Olivia Altman’s Portfolio
Graduate Student at The New School for Social Research: Applied Psychology & Design
About Me
I’m a Master’s student in Applied Psychology & Design at The New School, with Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Government & Law from Lafayette College.
My work spans UX research, AI, mental health, human behavior, and design, focusing on how people interact with systems, technology, and each other.
My experience includes usability testing, heuristic evaluations, hierarchical task analysis, and psychological research on topics like human interaction, social pain perception, test anxiety, and digital learning tools. As a former Mental Health Program Coordinator at BSM Global Association, I developed initiatives supporting survivors of gender-based violence. I also worked as a Behavioral Health Technician (BHT) supporting children with autism. At my university, I currently serve as an Editor for The New School Psychology Bulletin and I am part of the Language & Interaction Lab as a student researcher.
I’m passionate about bridging psychology, technology, design, AI, empathy, and mental health to improve experiences, accessibility, and well-being.
Past Studies
Below are my past independent studies in APA-style lab reports along with short descriptions.
Above: Conducted UX research through testing methods such as personas, heuristic checklist evaluations, storyboarding, competitor analyses, and hierarchical task analysis and created and conducted surveys to test user experience. Generated strengths and weaknesses, figures, and reported results in a final APA-style lab report with suggestions on how to improve the usability of the application.
Above: Designed an experiment to test how one’s proximity to a painful event impacts pain levels. Created an Institutional Review Board Proposal. Collected data from participants and cleaned data in Excel to input into JASP. Created an APA-style lab report and graphs and tables for visual reference of data. Designed an experiment to test how one’s proximity to a painful event impacts pain levels. Created an Institutional Review Board Proposal. Collected data from participants and cleaned data in Excel to input into JASP. Created an APA-style lab report and graphs and tables for visual reference of data.
Above: Designed an experiment to test the impact of online testing conditions on test performance. Created an Institutional Review Board proposal. Collected data from students and organized the data into an Excel spreadsheet to put into JASP for calculations.
Photography
I have experience in photography, Adobe Lightroom, studio setups, and lighting fixtures. My primary focus is on artistic portrait photography.
“Feeling Blue” won a Gold Key award from the Scholastic Art and Writing Award in 2019
Artistic Portraits
Infographics & Social Media Posts I Designed
I have experience designing on Canva, Adobe InDesign, and, more recently, Figma. I also have a lot of experience designing powerpoints with Canva, Google Slides, and Microsoft Powerpoint. Here are examples:
