BlackBerry WebWorks
In 2011, I completed a 12 month co-op with BlackBerry (then Research In Motion) working as a Software Test Associate on the WebWorks platform. WebWorks is a technology for both the legacy BlackBerry 7 operating system, the PlayBook OS, and BlackBerry 10 that allows developers to create web/html based applications with access to various native APIs that a traditional application would include. My role involved generating test cases for testing HTML5 support according to the W3C guidelines, running these tests on new builds of the operating system, and logging+tracking encountered bugs with the development team. At the time and at present, the platform still scores the highest amongst mobile on the HTML5 test.
Phylodex
Phylodex was a group project for a Software Engineering class where the challenge was to create an interesting companion / enhancement iOS application for the Phylo Game project. My role in the group was secondary programmer and version management control/QA. As the whole group's first experience working with iOS, it was a fairly successful effort that achieved a significant amount of the goals considering the external constraints and dependencies in development. The project was also a strong experience in team programming and collaboration, version tracking and integration, and general product development cycles.
Affective Evaluation Field Study
Our team was challenged to utilize a field study to evaluate players’ subjective emotional and affective experiences using a whole body interface style video game. The goal was to find out how the participants felt during and after game play. This information was then used to suggest improvements to the design of aspects of the interface.
Google+ Hangouts Usability Study
For a Design Evaluation course at SFU, our group was challenged to perform User Studies/ Testing of the Google+ Video Hangouts software experience. After creating a set of tasks that would provide insight into the various elements we were interested in, we gathered participants and went through both Think-Aloud and Constructive Interaction sessions. Findings were compiled into a document and were amongst those that the professor passed along to Google that he was in dialogue with.
Student Information System Redesign
In a User Interface course, our group was tasked with performing User Studies to determine the goals and needs of students when interacting with the Student Information System service, and were challenged to take these findings and incorporate them into a proposed redesign of the system/interface. The project was then further tested against users to identify problem areas and targets for improvement. My role crossed all areas of the project from user study design to documentation and analysis to interface design. Our variant of the system received the top mark in the class for appropriately identifying and justifying user needs and addressing them in the final design.
Other Projects
Other projects I have developed and worked on in the past include the following:
- Quantitative On-Screen Keyboard Evaluation - Gained experience conducting a controlled experiment, performing statistical analysis, interpreting the results, and considering the implications to design decisions. The assignment compared people's mouse-typing abilities on different keyboard layouts. Technical Documentation was created summarizing and analyzing the test data.
- Writing++ - Tasked with the design of a "design-support tool", our group focused on the design domain of creative writing. Studying the design domain in more detail, we defined the problem or bottleneck areas of design activities. Using iterative design, we created multiple prototypes and refined our application to meet these problem areas and create a functional prototype to evaluate our design and solutions. My role was that of Lead Data Structure Programmer, Version Control Management/QA, and Co-Designer. By utilizing Test Driven Development, we were able to ensure that all our group's atomic code integrated correctly when put together, and errors were much easier to be tracked down to their origin.
- Maze Router & Map Colours - Created a best path maze solver and a 4-color map solver in Scheme. Strong results on these assignments were achieved with careful test-driven design to ensure all functions performed atomically before integration, as well as designing effective edge test cases.
- Beat Detektor - This was a partner project at SFU where we were challenged to create 'an interesting multimedia program' to demonstrate concepts from the course. The application is designed to function as interactive visualizer for user chosen audio files. Using various signal processing techniques the program analyzes the desired audio file and creates a set of data to generate visuals and gameplay elements in synch with audio playback. Along with gaining experience in Version Control and code integration, this project, much like the Maze Solver and 4-Color Solver, was built on a strong Test-Driven Development foundation.
© 2014 Ethan Johanson All Rights Reserved.