We’ve already established I grew up in a Trekkie household – so even though my fervor was largely attained in adulthood, I did still have strong opinions about parts of that universe. Specifically, my favorite Trek movie was always Star Trek IV:
Category: Design
For the first time in a while, I’m designing and running my own usability studies. Carnegie Mellon cross-trains its HCI students in both research and design, so it’s a bit like riding a bike – it comes back eventually. Post-university, I used
In September 2014, I left Microsoft to join a new product team at Amazon. The project itself is still classified, but it’s a v1 technology product, which means we’re starting from scratch. An exciting opportunity, but it changes the way one has
Kenyans are renowned for their sprinting abilities… in stark contrast to my own physical proclivities. But I did my own form of sprinting today, with a back to back day on the heels of a successful Thursday. Thursday: Gaming, psychology, and the
The primary reason I’m in Africa is as a volunteer for the Microsoft4Afrika program. One part of their outreach is to match professionals from Microsoft with identified technology needs in African countries. Many of the assignments are either teaching advanced skills or
Back in December, I was browsing the internal Microsoft forums (Yammer) and stumbled across an announcement for a new volunteer outreach program – MySkills4Afrika, part of the larger Microsoft for Afrika program. They were accepting applications from full-time employees to share their
In the past 6 months I’ve had the opportunity to use the new Disney World MyMagic+ system as a guest at Animal Kingdom Lodge on two separate trips – my honeymoon in October and a trip at the end of January. In
I can still remember when the TiVo interface was a beautiful creature of simplicity, a thing to be emulated and learned from. They accomplished so much with a simple directional control. But the TiVo – and all modern DVR/interactive guide systems –
Over the course of a year, I talk to hundreds of students and young professionals interested in the field of UX and looking to start a journey through reading. Three notes: 1. For those looking to pursue this as a career change,
I haven’t spoken about it formally here, but I’m honored to be part of one of the featured mentorship pairings in the Huffington Post’s women in STEM mentoring initiative. As part of that relationship, we were asked to provide an intro to