Sorry for the delay in posting. I spent four days sleeping (seriously, that’s all I did), and lately I’ve been a bit preoccupied with issues related to Student Loans. I learned recently that the whole “You need to pay for classes thing” isn’t just a polite recommendation: CMU doesn’t let you register for the next semester until you do (and here I was hoping to avoid the issue until graudation). Oh well, I digress.

In a couple months, the MHCI lab will be moving from its luxurious space in Wean Hall (also known as the giant cement block of CMU). While I think the new space might be equally cement-block-ish, the interior promises to be a lot nicer than our current space. I’m excited, even if I won’t get to reap the entire benefit of the new space.

Apparently the CMU Computer Science department is moving all of its professional masters program students to this new space, which consists of the MHCI program and the Software Engineering Masters programs. What do you know about that – I’ll be next door to my friends from my Software Engineering class.

It’s struck me the past two weeks how little the programs know about each other given how integral each discipline is to the other. Currently, their space is literally directly above ours – next door to a programming class that 80% of the MHCI students are taking. Our program director talks about the space in terms of “Why is it bigger than our space?” – understandable, but not really a substitute for having the two groups of people mix a little bit.

For all the joking I’ve been doing about the Software Engineering class this semester (I guess I’m a bit of a Methods snob), the MSE / MSIT students are a really good bunch of folks who would be a blast to work with in industry. It’s a shame that there isn’t more mixing of the groups. Hopefully the new space will lead to some of that, but I doubt it.

So, being the good HCI citizen that I am, I thought I’d promote a little mixing. One of the MSE students was also accepted to MHCI, so she was asking me about designe courses to take that HCIers tended to like. Of course, I referred her to Interface & Interaction Design, the required design course for the MHCI program. She’s considering it, and I think I got a few more Softare Engineering people thinking about it too. I think it’s generally unheard of for Softare Engineers to cross over like this… but I’ve always got this weird pleasure from shaking things up to see what falls out.