Salma Elsayed-Ali

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Working with the Design Team on ArcGIS Hub at the Esri R&D Center in Washington DC. Utilizing UX Research methods including heuristic evaluation, scenario and task creation, usability testing, clickstream analysis, tree tests, etc. as well as helping with UI design and debugging.

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Please read our IDC 2020 publication available Open Access via the ACM DL here for more information.

For a Fall 2019 course, Fundamentals of Human-Computer Interaction I worked with a team to research the potential of autopersonalization technologies (specifically the Morphic OS extension) for people with mild to moderate dementia. We additionally assessed the discoverability of accessibility features, notification systems, and more generally usability testing with people with dementia.

We conducted in-person pilot usability tests and full remote usability tests using Zoom software. This was the first project where I got to run usability tests from the beginning to end, with semi-structured interviews interspersed throughout. I also got to work on task and scenario creation, research question definition, and paper writing.

While a research assistant at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute for the 10-week Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program, I collaborated alongside members of the OH!Lab and was responsible for cleaning, coding, and analyzing user data drawn from an online peer feedback system (PeerPresents) and surveys taken by students and instructors of an educational game design course. It was an amazing opportunity where I got to put my advanced Excel , data visualization, user research methods, and writing skills to good use. I created and iterated on over 100 different data visualizations, a process that looked a little bit like this:


What did I learn from the experience?
For the two studies I worked on concurrently, I learned and utilized different UX research techniques including open card sorting through random sampling (see below), qualitative coding, think aloud sessions, and checking for intercoder reliability. I also learned about statistical measures such as the standard error of the mean (as opposed to standard deviation), game design, Likert-type scales, formative (as opposed to summative) feedback, and the ICAP theory of cognitive engagement. Conducting research at the HCII was a wonderful opportunity where I got to bridge diverse methods and theories drawing from a multitude of disciplines, as well as contribute to research studies by my fellow colleagues working in AR/VR, social computing, and enabling technologies.


ACM CHI Paper:
In addition to working on the two research studies, I greatly contributed to the literature review, methods, and findings for a paper on the utilization of guiding questions in peer feedback exchanges, which was accepted to CHI (The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) 2019. You can find the paper here.

Poster Symposium
I also created a poster and presented it to HCII students, faculty, and CMU SCS community members at the culminating summer research symposium, seen above.