Site Update
I’ve rolled out updates to my website today that have been in the works for some time. The basic look is the same and most of you probably won’t notice a thing. I’ve done a lot that will help me manage the site and its integration with Wordpress better. Updates include
- New resume - hire me!
- Links page which pulls my del.icio.us Internet bookmarks
- Upgraded to Wordpress 2.0 - major updates including awesome WYSIWYG editing
- Redesigned theme so I can easily change the picture
Time permitting, the next thing I’d like to do is get a better integration of my links, photos and videos as well as linking to my friends websites and photos. Thanks for visiting and please let me know if you discover any problems.
Happy Halloween
Although it is still a few hours until halloween as I write this, it feels like it is over. This past weekend we managed to get two nights use out of our costumes as Team Zissou. For those of you who don’t know, Team Zissou is from the Life Aquatic a movie from 2004 with Bill Murray and Owen Wilson among others. In the movie sailors on Team Zissou wear blue jumpsuits and red beanies and carry guns on their hip. The movie itself was a flop, but it is known well enough that we met another Team Zissou at one of the parties.
It took a lot of shopping get our costumes together but in the end that was half of the fun. It was so much fun to go together on costumes with other people. The biggest challenge was finding good toy guns. I’m not sure what this world has come to but it’s easier to get a real gun than a toy one that looks real. We were getting desperate but then Shae came through with the find of the century: realistic pistols that fired caps too! It seriously made my week when I heard she found us the final element of our costume. After applying some blue duct tape, dying the laces in our matching shoes, and making some official name badges we were in business.
I wonder where I’ll be next Halloween…
Happy Halloween everyone!
Pumpkin Fest
Last night, a lot of people from the HCI program got together at Shae’s apartment for what we called Pumpkin Fest 2006. Basically we had a bunch of pumpkins and spent the night gutting, designing and carving. It was a great time… I love carving pumpkins!
Before the party, we drove out to Schramm’s Farm east of Pittsburgh to find some giant pumpkins. We almost didn’t make it before dark. Getting a late start and hitting traffic gave us just enough time to find 7 pumpkins load them in a cart, checkout and stuff them in Madhu’s trunk (they barely fit!). We were 5 minutes late for the party, which wasn’t good because Shae was with and she was the host.
For the party, I made pumpkin punch from a reciepe I found online. It really didn’t taste at all like pumpkin but serving it in a giant pumpkin made it very festive. Instead of chunks of floating pumpkin, Shae suggested apple pieces so we used that instead. We also had fresh apple cider from the farm which is probably a big reason why it tasted so good.
So after gutting the giant pumpkin for the punch, I set out to create a jack-o-lantern with the HCI Institute logo on it. It took me most of the night to whittle away pieces of pumpkin, but I think it turned out pretty good.
New Things in HCI
I’ve had the chance to talk with a few people back in the midwest and a frequent topic is some of the new things I’m learning here at CMU. First off, the Human-Computer Interaction masters program has been keeping me plenty busy. I have two core classes that take up a majority of my time: HCI Methods and Software Architecture for User Interfaces (SAUI). I’m enjoying all my classes and I’d like to share a little bit about each one.
Software Architecture for User Interfaces
I am really enjoying SAUI, probably because I’ve always done a lot of user interface development and had a strong interest in it , but never had a formal course in it. This course is also designed differently than a lot I have taken in the past. For the most part, the course grade consists of five programming assignments. We also have a lot of very interesting in-class discussion on different approaches to solving user interface problems. One reason it is so interesting is that Jason Hong, our instructor, has been a key figure in a lot of user interface design research.
In class, we’ve looked at a lot of cool new user interface research projects. Here are a few of my favorites. If you are interested, be sure to checkout the videos!
- Peephole Displays for PDA
- Chateau: Suggestive 3D Drawing
- Multi-Touch Display
- Bumptop: Realistic Desktop Metaphor
HCI Methods
HCI Methods is also very interesting to me, although you are probably just as likely to find me complaining about it as you are talking about why I think it is so important. Since my background is in software engineering, I’ve learned a lot of various software processes, but taking an HCI approach to design is refreshing. The principles of the contextual design methodology we’ve learned so far are what I really think is most important in the software development lifecycle. In layman terms what I mean is I think the major problem we have in software engineering is building the wrong product.
This week we are also taking a look at CogTool. CogTool is an application developed for UI designers which allows them to analyze and redesign a more efficient user interface. Efficiency in this case is at the keystroke level. CogTool models keystroke, perception and movement times in order to predict how long tasks inside an application will take for skilled users. Although this is just one technique, it can help optimize parts of an application that are used repeatedly in order to create a better user experience.
Communication Design Fundamentals
I’ve also been trying my hand at some graphical design in Communication Design Fundamentals, which teaches basic design techniques including composition and typography. My biggest problem with this class is not knowing the tools very well. We use Adobe Illustrator for almost all the work and I have a lot to learn in order to be able to express what I want using the tool. This can be frustrating at times, but I know a lot of my fellow students are in the same situation. I’m learning the basics and wish I had more time to explore different designs. Graphic design is one of those things where you are never really done. You have to decide for yourself when “enough is enough” and be happy with what you have. I suppose in this repect it is a little like software development.
Organizational Communication
My free elective this semester is Organization Communication taught by Robert Kraut. Dr. Kraut has done a lot of interesting interdisciplinary research on how people communicate, specifically in organizations. I selected this course because after working for 3 years I really believe that a majority of problems that occur have a root cause in poor communication. The literature in the course is very interesting and I’m hoping in the end it will translate into some real-world skills to help me better understand conflict in teams.
When I Grow Up
Although I’ve been working for the past three years I find myself once again faced with the question “what do I want to do when I grow up?” I’ve done my best to answer this question twice in the past. The first time was when I was applying for college during high school. The second time was while searching for my first job after college. Although there are many months between now and when I graduate next August, addressing this question this time around isn’t proving to be any easier than in the past. In some ways the experience I’ve had in the working world has taught me the things I might like and dislike about the environment in which I work. But in other ways it’s made me realize the extent of the opportunities are out there. Having a lot of choices is a good thing though, and I’m trying to keep in mind that whatever decision I make will have a positive effect on my life.
About three weeks ago, Carnegie Mellon had it’s annual Technology Opportunities Conference which is a career fair with a high concentration of high-tech companies. I spoke to several including Microsoft, GE, Amazon.com, Accenture, VMWare, Google, and IBM. I also attended an information session for Yahoo to learn more about some of their opportunities. I even won a toy football (whoo! or I guess I should I say “yahoo!”). Anyway, my main goal in talking to recruiters was to jumpstart my thought process in deciding what type of position I want to pursue. My background of software engineering with a master’s in human-computer interaction gives me a few options, the most likely of which is a user interface designer. A user interface designer is a software developer who typically works on creating user interfaces and evaluating them with usability engineers.
The other significant thing that I’ve been noticing here at CMU is an pervasive entrepreneurial spirit. Students, researchers and faculty alike are very open to simply making things happen. This attitude has started to change the way I think and I think it may eventually have an impact on what I do after graduation. I think this passion may prove to be as big of a takeaway from CMU as the things I learn in the classroom.
So even though I’ve been thinking a lot about the question “what do I want to do when I grow up?”, I’m okay with never having an answer. In fact, the real goal is to never answer this question. Answering this question means I have an end goal in sight and I would be less willing to explore new things.