Graduate Assistantship:
UX Textbook Authoring & Research
The Role
The assistantship is a working academic position inside Kent State's School of Information. I contribute to teaching and research under faculty supervision, with deliverables used by students and research teams.
My GA responsibilities fall into three areas: instructional materials development for graduate UX courses, co-authoring a graduate-level UX textbook, and qualitative research verification. Each of these requires a different kind of rigor. Instructional materials need to be clear, accurate, and pedagogically sound. Textbook authoring demands synthesis of existing literature into something coherent and teachable. Research verification means checking that qualitative findings hold up under scrutiny, that coding schemes are consistent, and that claims are grounded in data.
Faculty review sets the standard for scope, evidence, and revision. I have to trace claims to source material, explain methodological choices, and revise work that does not survive that review.
Textbook Authoring
Contributing to a graduate UX textbook requires literature synthesis, design theory, usability research, and the cognitive science behind both. My work includes analyzing sources, identifying gaps, drafting explanatory material, and making technical ideas teachable without stripping away the distinctions that matter.
Textbook authoring requires a specific kind of discipline. Every claim needs a citation. Every example needs to be accurate and current. The writing has to be precise without being impenetrable. You are building a reference that students will return to across their careers, so shortcuts in accuracy or clarity compound into real problems.
This work connects directly to my research interests in creativity, cognition, explainable AI, and embodied cognition. Writing about these topics at textbook depth forces a level of understanding that reading alone does not. You cannot explain something clearly to a graduate student if you do not understand it thoroughly yourself.
Research Verification
The qualitative research verification work is about methodological rigor. Qualitative research produces rich data, but that richness creates opportunities for interpretive drift, where findings subtly shift away from what the data actually supports. My role is to verify that the research holds together: checking coding consistency, tracing claims back to source data, and flagging places where the analysis might be overreaching.
This is detail work. It requires patience, systematic thinking, and a willingness to question conclusions that seem reasonable but are not fully supported. It is also excellent training for anyone who wants to conduct their own qualitative research. You learn what rigor looks like by holding other work to that standard first.
The verification process involves reviewing transcripts, audit trails, and coding schemes. I check whether categories emerge from the data, whether the analysis imposes them, and whether inter-rater reliability applies. That detail work is what makes the result defensible.
Why This Matters
I am pursuing a research-oriented career in UX, with a focus on ethnographic and desk research. My goal is a PhD in HCI or Design Sciences. Everything in this assistantship feeds that trajectory directly.
Academic Credibility
The textbook and course-material work gives me evidence of sustained literature synthesis, technical explanation, and revision under expert review. Those are the parts I can show. Admissions committees can decide what weight they deserve.
Research Skills
Textbook authoring and research verification build literature synthesis, methodological awareness, qualitative analysis, and collaboration under supervision. I will carry those skills into doctoral research.
The Bigger Picture
My research connects creativity, cognition, explainable AI, and embodied interaction through one question: how do people make sense of complex systems, and what should a tool expose to help? The assistantship gives me direct practice answering that question through sources, methods, and accountable revision.