BLOG by zaiss

When I came to Pittsburgh almost two years ago, I rented the smallest truck available (not a trailer since I had some hefty furniture in tow), and fitted all of my belongings into 6 boxes (plus some odds and ends that went in my car).

Well, odds and ends are in my car again, but somehow the number of boxes has increased this time around.

Last count we were up to 25. I didn’t know I had that much stuff! I think they are using smaller boxes for books and what not, and they put a lot of padding into the boxes. But still… it makes me feel like… I have too much stuff. They even called in a third guy to help load things into the truck. Was this standard procedure? I hope so. I hate being a difficult case.

Graduation has occurred! As of two days ago, I’m officially a Master of Human-Computer Interaction. Lesson learned? Even if the cap & gown distributors say “Everything should be set,” try on your cap. Otherwise you’ll look like this guy…

Anyway, moving on. While my graduation message from last year still inspires me, I’ve been thinking about something new to say. About a week ago, I remembered something my friend Alex Switzer said to me in high school about our debate careers. “You know what I realized today? Every debate career – unless you’re the national champion – every debate career ends in a loss.”

If you don’t know Alex, or how awesome of a debater she was (I think it runs in her family), to her this realization was a depressing one. And while her thought was targeted toward debate, I think the sentiment is universal – when a chapter draws to a close, I think negatives become more prominent since they seem to represent the career that led up to them (plus that silly Psychological notion of the recency effect).

I’ve heard a few people mentioning how things have been ending on a sour note, and that’s been true for me also. After what seems like such an interesting and compelling time, it really sucks to see any part of it end on a sour note.

But if anything, I take Alex’s message as a positive – when it comes to debate, all that means is that, ultimately, practically everyone ends up the same. In the case of debate, that final chink in the armor is almost inevitable. And so it goes with other things in life – ultimately, the final event is simply another event, with the same odds of being a win or loss as the one before, or the one before that. While it’s hard to do during a big transition, I think it’s important to remember the experience you had as a whole, and not let the last moment get to you if it’s not in line with where you want it to be. Ultimately, we live experiences the best we can in hopes of learning something for the next big experience.

Don’t regret leaving prematurely. Just let it spur on the next experience.

And, of course, congratulations to this year’s graduates (that’s me!) and this year’s 2/3 graduates. “You’re Almost There!”

As my Masters education comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on this past semester. In many ways, I think it was my best one at CMU. I wouldn’t trade anything for what I learned in prior semesters, but this one just felt more rewarding overall.

One reason was probably the high emphasis on service this semester – which was not intended, but I’m glad it worked out the way it did. In my International Marketing class, we had a service project where we worked with Global Links, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit that collects surplus medical supplies from hospitals and distributes them to third world countries who desperately need the supplies. It’s a pretty important mission, and one that seems obvious but doesn’t readily come to mind when one thinks of what typical non-profits do.

Representatives from the class presented in a Pittsburgh-area Service Case Competition, and we came in second place! The prize was $500 that was supposed to go to our university, but CMU isn’t exactly hurting for cash, yeah? The class decided to give it to Global Links instead. That was pretty awesome. Each student also got free passes to attractions in the Pittsburgh area, including the Pittsburgh Zoo, the Warhol, the Conservatory, and the Mattress Factory.

Now hmm, what have I done with the Mattress Factory lately?

Oh right. The skit.

You might recall that the client in my Designing for Service class was the Mattress Factory, a contemporary art museum in Pittsburgh. The above picture is from our final presentation – we were showcasing the use of our proposed new Visitor’s Guide, the Factory Deck.

It turned out to be pretty fun, and it seemed to be a hit with the Mattress Factory folks. If you see something like this in the immediate future, you know where it came from!

So right, really long tangents to get back to the reflection part. I think it’s almost a shame that I completely missed these opportunities – there’s something really rewarding and educational about working for a non-profit that you don’t get in however many industry projects (or quasi-industry-but-really-just-CMU projects). Especially as busy Masters students, I think it’s easy to forget everything that’s happening in the world. These projects really helped me to keep perspective.

Jason took pity on my appeal to Vince for the Wall of Dew pictures, so he made them available to me. Here are the shots (including one that catches me as a blonde… oh my…). Click to enlarge the shots.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this horrid display of caffeine indulgence. Yet another reminder why it’s a good idea to kick caffeine.

Another thing that pisses me off about 7-up is that they’re being sold in 4-packs now. Y’know what’s handy about the 6-pack rings, aside from their added ability to be reapplied to Mountain Dew cans to make an 8-foot tall Wall o’ Dew? (More on that if Vince ever sends me pictures of our monument. -cough-). There are two eyelets in between each square of four cans, making it perfect for grasping and picking up.

