If you were to look at where people in CMU’s MHCI program came from, you’d see heavy concentration of students in the northeastern and western United States. In fact, I can count the number of people from the South and Midwest on one hand (well, if I had a hand with six fingers that is, but who’s counting?).
Archive for June 2005
It’s amazing how you can pair two disparate things and come up with a killer post title…
When I moved to Pittsburgh, I joined DSW’s “Reward Your Style” program… what did I have to lose? Another random value card to put in my wallet, and I’d occasionally get some free shoes.
I have a passive interest in branding strategies that corporations use and the messages they convey to the audience. Originally, I had planned on exploring marketing and its overlap with HCI while at CMU. But alas, things changed, and I got sidetracked.
Speaking of getting sidetracked, let’s hurry on to the topic at hand before it happens again. I’ve lived in Pittsburgh for almost a year now, and I’m starting to get a good idea of the image they portray to residents and visitors alike. A few months back my car registration expired. I decided to renew in Pennsylvania since it is about $100 cheaper (even after the mandatory car inspection) than registering in Nebraska. So I went for it.
On Friday, I hopped a plane to Houston to spend Father’s Day weekend with my dad. It was a low key weekend, but we watched the new Star* Wars movie, which was good. I think Star* Wars viewing is exemplary of Father-Son togetherness activity, but anyway, I’m rambling. That’s probably because I’m not so good at talking about personal matters, so I might as well dive right into it.
My dad has cancer. Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma, to be precise. I won’t go into details about it here, but here are the Google results if you’re curious. He’s currently starting week 5 of an 8 week chemotherapy treatment. If all goes according to plan, he’ll get 2 weeks rest at the end of the treatment, followed by one intense week of chemotherapy to kill his immune system. He’d then get a bone marrow transplant in mid-August.
My dad’s been a serious trooper for the past month, and the good news is that he’ll have someone with him almost all of the time from here until he’s recovered from his transplant. Even still, I want my dad to know that people out there are rooting for him, so here’s where the favor comes in.
As part of my dad’s blog I’ve set up a contact page by which you can contact him. If you have two seconds, swing by and send him your well wishes. If you have more time, you should read his blog. If you’ve laughed at my blog once or twice, you’re sure to laugh at what he has to say. My sense of humor had to come from somewhere, right?
When the MHCI program touted the real world experience I would gain in this program, I didn’t realize that they pursued it with such gusto! I’m keeping quite busy this summer, which is why my blog entries have been somewhat lacking. I promise they’ll pick up come August, and I’ll try to keep the entries steady in the meantime.
Till the next one, I thought I’d give you an update of the projects that I’m working on. As they wrap up, I’ll be posting them (or demos, or websites, or something relevant) for you to look at. I promise I’m not slacking. =D
- My Portfolio Site: Look for this in the coming week. I’ve had a domain name for over a year now, and still no website to show for it? Except this one, of course, but that’s beside the point — I’ve been doing lots of work and I’m not showing it off! Hopefully that will change very soon.
- PSLC Data Shop: The Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center commissioned a Project group to aid in the development of their Data Shop. They need their data organized, and more importantly, visualized! We’ve started designing some of the reports, and it’s going well so far. We should have a cool product come August!
- PICOLA: This is the project that sponsored me to give a talk at Stanford last month. I’m doing some of the Flash development for the computer interface. We also just got our mobile devices in! Yes, my sponsor here is dreaming big, and we’re already building a mobile interface. The perk — the mobile device that I’m testing on is mine to keep! I’m now the proud owner of a Dell Axim Pocket PC. Hmm… I wonder if it will network with my Mac…
- Calc Study: My research sponsor’s philosophy for research questions is like her philosophy for applying for grants: the more the merrier. Aside from trying to answer a slieu of questions about how people learn Calculus (and exactly what the mechanism is for learning), the Calc Study is serving to gather dialogues between participants and tutors / peer learners to provide a basis for a natural language tutor in Calculus. That’s a great lead-in to…
- TuTalk: The idea behind TuTalk is to make it easy for a layperson to build a conversation-based tutor without a whole lot of technological know-how. I’m slowly ramping up on this project, but it will likely be my life come August. That’s OK, at least Project will be over.
As these projects wrap up, I’ll post more and show you the work we’re doing. Till then, I hope you enjoy the interim posts!
The number of the day today is 4. Four is the number of million dollar budget cuts keeping our Federal Government from contributing no federal money to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Be careful how eagerly you count up to 4, Count… once you get there, you might get cancelled. At least in rural areas of the United States who can’t rally support for public broadcasting on without federal support.
My friend Lisa got me hooked on Diet Snapple Teas (I’m a fan of the Peach and Lime Green Tea varieties), and part of the pleasure is that you get a random Snapple fact under each bottle cap. Today, I learned that snails can sleep for up to three years. And how nice would that be? I’d like to leave all my cares behind and go sleep for 3 years. Although, I think I’d wake up with one heck of a backache.
I’m also amused that beavers used to be the size of bears. Look out trees, it’s a giant beaver! Raar.
Yeah. He either used to have my phone number or submitted the wrong phone number to the phone book. I’d think he’s a shady character because of all the phone calls he gets from shady people with restricted numbers, but I got a call from one of his students once asking for help on homework. Whoops.
If Ronnie from Omaha, Nebraska ever reads this blog entry, please update your phone number!
In the Methods of Human-Computer Interaction course that I took last Fall, we learned about a number of Discount Usability Methods, including Heuristic Evaluations, developed by Jakob Nielsen. The thing about HEs is that if you get enough people together, you can find a majority of basic flaws with any given interface. The training is really cheap, and the evaluation itself shouldn’t take too long either. In all, it’s pretty inexpensive, especially compared to some of the other methods out there (bringing in “real users” can get expensive, as I’m learning this summer).
As such, I was shocked to learn that you can commission Nielsen to do a Heuristic Evaluation of your website or interface for $35,000! That’s not very “discount,” is it? On the upside, you get experts from the Nielsen/Norman group conducting your evaluation. But still, according to the literature I’ve read in this program, a group of 5 Heuristic Evaluators will find about 80% of the issues present in an interface — not 100%, but is that extra 20% worth tens of thousands of dollars? It’s not that good of a method…
I’m quoting my mom’s recent post on my dad’s blog:
A few months ago, Rick came across a book titled “Ask and It is Given” about manifesting one’s desires by focusing positive energy toward goals. It changed his attitude about his disease and life in general. He, as best he can - even now when in pain - focuses his attention on positive goals and envisions achievement of them. (There’s obviously a lot more to it than that but I’m not trying to reprise the book here.) One focus was on a series of adventures written about in Men’s Journal. He cut out those he was planning in the future and posted them, by year he planned them, on a poster. He also wrote a letter to the magazine letting them know they had inspired him in his quest to look forward. Yesterday the June issue of the magazine was published - including Rick’s letter! Not only did they publish his letter, they are sending him a new Trek Fuel EX7 mountain bike for his contribution (one of the adventures was a bike tour through Provence).
I was so happy to read that… it’s like Men’s Health is right there behind my dad sayin, “Keep it up.” That’s so cool.
