Michael Adcock

I earned a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the Information School at the University of Washington in the summer of 2008. Detailed descriptions of my projects and experiences can be found in my MLIS Portfolio. My coursework listing and  Transcript are also available.

The projects and topics mentioned below are just a few highlights.

Information Architecture

• I participated in an intensive, week long course where I learned the history of IA, challenges, techniques, and methods.
• The final team project had us “pitch” a solution with only four days to produce a strategy, enough artifacts to describe the design, and a presentation.
• I also attended my first IA Summit in 2008, thanks to a scholarship from Eric Reiss at FatDUX. I’ve attended every IA Summit since, and continue to be active in the community.
• Additional details can be found here.

Usability

• I performed preliminary user and task analysis, created a persona, conducted an interview, wrote a product walkthrough and created a use scenario.
• Working with a team, I produced a wants and needs analysis, wrote a redesign proposal, conducted another wants and needs analysis combined with a cognitive walkthrough, applied heuristic evaluation, conducted a usability evaluation, analyzed our findings, produced a final report and gave a presentation to our class.
• With a different team, I produced a  test kit containing several components including a brief participant survey, an administrator checklist and script, a consent form, data collection forms, a task list for the user to follow during the test, and a post study interview script. Once prepared, we ran a pilot study using two participants, and produced a  final report detailing our findings.
• Additional details can be found here.

Interaction Design and HCI

• After learning fundamentals like Fitts’s Law and reading Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, I worked with two colleagues to create the fundamental interaction design for a zero-button mouse. While the design and final analysis was a team effort, I implemented the prototype myself in JavaScript and tried to ensure cross-browser compatibility.
• Additional details can be found here.

Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies

• During a course on the construction of indexing languages, I developed a web application that my team used to construct and maintain a thesaurus. (Note that we were only expected to create the thesaurus, not a tool!)
• I later used this TiddlyWiki Thesaurus as a focus for usability improvements, and students in two other instances of the indexing course have used it in their thesaurus projects.

Presentation Skills

• Although one course focused solely on teaching and instruction, I frequently presented findings from research, lead discussion groups, and used PowerPoint presentations.
• Additional details can be found here.

Library and Information Science

• I gained a solid understanding of how to model information behavior, covered information organization theory, collection development, and the reference interview process.
• I also studied metadata design, ontologies, and semantic structures.