Andrew McKinney

Andrew McKinney

Current Focus
Human-Computer Interaction Design program at Indiana University

Background
Business-Technology Consulting, Animation Support (Disney)

Career Interests
Interaction Design, User Experience, Prototyping

Blog
hciblog.com

Twitter
@drewmckinney

Linked-In
Andrew McKinney

Hobbies
Cycling, Camping, Melbourne Shuffle

Favorite Tools
Fireworks, Ruby on Rails, xCode, Pen & Paper

About Me

Professional Goals

Design Philosophy

Background



Why I love Interaction Design and User Experience... a quick story

When I began my career I was tasked with the ostensibly 'not-so-fun job' of creating an electronic version of HIV tracking forms nurses were using to report disease information at hospitals. The nurses would manually enter form details using a pen, fax the sheet to the City of Chicago, and the information would be re-entered into computers there.

When the City wanted to change these forms to an electronic version the nurses fought back. Most were not used to working with computers and felt uncomfortable with a web form, preferring a COBOL mainframe entry or paper/fax instead. This eventually became a major conflict between the City and the hospitals: the City wanting to modernize to web, the hospitals wanting to stick with the tried-and-true method.

I took this conflict into account when designing the forms. Instead of creating a strictly web-enabled form, I created a PDF version which could either be submitted electronically with one click or faxed into City offices. The form used the same tabbing feature as COBOL interfaces; hitting TAB would iterate between entry cells. The result was an adoption of the forms by the nurses, and a general end to the form conflict.

I love Interaction Design because it centers around the user, not the technology, as the mechanism for change. Making the users job/life easier translates into a successful project.