Vound / Aduna

Semantic Exploration and Cyber-crime Investigation

For a year and a half I worked as a part-time interaction designer for Aduna, a company developing enterprise search solutions. During my time at Aduna I have helped to improve the usability of their software, worked on a large consultancy project, and helped transforming their generic search solution into a tool specifically suitable for cyber-crime investigation.

History

Back in 2005 I attended a guest lecture by Aduna. As part of the course, Steven Langerwerf and I analyzed Aduna's AutoFocus software and came up with several possible improvements. In 2006 I took a course at CMU on Software Architectures for User Interfaces. As a final project for this course, I decided to implement several of the improvements I suggested earlier. Together with Gabriel Golcher and Herman Ng, I implemented the improvements in the JAVA source code. During the winter break I discussed the design rationale behind the improvements with the Aduna development team.

By the end of 2007, Aduna asked me to come work for them as a part-time interaction designer.

Usability and Usefulness

My first task at Aduna was to test and improve the usability of AutoFocus and its unique search visualization. I performed Heuristic Evaluations, designed new interaction concepts, validated these with users, constructed and tested paper prototypes and at last implemented the improvements in a Flash-based mock-up.

Several of my proposed improvements have now made their way to one of the Aduna products. Furthermore, my approach has inspired the development team to take a more user-centric approach to software development.

Consultancy

When a large Dutch insurance company asked Aduna for a creative search solution linking their knowledge about risks to customer data and experience research data, I was asked to design such a solution. Together with the Context Innovation team I explored the different types of information they wanted to include and came up with a hybrid solution to explore linked and unlinked data in an intuitive interface.

As a side-project I analyzed information flows in the risk department and designed a tailored way gathering, augmenting and disclosing risk information for risk analysts and underwriters.

Intella

Aduna recently started a Joint Venture with Forensics Matters to form Vound. For Vound I helped to transform the AutoFocus software into Intella, a tool for digital forensic research.

Design

Beside my main position as an interaction designer, Aduna has also used my experience in visual design. I designed several brochures, the Aduna website, and an exposition banner.

I also designed the entire Vound corporate brand, including the Intella product logo, the Vound website, several brochures, and the software box.

Accomplishments