ups, I build them quickly in HTML, CSS and JS w jQuery and D3.js for charts, normally using a simple text editor like Brackets.
REMEDI apps UIs are built in ClojureScript + React.JS. Other developers (we are a power team of three :) usually pick-up my html mock-ups and hook them up to real data. Sometimes I get to write UIs in cljs. Yey for functional programming! :) Surely it takes a good number of rounds of user feedback+tweaking+testing+bug-fixing before a feature is production-ready.

Interactive mock-up of the Alerts app. You wouldn't tell it from the actual app released in production, except that it's using fake data. The mock-up is 100% my work, start to finish.

The Challenge of UX Design

Back in 2015 I ran a session on UX Design Challenge in Scientific Software at Mozilla Festival in London, UK. With about 25 folks from different backgrounds - designers, researchers, educators - we discussed what it takes to create intuitive, easy-to-use, responsive UIs and smooth user experience when building scientific apps with inherently complex underlying data and novel user workflows. I shared my experience on the open source Hubzero project, and highlighted the complexity of my task on the REMEDI project, where user questions are often unknown because we deal with new kind of data and are building pathways into uncharted territory. Personas, storyboards, metrics analysis all help, but to a certain extent. And you are left to sort it all out with "go design something" task from your manager.

Solving Design Puzzles

Let's say the big, complex, multivariate initial data are sorted and categorized. Let's say a list of possible user questions is derived from the data and surveying potential users. You have some pieces of the puzzle, you draw the missing pieces from your experience, make assumptions (to verify with users later). It's a kind of a puzzle that can take different final shapes, and each is worth exploring. You determine primary variables and major dependencies, you organize content around big categories: where, when, what, why and how, and consider simplest user pathways to answers. The design principles all come into play. You think of balance, proportions, compositional flow, space, consider responsiveness and scale. You know if you hit the mark as you watch users engage with your product.

Examples of my conceptual design and prototyping sketches as I am working on a new app.

Motivation

The most rewarding aspect on my work on the REMEDI project is knowing that by helping clinicians learn from their data, we help them in their strive to improve patient safety in hospitals. The project also contributes to the nationwide effort to standardize drug names, concentrations, drug delivery practices and thereby helps advance healthcare safety. I like to think of my work in the context of these big ideas and efforts, even when tackling small tasks.

Take my work at Hubzero as another example, - when developing components of Hubzero framework I thought of how this ultimately aids our users, scientists and educators, advance and publicize their research. With every UI I design and every feature I code, I consider how to help my users be more effective in their tasks, how to make their experience non-tedious and how to make them smile. :)

Volunteering for Mozilla

My involvement with Mozilla as a volunteer started in 2015 when I was invited to run a Mozfest session on UX Design Challenge in Scientific Software. In 2016 I joined Open Leadership Training program run by @abbycabs - first as a mentee on REMEDI Research Access project, then as a mentor, helping others (Felipe Do E. Santo with Open Graduation Classes, Paul Villoutreix with Embryo Digital Atlas, and others) plan, organize, advance and promote their open web / science / code projects.

Work for Open Source Hubzero

Above are some samples of my work at Hubzero. Click on individual thumbnails for screenshots and explanation.

Before joining REMEDI I was a senior developer at Hubzero, an open source software platform for scientific collaboration. The data management and publishing system at the core of Hubzero - Hub Projects and Publications - is almost solely my baby and my major contribution to the platform. Many hubs, with total usage base over 500K, rely on the solution I created for managing and sharing research data. For Purdue University Research Repository (PURR), data management hub for Purdue faculty, this is the core functionality. Other big ticket additions to the platform on my part include: Wishlist feature allowing users to submit ideas for improvement and for others to rank the ideas and determine priorities; Contribtool - simulation tool contribution system letting tool developers manage their development projects; and many more.

A Look Back: Generation Nano

Click on individual thumbnails for screenshots and explanation.

