J . M A I L

School @ UCalgary

I have been in Calgary for a week and am really impressed with the university so far. The people, the facilities, the ideas, the classes, and the perspectives are are so different from what I am used to.

To start with, my classes seem really awesome. Qualitative Research Methods for System Engineering seems like it will really expand what I thought I knew about qualitative research. While I thought I was more of a qualitative researcher all along, rather than a quantitative (numbers) researcher, I think I might have been wrong all along. I really hope this course will help to really learn to study people without the idea that I always have to be able to numerical categorize my findings.

My other course, Software Planning and Release, will be interesting in that I will learn much more about best practices for software planning and I think this will be very important for web applications I work on now and will develop in the future, I kinda see my future as a movement towards focusing on development of web tools and apps.

From talking to my new advisor here I realize how much of usability mind set I have. I approach problems with a “fixit” attitude or with the idea that I will find problems to resolve or with the goal of improving systems. What I have never really focused on is creating COMPELLING systems and this is something I think I will learn here. The closest I have gotten to this in the past is making interesting things, I think this is the next step beyond just making good/interesting systems.

The iLab area, where I work out of, is a show piece for the university and I have already been warned, as we all have, to be ready to demo all the time as the president of the university makes this lab the first stop when showing people around the university. There is so much technology in this lab, Microsoft surface tables, giant displays, miniature hardware ect and so many research projects in so many areas it’s a bet overwhelming at this point. I do really like my computer and dual 24” displays at my desk though :)

Further, I learned that I will have a lot of opportunities to go to conferences, learn, and meet new people while I am here. If we publish here we go to the conference. We can even go to conferences that are important for our field that we may not even present in. This is very different from what I am used to and a very welcome change.

I will have the opportunity to take actual design courses here in the fall and work with different materials beyond just computers and I really really excited about that.

All the said, overall the University here seems nice although different. There are a LOT more people here and the building are much bigger. I am learning my way around and have even starting going to the gym here.

I am super excited to come and see everyone this coming week in Guelph/Toronto. That said, I hope you all can come out at some point and visit me here as well.

I will start updating this blog more regularly, the recent lack of posts just reflects how busy I have been the past little while.