You can’t do that with 4-packs!! They’re hard to pick up, and I almost pulled cans out just trying to get it into the grocery cart. C’mon 7-up, do some usability testing. Although, I guess it is logical that you start selling less of your product in the hopes that someone might finally buy it. (Can you tell I’m no longer a 7-up consumer?)

Has anyone seen those new 7-up commercials claiming that 7-up is now all natural, showing fresh lemons and limes bouncing around in water?

Yeah. What a bunch of crap. You know what’s not in 7-up? Anything with the word “lemon” or “lime” in it. It’s carbonated water, high-fructose corn syrup, and three things that sound like I made them in Chemistry class with the word “Natural” in front of them.

The problem is that most organic food stores don’t sell food with HFCS, and with good reason. If you don’t know, HFCS is essentially super-sweetened sugar to appeal to our taste buds - with about 3x the calories of regular sugar (hence the high-fructose part). Not to mention, it’s in everything. And people wonder why Americans are facing obesity in epidemic proportions.

So yeah, 7-up. Don’t be fooled into buying it with this new campaign. I almost was, until I read the ingredients and saw HFCS on the back. Apparently it was grounds to get 7-up sued for false advertising, so don’t let it sway you into drinking more of it.

A few weeks ago I posted a blurb about Kingdom Hearts 2 with a link to a video previewing KH2, FF7 AC, and the new Zelda game. I stumbled upon the music used for the second half of the video, Million Miles from Home by Dune. It’s fun and upbeat, so check it out on iTunes if you liked it.

On another note, I’m finally done with the MHCI program at CMU. More on this later with my graduation post, coming later this week.

Colleagues and loyal blog readers know that I’ve been working on the PICOLA project for quite a while - practically since day one at CMU, and culminating this week with a few final programming tweaks and a paper on opinion formation.

When it came to PICOLA, I was pretty quick to drink the proverbial kool-aid – it made sense that normal opinion polls had the tendency to be fallacious, at time, due to an uninformed public (especially when it comes to political or social issues). But one of my sources for this paper suggests that informing the public doesn’t necessarily make the results better. And, I suppose I knew it all along: If there’s one thing I learned in my Psychology major, it’s that opinion formation can be fickle at best.

Then I cracked open Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and read a research summary from Harvard that I just had to share:

With fun results like that, it almost makes me think that people who study Psychology should swear an oath not to use it for evil (i.e., friendly manipulation). How tempting.

If you were to number the days of the week, 1 - 7, what number would Tuesday be? Would it be 2? It would be in my head. And oddly enough, that leads to a lot of calendar errors for Tuesday events. Check out my haircut for the upcoming week:

My haircut was scheduled for Tuesday at 11:30, yet I put it on Monday. So, a month later, I’m shocked that I scheduled something during a hectic presentation day, and have to call the salon to reschedule, just to be told, “Well, your stylist doesn’t work on Mondays… so it’s probably a Tuesday appointment.”

Why does this happen? I think it’s because I associate Tuesday with the number 2 - and Monday is 2 from the left on my calendar. It never happens to Monday events - an event all the way to the left is clearly on Sunday. It also never happens for Wednesday events, because Wednesday falls exactly in the middle. I also use Wednesday as a reference point for Thursday and Friday.

It seems like a problem unique to Tuesday events - and this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Maybe I’m just not paying close enough attention, but thinking back, I’m not sure what else would have been distracting me at the time. How very strange.

Sadly, today was the last day of Game Design class. I stand by my original stance that it was one of the best courses that I’ve taken. As promised, I have the second half of fun lessons from Game Design.

Between a game design conference, an HCI conference, and a day that I forgot when the shuttle left for the PTC, there aren’t as many as last time, but you should still enjoy it. In quote form this time:

1. Microsoft came out with this ad campaign in the 90s, suggesting, ‘What if your computer could turn on like a lightbulb?’ WHAT IF IT COULD, YOU IDIOTS? WHY DON’T YOU DO THAT? MORONS!
2. I hate dustpans! They suck! They’ve been the bane of my existence since I was 5!!!
3. Swiffer was a sweeping success.
4. Do you think the very best business people go into the game industry? NO! No they don’t! They’re trading securities in Malaysia or something.
5. Usability is easier to figure out than playability. [Not a joke - a deep thought that I particularly like.]
6. With private investors, it’s all about the hype. It’s sad, really… they lose a lot of money.
7. One of these days, retailers are gonna wisen up to MMOs and say, ‘Hey! We’re only getting the little piece!’
8. There are lots of good things you can do with waffles! Chocolate waffles, strawberry waffles. Waffles can have toppings…
9. The key to Location-Based Entertainment is to make it something you can’t get at home. It’s very important. Arcades know it… prostitutes know it…
10. Bowling is the gold standard of location-based entertainment.
11. IBM contributed three things to the computer business: The I, the B, and the M.
12. In juggling, if you’re not dropping, you’re not learning.

Oh, Game Design, what a good class. One thing I will truly miss from CMU.