So while this post comes somewhat late, I still thought I’d throw it out there. Starting June 2nd I’ll be working as a User Experience Specialist at Analytic Design Group. Needless to say I’m excited, terrified and happy all at the same time.

Since ADG is a fairly small company I’ll be expected to wear many different hats depending on the current needs, which means unlike my time at CM, I won’t get stuck doing the same thing over and over and over for the next forty years. Actually, during the interview for the job I had a idea, which was to get a set of hats made up with my different skill sets. Each hat could be a different color and have the title of whatever new skill I had learned, and thus, as I had to do front end design, on goes the web dev hat. Mobile testing? Mobi hat. Needless to say that would end up with a lot of different hats, and I was pondering this when Cheryl from CM offered the idea of getting one of those old school press fedral hats with the little cardboard PRESS and replacing it with whatever new job I was doing. Definitely more effective, and it’s a cool hat, I’ll have to think about it.

It has occurred to me that when I communicate with people, I tend to group them by the different level of communication I or they are willing to participate in. Allow me to elaborate, the most basic communication for me is the phone, it is also one of my less preferred methods, and generally speaking, the only ones who I primary communicate with via phone are people who are not able, or are not willing to use other methods. (or who have proven to be unreachable by other means)

With others, a conversation might start via a twitter. From there it could go to a SMS message, from there a IM, or via facebook chat (if it works) or even more recently zoomchat.

While some of my readers might notice each of those steps up to a higher level of interaction with the other person, I also belive it moves back down as well, as the conversation dies down. There are many occasions when I am in a direct IM or chat with someone and I feel like it has no longer become the best medium for the conversation. Either replies are too spaced out, too short or have become unimportant, it now feels like it should be handled by SMS message, which frees me up to do something else, and no longer be slaved to that conversation window. (While that might say something about myself, I am willing to bet I am not the only one who might feel that way, although I have no proof.)

This ability to upgrade and downgrade the level of communication or interaction with others also relates to the number of people who you are communicating with. Maintaining a full fledge chat via IM takes a fair bit of your attention, limiting the number of people who you can be talking with, or the other tasks you can be doing. Stepping down to twitters or SMS means you can pay more attention to those tasks, although you do have to deal with more interruptions (as generally speaking SMS and Twitters tend to make your phone do annoying dances across your table, or ding at you.)

So where I am going with this? Well what I’m trying to get at is if there is an application out there, being worked out in someones mind, or in the planning that would allow me to scale up and down the level of conversation, that frees me from the binding of IM chat widows where you are not free to walk away, well you get the idea, and I would be very interested in that.

I’ve been trying to keep up to date in my readings, and I’m noticing a trend in Usability, everyone seems to just be rehashing the same topics over and over again. Everyone seems to feel the need to weigh in on this topic, restate what’s been said before, and act like they’ve contributed. Perhaps they have, in our 2.0 enviroment social agreement and networking are everything, perhaps by in essence writing a long, I agree with what you said, they are connecting with other like minded people? It’s not too much of a shot in the dark, as we as people tend to like other people who agree or are fairly close to our points of veiw.

Perhaps my choices in reading need to be improved, there are still a great many things left in the Usability field for me to learn, and discovering I’ve spent a hour reading something only to learn there’s nothing new in it, can be well, frustrating at times.

If you Google, “Rules of Twitter” you’ll see everyone from tech people to  ex-Mormon Lesbians has their own sets of rules, some of which seem like good ideas, others, well they reek of the IT smell. Allow me to explain, a former classmate of mine once described IT people as seeing the world through a haze of permissions. Everyone isn’t allowed to access everything, and each user has set rules of what they can and can not access. Many of them seem arbitrary for the way that person uses twitter, I’ve discovered one of the more enjoyable things about Twitter is that it can be many things to many different people without changing it’s spot.

Take my usage for example, it is primary used by former classmates and friends and by extension, their classmates and co-workers when they twitter @ them.  Since we all know each other, everyone’s twitters tend towards the more relaxed, and with everyone scattered across Vancouver now, it’s been a good way for everyone to touch base without having to commit to calling or finding a time when your both online to chat.

