Brian Illa Email & Phone Number

Greater Seattle Area

Seattle, Washington, United States

San Francisco Bay Area

Greater Seattle Area

Culminating my college experience, I was involved in this research group conducting outreach with local high schools to introduce young adults to the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering and the field of UX. During visits to high schools, we ran an activity refereed to as a "charrette" or an intense period of design activity. During this time, students have the opportunity to engage in User Centered Design activities: from brainstorming users, needs, and goals to sketching app screens and developing low fidelity prototypes using the Marvel Prototyping tool. At the end of the activity, student's are able to create they're own applications based on UCD methodology.During 3 months, I lead 50 minute and 80 minute charrette activities at 3 different high schools in the Seattle area.

Greater Seattle Area

In this directed research group, we analyzed the misinformation and disinformation ecosystem that exits in and around social media spaces. This research focused on understanding the emotional affect of fake news and how misinformation has distorted our social information space.

Greater Seattle Area

Worked in an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers and developers to establish a program for reducing the amount of food waste that comes from the UW by pairing with local food donation agencies. My work was primarily focused on research by completing interviews and contextual inquiries with agencies in the Greater Seattle Area to capture a clear picture about these organizations, how they run and their impact to the surrounding communities. Additionally, I worked with a small team of designers to start first iterations of an online web portal that would serve as the medium for handling donation logistics between the UW, food agencies and our team.

Greater Seattle Area

During this 6 month senior capstone project, I worked as a User Researcher and Product Designer in an interdisciplinary team of 4 to design "blue sky" solutions for trust building communication between Amazon and Amazon Marketplace Sellers. Our stakeholders from the Amazon challenged us to see how trust can be built solely through news communication and what factors of news move the dial as it pertains to trust. We employed different UCD techniques in order to address our design goal and research questions:- Participatory Design and Competitive Analysis used to understand the seller experience and tease out pain points, needs and goals related to news communication from Amazon- Development of design concepts, from low fidelity wires to high fidelity mock-ups. These concepts directly address the needs and pain points identified during the research phase- Usability testing of these concepts to understand their perceived value among Amazon Marketplace SellersThe culmination of this project resulted in a presentation to Amazon stakeholders directly involved in the development of Amazon news communication as well as a presentation at the annual HCDE Open House event.

Greater Seattle Area

Working with the Lab Manager and Lab Supervisor to ensure lab equipment and spaces are in order and prepared for student labs. Assisted in stocking of materials, fixing equipment and documenting papers and packages.