Aaron Powers 


 

My areas of specific expertise are: (1) human-robot interaction (2) building experiments and studies, especially complex web-based ones, and, more broadly, (3) human-computer interaction & user experience evaluation, design, & development.

I have worked on human-computer interaction projects for a number of small businesses, research projects, and startup companies, as well as one I started, ReserveSport LLC (since retired to open source). I've led development of several software packages and web applications that have had tens of thousands of users, including a state of the art web survey package, the Web Survey Toolbox, which is used for online research around the world. Until August 2006, I was a Senior Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University, where I've published several papers about Human-Robot Interaction, with several more in the works.

CanLinkIt
Many designers use Photoshop for designing UIs -- I'm one of them. On many design teams I've been on, we've had piles of Photoshop files and updating, say, a background image in a bunch of files was a big pain. So in my spare time I'm working on CanLinkIt -- it allows you to create references, or links, to other Photoshop files to "include" them in just like you can do with code.

MathWorks
I currently work as a Senior Usability Specialist at MathWorks.

Opera Solutions
I worked as the User Experience Architect at Opera Solutions from 2010-2012.

iRobot
I worked at iRobot from 2006 to 2010, doing user interface design primarily in the Government and Industrial Robotics Division.


Project On People And Robots
Until 2006, I was a researcher and developer for the Project on People and Robots, focusing on Pearl the Nursebot.

Web Survey Toolbox
I am project lead for the Web Survey Toolbok, an open source software package for building complex web surveys.

ReserveSport, LLC
I founded ReserveSport, LLC, which built software for making online court reservations. It retired to open source in 2004.

HomeNet
Until 2004, I worked on the HomeNet project, building and designing advanced web surveys for research on the effect of the Internet in the home.

Games
I worked on a few games and virtual reality worlds -- these were just fun (none made it into the public).