Other users can use twitter as it was more intended, the ‘where are you now’ question. While there are some instances where, I assume most of us don’t want to know where you are, for the most part I’m always somewhat interested when I see a twit saying someone is at an apple store, or looking for computer hardware, since you don’t get the full message about what their going to buy, just, where they are.

There is also the conference going twitter user, who twits about what they’ve seen and who they’ve met, causing some jelousy from some of their followers. (Spawning several of the above mentioned rules actually).

So post grad show I had the chance to discuss an idea I had been batting around for some time with one of my teachers and some students about creating a library of pre-built objects that are most commonly found in wireframes and prototypes. While at first daunted by the idea that a drop down menu could be as long as five hundred lines of code, when I actually looked into it, things are not quite that bad. So I have a new goal, within two months I want to be able to release the first version of this library, while many objects already exist in the Flash component libraries, and rest assures I will be repurposing them for my own means, I imagine items like, fly out and other more complicated interactions will require custom objects I will have to learn to built. Given my current state of, well lazy, it will do me good to have a side project to continue to work away at.

So, on the note of having too much time on my own, it is clear that I should find employment, it feels strange to have nothing to do, I worked all through school and now with no projects, deadlines or assignments, I’m not sure what to do with myself.  I plan to go speak with Blast Radius, although their past does make it unlikely I will seek employment there, Sam passed along a possible position which I will apply for and of course there’s always Merlyn at Sage who I need to chat with to discover what they need and if my skill set fit that. I also had a vague idea of apply with Karen, who actually taught me IA, I wonder what that would be like, although with the first year intern she currently has, and her senior one leaving, it’s hard to say what she is looking for right now.

Life is surprisingly good, I didn’t realize how much I had missed Vancouver until I returned, and while I am not opposed to leaving again, I think I would like to spend a little more time here first. We shall see though, it is nice to see everyone again, and of course feel the rain again, as opposed to, say the snow I found randomly on my car all the time.

So it’s finaly here. The big day were we INTE students show off what we’ve learned, what we’ve done, and then get bored to death by hours of speakers. Heh, well perhaps it won’t be too bad, one never knows, however what I do know is that I’m equal parts excited and terrified by this, actauly, not unlike my first few days at Critical Mass.

New challenges and experiences can be exciting and challenging, but there is always that fear of leaving what you know and stepping out into something new. Recently it’s becoming more and more clear that to grow as both a professional and as a person you need to leave those comfort zones and continue to explore new challenges.

Which takes us back to the grad show. How will it turn out? Will there be a good opportunity to network, or will we spend most of the time catching up with old friends and classmates?  Well I’ve got a couple of hours to think of something to rawk, and besides, failing all else there’s always the huge number of sketches and notes I took and created during my time at Critical Mass, although losing the second notebook is a huge blow to it.

Well thats enough about this for now, I’ll post a full update with photos post grad show!

Wow, six weeks already. The internships are officially over and expect to see a “As heard at Critical Mass” list coming up with some killer one liners. I joke, so I should be packing but I’m putting it off and code monkeying, as I’m sure you have noticed (well actaully if your reading via RSS you wouldn’t have) I’ve redesigned the site, or *cough* I’ve hacked apart a WP theme… again.

The big news is that as of writing this, every browser (but not IE6 or earlier, but I don’t consider those real browsers) renders it quite well. There are of course CSS issues, but it gets the point across fairly well. Hm, I’ve ordered business cards, and kicked Curtis and Chad into getting them too you lazy people. I’ll post a picture of them when I collect them Monday Tuesday. So on that note, the grad show is coming up soon, really soon. Scary ain’t it, basically here if we walk out without jobs, well, were we even trying? (Apart from those of you already with jobs, in that case, please kindly take a long walk off short pier).

A lot of pressure, but I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again. What I’m not looking forward to is this 12 hour drive home on Sunday. Ugh, thats going to suck, 12 hours in a car with Chad. If anyone has any spare horse tranquillizers I will not question why or how come you have them if you give me one.

