I received my B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego, in 2002. After graduation I spent two years doing enterprise software support for the Data Management division of IBM in Silicon Valley. The daily interaction with customers gave me a taste of the experiences and frustrations of users when faced with unintuitive software, and reinforced my desire to go back to school to learn how to design better systems.

I am currently a full-time student in the Human-Computer Interaction Masters program at Carnegie Mellon University and expect to graduate in August 2005. After graduation I hope to apply what I have learned to design products that support people's lives and are easy and enjoyable to use.

This semester I am working on a project to design, develop and evaluate interfaces for Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETMs) as part of ongoing CMU research for the U.S. Navy. The project aims to assist maintenance workers in efficiently performing complex problem-solving tasks by providing:

• Intelligent access to technical manuals through natural language querying and navigation
• Integrated equipment, procedure and personal history for effective coaching during performance
• Active assistance in diagnostic and repair procedures
• Support for synchronous and asynchronous work-group collaboration through dialog-based problem reporting and solution capture

The expected impacts include enabling maintainers to become self-sufficient earlier in training, making their skills transferable over a wide range of equipment, and improving the speed and quality of maintenance work.