The novel collaboration between the Banding Lab, part of USGS' Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, and the University of Baltimore’s graduate program in Interaction Design and Information Architecture in fall 2017. This novel partnership provides graduate students with real-world problems and allows the biologists in the BBL to leverage local talent in areas outside of the expertise of current staff - in this case, web usability and design. During the fall semester, graduate students reviewed the BBL’s website and Reportband.gov. In the spring semester a different group of graduate students conducted user testing of Bandit software.

We’ve recruited two graduate students from these courses to continue working with the BBL as part of their Master’s theses. Jaime Dalbke is working on the redesign of Reportband.gov. Brandon Turner is gathering additional feedback from Bandit users in advance of the replacement of current software with a new, web-based data submission process.

Stay tuned for updates about these projects here!