Monthly Archive for May, 2005

During the Rite of Passage for Informatics first year masters students, we talked a bit about what we liked and disliked about this year, and where we are heading. One of the things I said was that I am surprised at how much I believe in this program’s potential. I think two things–our ability to quickly assimilate emerging paradigms, and to recruit talented people who don’t have traditional HCI backgrounds–put us in a unique position.

But more immediately, there are a few things I want to do differently this summer and next year, so I thought I would put them down in writing:

• Take over the basement. We need to put the CHI posters up in the Collaboratorium. And we need to get in the habit of all going down there to work in the afternoon. We need to keep the doors to both rooms open, so people feel free to come in and hang out. Maybe even some light music from time to time. The point is, we need to work in each others’ presence. Doing just that will make our work at least twice as good, if not ten times.
• Become a pizza ambassador. Google apparently buys pizza for people who sit around and study. Why are we not capitalizing on this?
• Go out every Friday evening. I spend too many Friday nights hacking. There should be a place–Yogi’s, the Vid, Irish Lion–somewhere that you can show up on Friday night and expect to meet someone you know. Maybe this is just something I need to do for myself: go out more.
• Plan trips. Hoosier National Forest. Brown County. Chicago. Indy. Repeat after me: All work and no play makes Jack…
• Get on the web. We need to have a better presence on the web. There is a lot of really cool stuff starting to happen among the grad students, and the outside world is not seeing it.
• Cross talk on Planet Informatics. This school is supposed to be all about collaboration, but the problems we have with space make that difficult. I wish more of us blogged our work. Hopefully as Planet Informatics grows, people will start communicating through their blogs, posting back and forth.
• Talk about our capstones. I think we’re capable of putting out a lot of really impressive capstones next May, but to do that we need to be constantly helping each other, and putting things out for critique.
• Putting Design Club to work. This last one is a little controversial, but I would like to try to move design club towards something a little more professional, at least part of the time, where we are cutting our teeth on weightier projects. Design Club is about trying lots of things, and that means getting serious sometimes.

But I would say the single most important challenge for us as a program is to start really putting our cards on the table, and getting everyone looking at them honestly. Right now, there is too much cowering within our boundaries and accepting mediocre work. I think the faculty are almost entirely responsible for this attitude, but it’s not necessarily their job to fix it. As students, we need to start taking risks, and start being honest with each other, and the rest will fall into place.

Niamh and I just booked our hotel for Paris, for about $90/night. We found our winner at Venere.com, which I would highly recommend. They have lots of reviews and pictures. We’ll probably use them to find hotels for the rest of our trip.

Time to ride home and have some dinner. Sid bought me lunch at Bombay House to thank me for being in his usability testing photos this morning, which was lovely. Thanks Sid! If not for him, I would have had to go home much earlier to eat.

Made good progress today on the Tragedy of the Commons game for Yvonne, which makes me feel better about myself. I’ve been neglecting that project.

Did you know that the first Friday of May is No Pants Day?

And did you know that that the first Friday of May is today?