Hello.
My interests are in the areas where technology, training, and communication intersect. Using web technology to give learners of all backgrounds access to education is more than job to me; it is my calling. I have degrees in both computer science and in education and have been working in these fields since 1998.
As a K-12 classroom teacher, I learned that education is about meeting people where they are and getting them where they need to be. I believe that education should not be a filter where we sort which learners are worthy. It should be a scaffold that supports students while we build them into people who can stand on their own. This is why I was drawn to accessibility and universal design in my web career.
At Penn State, I have worked on programming, multimedia specialist, and user experience teams. I have facilitated sessions where we identify our users, create empathy maps, and form personas. I have performed content inventories and modeling. I have gathered requirements, written user stories, and created data schemas for new interactive tools. I have designed wireframes and developed front-end prototypes based on user research and heuristic studies of our competitors.
Because I work very closely with accessibility consultants, I have learned how to create interfaces that are not just WCAG 2.0 compliant, but also a pleasant user experience for users of assistive technology. Our students use Kurzweil more than any other assistive technology. Most developers are only testing with VoiceOver or JAWS, if at all. Often Kurzweil users will use the print feature to work around content that does not load, so I put as much emphasis on designing for print as I do for designing for screen.
Of course even the best user-interfaces can be terrible user-experiences if the content itself is incorrect or out of date. If a system is too cumbersome for the staff who maintain content in it, then the content and end users will suffer. That’s why I advocate for Authoring Experience (AX) to make our work scalable. A good AX will result in shorter, more streamlined training with fewer refreshers. A good AX will allow staff to update content more efficiently. A good AX will result in fewer technical support tickets.
I am a unique combination of multimedia specialist, front-end developer, and educator, and I enjoy opportunities to put all of these skills to use. I’m looking forward to sharing my work with you!
Sincerely,
Nikki MK