September 2003 Archive
OK/Cancel
A few days ago my classmate, Kevin Cheng, told me about his HCI/interaction design/usability comic strip, OK/Cancel. It’s well-drawn and witty, so check it out!
Already Thinking About the Thesis
Yesterday, we heard from three HCI Master’s students who talked about their theses and surviving the course. I was impressed by the range of their thesis topics. One was on extracting keywords from common discussion and using those keywords to search for related images via Alta Vista image search. Another examined using information visualization techniques in complex transportation displays. Finally, another investigated the idea of immersion in video games.
We won’t need to solidify our project topics until after the first term, but I can’t help but think about what I might study. I already have quite a few ideas brewing, but I’d love to hear any project ideas you have. So if you have any important, interesting or outrageous ideas that you think I should look at in the context of HCI, please me let know in the comments.
Settling In
My first week at University College London has been a rollercoaster of names, faces and queues. A few random notes and thoughts on my experience so far:
- London is big, beautiful and amazing, but you already knew that.
- Mobile phones work very differently here. As in the States, there are four or five main networks, but unlike the States, there isn’t a flat rate across the different networks. So, for example, a Vodaphone customer will almost always pay more for calling people who use a carrier other than Vodaphone. It’s strange for someone who’s used to being able to call anyone and paying the same rate. Two things that they’re definitely doing right here are charging customers for outgoing calls only and using SIM cards, which allow customers to easily move their number and phone data from one phone to another.
- I was in a pub in the student union two nights ago, having a few beers with my HCI classmates and talking about interaction design. That was the first moment that I knew this is going to be a brilliant year.
- I’m the only Mac user in my flat, and I’m also the only one who was able to seamlessly connect to the UCL network.
- Did I mention queues? There are queues for enrolling, queues for library registration, queues for information services registration, queues for residence hall network access and just about everything else. I know that they like queuing in general in the UK, but must that mean that universities can’t combine or even eliminate some of these queues? When I began my undergraduate study at Penn State in 1994, almost ten years ago, I can’t remember standing in one line for any essential student service. I just can’t help but think there’s got to be a better way than all these queues.
- The London Underground is a marvel of information design and wayfinding. Anyone who designs maps and signs should be required to study the tube maps and other directional ques throughout the Underground system.
This week has been induction week, and lectures start next week. Watch this space for more posts on my London and academic experience soon.
Chemstream.com Relaunch
I’m happy to announce the relaunch of chemstream.com, the site that I’ve been working on over the past month. The new site sports a beautiful design and excellent Flash demo by Eric Bort of Living Children, XHTML 1.0 Strict, all CSS navigation rollovers and my own CSS Tabs.
On a personal note, Chemstream is my father’s business, and he is the only real employee, so the client relationship has been interesting to say the least. If you’ve ever been involved in a family business, you know what I’m talking about. An advantage of a family business is having the freedom to discuss business issues openly. A disadvantage is having the freedom to discuss business issues openly. In the end, it all worked out. It was a good experience, but a month and a half has been enough family business time for me. I’m ready to move on. Hello University College London!
Rambling
Remember that poll I had a while back, asking visitors what they wanted to hear me doing? Yeah, I almost forgot about it too.
ramble.mp3 (3.4 MB; 3 minutes 46 seconds)
Transcript of the above audio file.
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