When I joined Purdue in 2006, I led the Generation Nano project, K-12 outreach effort of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN), which was an interactive website teaching middle school kids nanotechnology concepts through games and educational activities. Back then Flash was popular and I was an expert in Flash and ActionScript. The concept was an intriguing virtual world. When visiting the website, children would find themselves in the lobby of the Birck Nanotechnology Center at Purdue. They would explore the virtual hallways, cleanroom and labs, meet researchers, and engage in "missions" to help a researcher and learn about nanotechnology in the process. Looking back, this was probably the most enjoyable project of all I ever worked on.

A Look Back: My Work in Times of Tables and Flash

Click on individual thumbnails for screenshots and explanation.

Prior to coming to Purdue, I lived in the big cities of Canada - Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, - doing print and web design for companies like Air Canada, Ensemble Travel and CE Network, as well as running my own freelance business.
As an artist and programmer, I am largely self-taught. Computer drawing and animation was my passion ever since I got my first computer. Back in Moscow, Russia, where I originally come from, I studied Linguistics. Immigration to Canada in 2000 offered an opportunity to make graphic design my profession, and I jumped on it, training myself by solving tasks at hand and catching up on theory at evening classes while keeping the day job in IT support and eventually winning the title of a graphic artist. Eventually, already at Purdue, I caught up on formal education and completed Master's Degree in Technology in a program for working professionals.

Mosaic Art and Other Passions

Click on individual thumbnails for screenshots and explanation.

As a creative person, I have a number of passions. Mosaics has been one of them. I learned the skill while living in Montreal and attending Mosaikashop studio run by Suzanne Spahi. My mother Irina is an accomplished mosaic artist.

Other passions include travelling (with Iceland being my new favorite destination), hiking, long haul kayaking, dancing and culinary art.

Also I am a happy mom of two most bright and spirited kids, a teen son and a pre-teen daughter. They are my best friends and I love exploring the world with them and sharing adventures.

My Next Adventure?

I'm on the lookout for the next professional challenge and would love to be part of a high-impact or a cool experimental project with ambition to bring positive change, advance knowledge or help fellow humans in other ways. Open source? - Yey! Social change push? - Love it! Transformational technology improving human lives? - I'm in!

If you feel my skills, experience, artistic vision and enthusiasm would be of value to your team, please get in touch! I may well be the one you need.

Resume Resume (PDF) Latest Work Samples (PDF)

EXPERIENCE
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 2015 - present
    User Experience Architect
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 2010 - 2015
    Senior Web Programmer
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 2006-2010
    Web/Multimedia Management Specialist
  • Ensemble Travel Group, Vancouver, BC 2004-2006
    Web Developer
  • Air Canada, Montreal, QC 2003-2004
    Web Designer
  • CE Network Inc., Toronto, ON 2001-2003
    Graphic Artist; Freelance Web Designer
EDUCATION
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 2009, M.S. in Technology
  • Institute for Computer Graphics Research (ICARI), Montreal, QC, 2003, Diploma in Web Design
  • Moscow State Pedagogical University, Moscow, Russia, 2000, B.A. equivalent in Linguistics and Communication
  • Visionary UX lead with experience, skill and passion for solving challenging design problems and creating unique, engaging, emotional, meaningful experiences on the web.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & AWARDS
  • Mozilla Foundation Open Leadership program mentor, 2017 - present
  • Mozilla Foundation Open Leadership certificate, 12-Week Certificate Program, 2016
  • Purdue Bravo Award, Purdue IT, 2015
  • Technical Management Institute Certificate, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, 2014
  • Purdue Special Merit Award, Purdue Discovery Park, 2007
  • Desktop Publishing Design Certificate, George Brown College, Toronto, ON, 2001
SKILLS, TOOLS & EXPERTISE
  • Visual design, interaction design, low to high fidelity prototyping, wireframing, user flows. Adobe CC, Axure, Sketch and alike. Responsive design, web standards, accessibility. Lean/Agile. HTML, CSS, JavaScript w JQuery, D3.js, PHP, MySQL, APIs, Git, Github, Docker. Strong familiarity with ClojureScript + ReactJS.
CONTACT