Did go home again, after all.
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| My wife took this photo. Isn't it great? |
Sleeping through hazy afternoons, waking to mellow coffee and cheese, surrounded by warmth and family, I had a vacation for real at the end of 2012.
I also discovered, to my own amazement, that relaxing by the beach with a good book makes me anxious after the first few days. My to-do list makes me useful, and that makes me happy.
Supported UX Day at HFES 2012.
Keeping the fast-paced, launch-oriented User Experience research community healthy in HFES is one my biggest priorities for the society.So I'm volunteering to help the UX leadership committee identify and advise students interested in pursuing this product-centric model of human factors.
I'll be speaking at several UX day and student panels this year, and look forward to meeting future colleagues.
Learned a lot from videogames, really.
Now that I'm officially grown up and don't have as much time to maintain my reflexes, I find comfort in occasionally looking back at the strategy and data management games that inspired me as a kid.
Met amazing engineering students in Austin.
Over the weekend, I served as a panelist for CHIme, an NSF sponsored workshop for under-represented students. It's rare to see such brilliance, achievement, and unapologetic ambition concentrated in a single classroom.
My advice was apparently "very honest," and I hope helpful.
Then I had the chance to judge a student research competition before heading back for a few important meetings.
Rode an ATV through the Mojave Desert.
On the way back, my ATV caught fire and had to be towed. I'm that good.
Learned about lift firsthand.
Also learned that it takes a lot of horsepower to simulate a bunch of hot air.
Committed a tomatina.
The tomatoes, they said, were overripe and unfit for consumption. So you might as well throw them at people before composting them. My doubts began when an "overripe" tomato punched me in the head.
Became a designer.
I paid for much of graduate school with research internships and contracts. One summer, I decided to do something really hard and study interaction design at any Silicon Valley company that would be willing to teach me. Several people advised me not to endanger a promising career this way.
I was eventually offered a full time position as an interaction designer at Google, though I declined it and instead became a design researcher.
Invented awesome stuff with brilliant people
For example, here's a US patent for something I worked on with Google's co-founder Sergey, a former exec from Yahoo, a former Sandia scientist, and a genius designer.
Drove quite a few tech demos
But I confess a special fondness for small, everyday cars, like this little Euro-spec electric that I borrowed recently. Small, mass-market commuter vehicles present more interesting design constraints.
Became a 21st century hobo
Hopefully because I'm so energetic and dynamic, I've been asked to relocate 12 times in the past 3 years at work. This lead me to replace my desk with a rolling workstation, which I now drag behind me as I move from meeting to meeting.
(This is an example of my cart, though mine has some upgrades.)
Witnessed an airline's birth and death
My professor's flight safety research team had successfully worked out a partnership with a small regional airline that had bravely decided to go nationwide. The new airline was spotless, prices were low, passenger loads were decent, and service was spectacular. My research subjects beamed with pride.
Sadly, the timing was off. Their competitors had made terrible business decisions. Government intervention, designed to save the industry, had the unintended effect of letting these goliaths bleed money without consequences. The little upstart didn't stand a chance.
Lesson learned: there's more to successful products than best-in-class user experiences.
Photo source: Fletcher6
Guest spoke at University of Wisconsin
Professor Enid, a dear friend, asked me to guest lecture in a class about human computer interaction.
We arranged a video feed from Google to the university, and I ran a mock peer review panel of their brilliant final projects. I later found out that one team published their work at the ACM CHI conference, and was nice enough formally acknowledge our little class exercise.
We repeated the process a year later, this time with my buddy from Microsoft videoconferencing in to add a little balance.
Photo by DJ Simanek.
Took a quick Cadillac break
General Motors held an event at work where they brought in 35 new model cars, including the new Chevy Volt hybrid, and left the keys in the ignition for us.
I dropped by between meetings and took a few Caddies for a peppy test drive before jogging half a mile to meet with my boss.
