I have been very bad at posting. I never posted Charlie’s second quarter update. I can tell you it wasn’t because I was sitting at home eating bon bons.

My first class is finished. I am told it is the most time consuming class in the entire program. I sure hope so! I don’t think I could do that over and over again for three years.

The course was Interaction Design Practice. It was interesting. It was a great way to meet my classmates. It was also an endless chain of group projects, one more complicated than the next. It was three classes a week plus group meetings. Also we had to write weekly reflections in a class blog – so I was moonlighting. Perhaps I will post a few of those reflections here for keeping track of what went on.

So add that to the two babies and full time job. I was extremely grateful to my wonderful husband and flexible job. It was a little hectic at times. If I use that class as a gauge of what I can handle, I am pretty sure I can only do one class a semester. Maybe it will get easier. My class next semester has zero group work and only meets once a week. I know the homework will be tough, but at least I can do it on my own time. We will see.

Yesterday was my birthday. I would like to write a reflective post, but might not get to it. The day was wonderful. I was snowed in from work. While working from home I was able to spend time in the snow with Zoe. Charlie is just TOOO little to even care.

Also, we were able to set up the table so I worked while Zoe colored. She did actually color some, but lost her crayons as she put them in her mouth.

The big news from my B-day was that Charlie finally figured out how to crawl – hand foot hand foot….it was super cute, although I think we are in for some interesting times with two mobile crazy kidlets. I am not waiting for when he realizes the limitlessness of his domain.

And the evening was spent having wonderful food at Zydecos, a New Orleans style restaurant in the town closest to us. It was a fabulous time. I had a hurricane, oysters, and a sampler of jambalaya, etouffle, garlic soup and red beans and rice.

I will be on vacation until the end of the year. I have lots of presents to wrap. Jason will also be on vacation one of the weeks. I am looking forward to some great days!

This is a response to this blog post.

On the whole i think I am on my way between Transitional and Designerly thinking. Of course, I am sure there are pieces of me that touch on pre-emergence. I scored myself on all of the categories. You can see a visualization of it here:

From Drop Box

I see a trend of being more competent at getting past the earlier barriers than the ones later in the list. There is a smattering of lower scores here and there which I think generally speaks to the path that I have taken so far – being in a professional setting rather than an academic setting.

Here are some of my insights for particular barriers:

Best solution and Algorithm / design paradox
I have been challenged with many problems throughout the years, and I have no doubt that for all of them there were many possible solutions. I don’t think there is some perfect answer (although initial mathematics training might have taught me differently). I have seen my proposed solutions come to fruition. Some of them are great, others are still causing problems. Sometimes it seems like the problem might be too hard to solve without radical changes to an industry that is not as pliable as we would like. I would probably rate myself highest on these concepts, just from experiencing messy problems over and over again.

Critique culture , Idea loyalty, Me and We
This is something I have more recently (past few years) become familiar with. In the beginning of 2009 I was placed into a new role. It was then that I actually started thinking of myself as a designer. I did design before that, but it wasn’t the focus of what I was doing, it was just sort of a necessary evil. It was in 2009 that I changed my lens. Thinking of things from a design perspective can be much more emotional than from a technical or management focus. It is over these few years I have learned so much more about letting go of your creation. Designs are made SOOOO much better when many people can give input. And, critiquing a design is not critiquing you as a person. I also have grown in that I understand what my strengths and weaknesses are. I think I am better at letting go of a design when it gets to a certain point so I can let someone else take it to the next level. Also, I think if you are making good design decisions, you have a good rationale for specific things that you put into your design, so you know what to make a case for and what to let go. I have lots of experience in the professional world being part of a team that is trying to reach a goal as well as leading the team in some way.

Technology vs Human Centered, User Research and IT Domination

My current position is at a very technology centered/ IT Domination company – at least the engineering team I am on is this way. There is sort of an internal schism between the brains and the feelings. And we have been somewhat successful with all of this. We hire good service members to make sure our customers are happy (or at least they think they are happy) and we higher big brains to make systems that will surely impress the customers with their whiz and bang. I suppose I have always been a sort of communicator between the two groups. I don’t write code. I can listen to people and help to identify their pain. I can make things happen and talk to the other brains to translate pain to product. I am pretty good at this, and it has helped me to moderately successful. Still, I would say that I am only as good as the sphere that I am in. We are trying to change trying to make our products designed from the beginning rather than built on top of a complex system – but changing an institution and how it thinks is a task that requires time and effort. We will get there. So I say that regardless of how I view the world and design, I still have much to learn on influencing that world.

Role, Research and Philosophy, Reflective Designer, Omnipresence and External/Internal

I think these are the areas I need to focus on the most. Its funny though, I feel as though these are ideas not just about design but about how you live. Design is a part of how I live my life. I can be a reflective living being, or I can just go day by day and not really think about what I am doing. Being reflective means searching for information to improve yourself or what you are doing, but the end design will come from you. I sort of feel that is how my life is. I research different things – recipes, books, new music, methods of parenting, communication, time management, and try to incorporate that into the design of Beth. In the end, whatever Beth is, is what she is, and some of those things might stick. The food might not taste quite like I expected from the recipe – but it is still good. I don’t know if I make much sense, but that is what I get when I ponder these last things. I am still a design in progress.

This past week we completed our design and did our presentation.

I am a bit disappointed in how we presented. We are very confident in our design and the rationale behind it. Of course, there is always room for improvement on a design, but I think the idea is interesting and our current iteration does help solve the problem we are addressing.

The flash project embedded in our power point didn’t load, but I don’t think that was such a big deal. Technical issues will arise all the time, and I think we didn’t let it stop us. Mostly, I felt we didn’t give enough time to practice and we didn’t do a strong enough attention getter. Our last presentation we actually did a scenario right at the beginning which drew the audience in. One thing that I know was different was that we were required to present our concept first last time, and doing that automatically puts the excitement right at front. We should have done a similar quick scenario to stage our problem and concept.

Personally, my attention was focused on a different portion of the project. I think that might be an issue with dividing and conquering. We are all so focused on our individual parts that there might not be someone thinking about the project as a whole. I am ok with the end result here. We have a good start and I think we can make something with it apply to CHI.

Its interesting though, I have to present designs all the time at work. While we definitely don’t go into as much detail from an academic research perspective, we do have to provide a rationale for the decisions we make. My colleague might have spent months researching a particular area and my group is responsible for taking her research and building possible concepts on them. In those meetings we are not required to grab people’s attention, because they are getting paid to be there. Yet, we do have times when we present at a user’s conference or a marketing engagement where it is absolutely necessary to draw people in. So there are times when you have to put on a show, and there are times when you just have to be as informative as possible about what the design is trying to accomplish.

All in all, I think I learned a lot this semester. It was a good start to a larger experience. Most of what I learned is about pushing my own limitations and what that does to the people around me. I think experience will definitely help me in gauging what my little circle of the world can handle.