Preventing bad experiences with digital goods

Giovanna Mancinelli is driven by the psychology behind digital products and the audiences interacting with them.

"You could build the quickest and most efficient program possible, but if people don't use it, it's a waste of money, and you will have disappointed your stakeholders. You will have disappointed the users because chances are that they needed to use it, and now they're not going to because it's hard to understand or it's not intuitive. Situations like that appear all over the world," says the UC Irvine senior in informatics.

Mancinelli collaborates with other students at UC Irvine to tackle these dilemmas, honing her craft via course projects and club events such as Design at UCI's Design-a-thon. Whether she's developing an app exposing children to different musical instruments or recommending foods based on a person's preferences, Mancinelli centers her designs around what would be most useful for the consumer.

"In my classes, I focus on the layout of apps. What's going to be on the home page? What should be hidden behind a menu? I think that looking at the map to go somewhere versus typing in the address should actually be two separate tabs," she says. "It's my job to advocate for the user."

For much of her adolescence, Mancinelli was unsure of her career path. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, she utilized her free time to research, watching YouTube videos of people detailing what a day in their occupation entailed. It was a user experience designer who caught Mancinelli's attention, eventually leading her to pursue informatics.

The Daly City native credits much of her initial interest in UX and informatics to the experimental technology she was exposed to during childhood, witnessing the trial and error of Bay Area companies testing new endeavors in the city's streets.

As she began her informatics journey at Redwood City's Cañada College, Mancinelli joined the Beta Zeta Nu chapter of the Phi Theta Kappa honor society, where, she says, she learned the importance of not only taking up space but being comfortable doing so - a lesson she carries with her to this day.

After studying for four years at community college, Mancinelli transferred to UC Irvine, where she specializes in human-computer interaction, building effective programs that are both visually appealing and easy to navigate.

Currently employed by the Womxn's Center for Success at UC Irvine as a creative media designer, she crafts posters and reels for social media. "It's one of my first times making designs that directly benefit a large body of students, so it feels really fulfilling," Mancinelli says.

She is also an innovation intern at The Paul Merage School of Business, writing tutorials that guide students through using Meta Quest headsets during their virtual reality-based Into the Metaverse course.

For the 2023-24 academic year, Mancinelli received an award from the Bob and Barbara Kleist Endowment, which assists transfer students venturing into the computer science field. She says that beyond the financial aid, the award reaffirms her commitment to her work - a reminder that trying her best is enough.

While Mancinelli has yet to decide whether she'll pursue UX design or graphic design after graduation, she's exploring both avenues with an open mind.

When asked what she hopes to achieve with her work, Mancinelli says: "I hope that whatever company I end up working for, I can one day stop a user on the street and say, 'Hey, I noticed you're using that app. I worked on that.' And they'll tell me, 'I like it. I find it easy to use, and I use it frequently. It's improved my life. It helps make my life easier."