Selected illustrations from Microsoft Firenze BXT
Selected illustrations from
Microsoft Firenze BXT
Software: After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Professional, PowerPoint
Category: illustration, human-centered research methods, teamwork, leadership
These are samples of illustrations I developed and merged with photography. They're from a video sketch I compiled for my CMU team as part of the Firenze competition. All the sketches were in pencil, inked, and scanned, and incorporated with the photos in After Effects.
About the competition: The university round of Firenze began in November 2010. My teammates represented each of the three disciplines embodied in this competition: Chua Chong Han (HCI/Technology), Jeff Mataya (MBA/Business), and Safwan Samla (MBA/Business). I represented the Experience portion of our team, though Chong Han and I worked closely together on that aspect. Our main reason for participating was to work with people from other departments and to break out of our "departmental silos."
Out of 10 CMU teams, ours ended up winning, and in early February 2011 we journeyed to Redmond, Washington to compete against (and work with) teams from Cornell, The Ohio State University, UMich, and NYU.
In a nutshell, the weekend in Redmond--and the entire competition--was such a tremendous (and intense) experience. I learned so much, made some wonderful contacts, and really feel like I pushed myself and grew. I feel truly honored to have made it that far. Our Redmond team didn't win the grand prize, but our CMU team had not even entered for the purpose of winning. It was all about the experience.
My Role: During the university competition, I facilitated the design and ideation discussions, and worked with the others to conduct user research. I also put together our team's video sketch, developed personas, and supervised the assembly of our slide deck. During the Redmond competition, I once again led the brainstorming (affinity diagrams, whiteboarding, and generally keeping the discussion focused on the user experience), ideation, and user research, ensuring that all my teammates were involved, and created the visuals and a slide template.
Throughout the competition, we have been under a NDA, so I regretfully cannot share any specifics of the projects we worked on. However, I would like to share some still images to demonstrate both my visual abilities (illustration, general composition) and to share some of our visual style.