It was just as fun a year later.
Stumbled backstage at a Santana concert
I turned towards the main stage to see rock legend Carlos Santana playing an impossibly long medley of his greatest hits, just 15 feet away.
His assistants walked past me, carrying the several guitars he would switch to during the course of what was, even for a casual fan, an amazing performance.
(Photo of a different performance by Yarl.)
Became a notary public
Becoming an officer of the state and experiencing an FBI and CA-DOJ background check firsthand? How could I resist?
Sadly, I was soon forced to resign my commission upon moving to Virginia.
(In the USA, a notary public only authenticates signatures and administers oaths. Photo by Tomcio77.)
Tutored psychoneuroimmunology
I trembled one day when a professor called me down after a class. She held a stack of uncollected exams and informed me that she'd been calling for me for weeks, and nobody knew who or where I was. I'd been caught. I was sure I'd have to repeat the class. And I was right.
Bless Professor Saunders for noticing both my absence and my interest in the material. She offered me a teaching assistantship, and I spent the next two semesters in the front of the class, tutoring students, learning to teach study groups, and grading exams in a course where the content and textbooks were constantly being updated.
Toured the Bay in a racing sailboat
With my amazing co-workers, we toured the beautiful Bay Area in a championship racing sailboat.
Had a paper presented at Cape Canaveral
Our paper on how to predict expert performance on a radically new user interface was just accepted at HCI-Aero 2010, a conference supported by organizations including ACM SIG:CHI and NASA.
Mumaw, R., Riley, V., Boorman, D., & Prada, L. R. (2010) A technique for estimating training time for a new flight deck interface. In the proceedings of HCI-Aero 2010, Cape Canaveral, FL
Got conscripted 3 times at HFES 2010
Since I have trouble saying no to a good cause, I've wound up in three events at the annual meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
Lessons from the Inside: What to expect, and how to prepare for the professional world
Student Career Day Panel, Monday 1:30 - 4pm
Panelists: Michelle Tinsley, Dr. Cynthia L. Roth, Dr. Robert Schumacher, Dr. Ricardo Prada, Dr. Virginia Land
Technical Tour: Google, Inc
Tuesday, 11:30 - 4:30pm
Host: Dr. Ricardo Prada
This tour sold out within just a few days, months in advance!
Safe Driving in the Multi-Tasking Generation
Wednesday, 8:30 - 10am
Panelists: Dr. James W. Jenness, Dr. Ricardo Prada, Dr. Neil D. Lerner, Dr. Clifford I. Nass, Dr. Daniel V. McGehee, Dr. John D. Lee
Wrote my own wedding vows
...which made all of my subsequent presentations seem trivial by comparison.
Lived in New York City
For over a year, I spent nearly 25% of my time living out of corporate apartments in Manhattan, while helping a team transition their User Experience work after a merger.
It was physically exhausting trying to balance travel and a growing family, but look at how comfortable the accommodations were. In that neighborhood, a two bedroom apartment to oneself was hard to believe.
Became a judgmental person
Easily one of the best things I've done professionally this year was helping judge the International Science and Engineering Fair, sponsored by Intel and Google, among others. Teenage science fair winners from around the world were given all-expenses-paid trips to the Silicon Valley to meet their future colleagues and compete for scholarships and research grants.
For a judge, the event was basically a series of 15 minute interviews with some of the brightest high school students in the world, discussing their research and enjoying their optimism.
I won't lie: two days of preparation, interviews, and judging was exhausting. But I'd recommend it to any scientist or engineer who has the opportunity.
For a judge, the event was basically a series of 15 minute interviews with some of the brightest high school students in the world, discussing their research and enjoying their optimism.
I won't lie: two days of preparation, interviews, and judging was exhausting. But I'd recommend it to any scientist or engineer who has the opportunity.
Whitewater rafted on the American River
Shortly after these photos were taken, we had to rescue a co-worker on a different boat who had fallen into the river.
