Michelle Boisson

interaction design and creative strategy

About Me

Research, Design, and Code in Service of Great End-to-End Experiences

Hi there!

I’m a holistic designer that’s not afraid of complex problems. I strive to be thorough in my explorations and precise in my definitions. When problem solving, my curiosity drives me to look from multiple angles. I’m fascinated by people and how we operate. I have a strong appetite for tinkering and learning.

I'm an advocate for the user, blending human-centered design, interaction design, behavior design, and design thinking. I'm involved in service design, prototyping, experience mapping, product design, user interviews and research, and usability testing.

I enjoy working in different mediums of emerging and traditional technology, like wearable tech, smart bike accessories, large scale in-person games, interactive installations, digital comics, and mobile apps. When not at work, I enjoy screen-free activities like card games, playing music, and chasing my toddler.

My Recent Work

Expanding the Used Cars Research Experience

- November 2, 2016

Role Product definition, information architecture, user research and synthesis in collaboration with a UX researcher, collaborating with a data scientist to produce data-driven prototypes, workshop facilitation with stakeholders, requirements documentation and prototyping. Observations Through interviews and surveys, we also learned that used car shoppers are not interested in learning how a car performed when when […]

Cell Phone Service Plan Helper

- November 1, 2016

Role Lead strategist, facilitator, prototype maker. I documented our process on a tumblr blog. Observations Choosing an optimal cell phone plan and switching carriers is a painful process for most. In interviews with consumers, we heard a lot about a fear of switching. Many people had a sense that they were not getting the best […]

Car Buying Guide for iOS and Android

- October 31, 2016

My Role: Product definition, information architecture, user research and synthesis in collaboration with a UX researcher, workshop facilitation with stakeholders, requirements documentation and prototyping. Observations: Most people looking into purchasing a new car tend to focus on which model is right for them, narrowing their choices to a few models, ignoring trim in the beginning. […]

Lumiere Video Editing App

- June 30, 2014

Local Projects was commissioned to design and build an iPad app for the Jacob Burns Film Center. Working directly with their lead interaction designer, I built web-based prototypes to help bring the concepts and interactions to life. >> Play with the prototype here << Lumiere teaches the fundamentals of visual storytelling through “viewing and doing” […]

Humboldt Forum Microsite

- June 29, 2014

In the soon-to-be reconstructed Berlin Palace, museum, library, university, and event venue will merge to create a thriving meeting point for people from all over the world – irrespective of their origin, age, educational background, interests, experience, and personal tastes. This meeting-point and melting-pot will be the Humboldt-Forum. While reconstruction for the new venue was […]

WorkJam

- February 15, 2013

WorkJam is a hypothetical system that helps regulate your mental energy with music while you’re working. It listens to your brain activity and responds with smart song selections to keep you in the creative flow. The Problem I’m not good at taking breaks when I’m working. Once I get started, I tend keep going and […]

IRC Mobile App Proposal

- April 5, 2012

The Brief Based on a creative brief, my classmate Carlin and I have been thinking about how a the International Rescue Committee could use mobile-based technologies as a way to ultimately garner donations and raise awareness about the organization. Looking at some of their competitors, we didn’t find much on mobile. My research on uses of […]

Paired

- February 15, 2013

Paired is a set of wearable, networked devices exploring intimate communication between people via screenless, interactive technologies. This was my graduate thesis project while attending ITP. DESCRIPTION Our current digital tools empower us to interact with our environment in new ways, being able to connect with more people and things at once. While the modes […]

Balloon Wars

- May 31, 2013

“It’s war. Don’t get popped.” As featured at the Come Out and Play Festival at Governor’s Island in 2012. Balloon Wars is a history of combat told through balloon stomping. A variety of short games can expose players to the varied ways we have battled each other, from asymmetric warfare to the charge, we explore […]

Simple Direction, wayfinding app

- April 12, 2012

David Gibson, wayfinding expert and author of The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Spaces, spoke to our user experience class a few weeks ago. After his presentation on how he and his team design wayfinding experiences, we had an interesting discussion around GPS navigations systems. A classmate told a story of how his friend, new […]

Simple Direction Wearable

- February 15, 2013

I wanted to make a wearable digital compass, that would point to a destination you give it, instead of pointing North. Here is the process I went through, the successes and the failures. The Parts I ordered my parts from sparkfun. I got an ATtiny85 which I could program with the Arduino Uno, a compass […]

BeThereNYC

- December 5, 2010

BeThereNYC is about free, cheap, fun, here and now. It is a personal project I started tinkering with in Spring 2010. I wanted to create a site that listed all the free and cheap events around the city. Every summer I’d aggregate the calendars from organizations like SummerStage and River to River into one shared Google calendar. I’d share […]

Digital Periscope

- February 15, 2013

Digital Periscope is an user-controlled installation to be put up at 240 Central Park West, which shares the view of Columbus Circle, Central Park and most of midtown Manhattan from the roof of the building, with people in the lobby. Project by Michelle P Boisson, Kaitlin Till-Landry, Tak Cheung, and Mark Breneman. Our group was […]

ME&Useum

- December 27, 2011

Overview After a talk giving by Curtis Wong, creator of The WorldWide Telescope (WWT), my team put together a response for our classmates in the form of a presentation. Our response: Personal narratives and immersive environments create memorable experiences. We decided that for our presentation, we would turn the lecture room into a museum space […]

Interactive Jellyfish Light Sculpture

- December 28, 2011

The jellyfish is an interactive sculpture that emits lights and is able to hear and speak like a living organism. When people get closer, her heart starts beating and she emits light and makes sounds in her own language. As she is from the deep sea, we don’t exactly know what she is saying, but […]

Emo Ant HTML5 Comic

- March 9, 2012

This comic is an experiment using new front-end tools available with webkit browsers. with an interactive interface online. As the user scrolls down, the story advances with animated transitions giving the user full control of the flow and speed. I’ll be using parallax effects, css3 transformations, and javascript queueing for the speech bubbles. See the […]

Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2010

- November 15, 2011

Building on the success of the Best Global Brands 2009, we looked to push the design and architecture a bit further. As a result, the website earned an Official Webby Honoree nomination and a Silver Award at the 2011 W3 Awards. I translated the designs into code and hand-coded the framework.