We work with the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) to provide usability and user experience consulting services. We do design and evaluation work with science gateways creators, helping them make their gateways easier and more pleasant to use. We have worked with more than 35 teams across a variety of domains and disciplines, including hurricane modeling, chemistry education, intercultural learning, ocean science, and nanotechnology, among others. A complete list of SGCI’s previous clients can be found here.

We offer bi-annual workshops on usability and user-centered design as part of SGCI’s Focus Week. In these workshops, we teach participants core principles of user-centered design and provide hands-on training for conducting basic usability testing.

We also give occasional webinars for the science gateways community on topics relating to user-centered design and usability.

  • February 12, 2020—Lessons learned from SGCI’s usability consulting [link]
  • August 8, 2018—User experience, usability, and visualization [link]
  • November 8, 2017—Making you gateway easy and pleasant to use [link] 

Graduate and undergraduate students within Purdue’s UX Design program carry out the majority of the day-to-day consulting work, under the supervision of Paul Parsons. Below is a list of students who have served in this role.

Current Students

Rachel Anderson
Graduate Assistant

Rachel is a Master’s student studying UX design. Rachel completed her undergraduate degree in Marketing & Hospitality Management from the University of Denver. While she spent a few years in industry, it was through a class on UX Design that she found her true passion. Rachel is excited to combine her passions of design and enhancing people’s experiences. She is looking forward to completing this program and applying these concepts and lessons to future jobs.

Ariana Eskew
Undergraduate Assistant

Ariana Eskew is a junior studying User Experience Design. She is pursuing minors in Psychology and Advanced Global Technology and certificates in Collaborative Leadership and Global Competence. Her choice to pursue design stems from her love of fostering meaningful connections between people and technology and creating striking visual designs.

Kanika Rao
Undergraduate Assistant

Kanika Rao is currently a junior studying User Experience Design with minors in Psychology and Communication. Her interests currently lie in Project Management, Data Visualization, and User Research. The many opportunities that lie within the space of user experience design and the many opportunities to improve or enhance the experience of different users while enacting direct change in different communities excites Kanika.

Past Students

Chrissy (Yu-Chuan) Chen, Graduate Assistant

Yu-Shen Ho, Graduate Assistant

Stephanie Knab, Graduate Assistant

Chris Watkins, Graduate Assistant

Marlo Owczarzak, Graduate Assistant

Abbee Westbrook, Undergraduate Assistant

Greg Sirko, Undergraduate Assistant

Brandon Dentler, Undergraduate Assistant

Kaitlin Groothuis, Undergraduate Assistant

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation, award 1547611