(I'm wearing an orange vest, top right.)
Toured Hoover Dam
As a reward for helping modernize products acquired from DoubleClick, our entire team was taken to one of the wonders of the modern world.
Became a street artist
The city of Berkeley hosts a yearly Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival.
My unofficial entry into the 2010 contest was titled "Self Confidence Intervals," but my most acclaimed piece was called "Oso, Pato, Mami, Gato, Papi, Más, Más."
Feared for my life in Mexico City
I spent several days in Mexico City conducting field research with my team. Here's why I took this photo during a taxi ride from the airport to the Intercontinental hotel:
- The taxi driver is talking on a CB radio, with the receiver in his hand.
- The taxi driver is also talking on a mobile phone held against his shoulder.
- The taxi driver is watching a fuzzy soccer match on television.
- The taxi driver is swerving at high speed between unmarked lanes.
Snowboarded at Mammoth Mountain
Working at one of the top technology companies has its perks, and one of them was a teambuilding trip to a mountain range.
I discovered the joys of snowboarding after an afternoon of private lessons and painful collisions with my co-worker, Chris U.
Inhaled, but nothing happened
I was convinced to visit an oxygen bar during a recent trip to Las Vegas. Breathing in scented oxygen is supposed to be extremely relaxing.
This is a picture of me wondering where my money went.
Taught UX to software developers
One of the great things about my employer is the attention it pays to self-improvement, including a yearly productivity lecture series for the entire engineering group.
I decided to pitch a class about how to critique user research more effectively, after finding that some of my programmer colleagues were having trouble expressing their concerns about behavioral studies. The lecture would present a quick overview of the history of applied psychology, how modern HCI research is done, and then address a few common questions around sample size and statistics.
I decided to pitch a class about how to critique user research more effectively, after finding that some of my programmer colleagues were having trouble expressing their concerns about behavioral studies. The lecture would present a quick overview of the history of applied psychology, how modern HCI research is done, and then address a few common questions around sample size and statistics.
- To my amazement, the course was accepted.
- To my greater amazement, I had about 100 sign-ups. I had been expecting 30 or so.
- To my even greater amazement, the talk was recorded and circulated around the company (I would have been more cautious about humor if I'd known this!)
- To my greatest amazement, it was later rated in the top 5 of three dozen classes in the series.
Became a dad
You know fatherhood is great when you can babble happily with a newborn (this is my daughter) after going without sleep for several weeks.
Earned my PhD
This is a picture of my proudest continental breakfast: the sweet orange juice of graduation morning. After a decade in universities, long nights in the lab, and cumulative months spent on live data collection across the country, my professors had finally decided that I was no longer the hapless young guy trying nervously to explain Markov models he barely understood. I was ready enough to be welcomed into their club of scholars.
These peak moments come before a fall, though, as I would soon after fly back to a company where formalwear means remembering to wear socks and professional titles are rarely used.
Egalitarianism is the best reminder that there's so much more left to learn.
Studied classical liberalism intensely
The summer before graduate school, I was selected for an intense course on free market economics and globalization, with tuition, room, and board covered by donors. We took over the dorms of a historic college in Pennsylvania and lived and breathed ideas. Our debates lasted deep into the night, fueled by months of preparation and reading lists.
That wonderful swirl was intended to deepen our commitment to libertarianism, but it had the opposite effect on me. I had the opportunity to share my deepest concerns about the world with eminent scholars from think tanks like the Hoover and Cato institutes and though their responses were seductive in their parsimony, they felt oddly out of touch and unsatisfying. If they didn't have the answers, who would?
Went snorkeling in central america
Still, when Sara and I went on a honeymoon cruise, I booked a snorkeling trip to a reef. And I loved it! Because of my poor swimming skills, I wore a lifevest and bobbed in the water for about an hour. I actually enjoyed the fish, even touching them, and took many photos with a camera that was sadly lost along the way.
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