It is a pity I won’t be staying at CM in the short term, everyone there has been quite helpful, I’m getting portfolio pieces, a portfolio review, reference letters, and introductions. On the whole, quite a good grab bag of work swag. Oh, I also took something else I wasn’t supposed to strictly speaking, but I had to. I took my nameplate and the frame around it, I’ll post a picture of it in it’s new home soon. I think I’ll start collecting them, it’s pretty cool to see it.

There’s so much still to say and this post is too long already, perhaps tomorrow or Monday.

Lately when I’ve checked my email I’ve found a ton of comments waiting to be moderated, however I am finding 99% of them to be spam, or tracebacks. Tracebacks are fine, and kinda interesting, but the spam, ok that needs to stop.

Status update, Loyal readers! (all 4 of you) this weekend has been set aside for a redesign of the blog, which will bring it into line with the portfolio project page, as well as fixing the layout, code, and a ton of other issues.

In more mundane news, my flickr feed (to the right) has the new photos of the house and the trip out here, and it’ll cost 200$ to repair the stove. So I shall have to call the Lyn and talk to her about it.

In internship news, things are more interesting. CM normally takes interns, puts them through their paces on each of the different stages of a project in fake project before allowing them to work on billable projects (real clients). I on the other hand have gotten to build 5 real page wire frames that have been  put into the set. So pending a review which I think takes place tomorrow, I’ll find out if they are being accepted or not, if they are that’d be wicked, if not, I’ll learn what I need to work on and improve myself that way. My research readings have beencut down to a few documents a day now, which is quite the releif, and I’m doing more practical research (incidently if anyone wants to be helpful and send me .jpg’s of a profile example from different sites that would be useful.)

Also, why is the IPhone having such issues with the time change? I’m going to ask around CM (since there are a great number of freed IPhone’s floating around) if anyone else is experiencing this issue or not.

Hmm, what else to talk about, I miss Crema, the coffee at CM as noted before can be broken down into, <span> Coffee </span> and <span> old coffee </span>. It makes me sad.

Well, the first week of internship is over and it’s time to recap. First off, now that I’m settled into my house it’s actauly pretty nice. We modeled the living room after Curtis’s living room, that is to say, couch, blankets, chairs, pink and Halo/CoD4. Right now we are watching Transformers on my 22 screen, it’s pretty epic. It’s 3 bedrooms, tiny ass kitcen good sized bedrooms. Downstairs is the other person who lives here, and unfortunately he smokes, so sometimes the house reeks of smoke. Kind of a pain, but what can you do.

But back to the topic at hand, the internship. While all of you fellow INTE’s are doing your own I thought I’d post about my experiences thus far, and add some photos or at least a section in my flickr for them.  The first two days were what CM calls “Critical Start” which is meant to indotricate, I mean educate you on CM’s way of doing things, histroy, clients and all the other legal mumbo jumbo stuff they have to do. Thats not to say it was boring, we had a meeting with the chief of finance, and he kept swearing, and talking about past CM employee indiscretions (which Chad and I got to witness on Friday afternoon) and he ended it by giving us the standing offer of buying us beers. On the whole the first two days were long and uneventful.

Day three was research day… let me explain what that means. It means reading a total of 179 powerpoint slides, 27 PDF documents, 40 different websites (including my Ebay of loans website)  and about an hour spent trying to make my eyes stop bleeding.

Yah, day three was total information overload, and oddly enough, almost none of it was about my client, it was all pre-research haha… Day four, or Thursday I suppose, was the lots of meetings, brainstormings, and more information dumps. I learned a ton about USAA (my BU’s client) got to voice my ideas (apparently I had two good ones haha) and at the end of the day I started working with Visio.

Friday was a production day for the most part, despite a few wrong turns (re working on the wrong phase of the project for 3 hours) I ultimately ended up creating the first draft wireframes that will be used for that section. Not too bad eh?  (I’m sure everyone else is doing something more exciting but I’ll take what I can get) The afternoon was spent watching old CM movies (including a hockey office enforcer, watching BU manager’s fight over IT people, and a very early CM warning movie about online sales (pre the whole internet sales becoming a reality) There was beers, vodka coolers, wine, this was followed by facebooking and digg for the last 45 minutes (most other people left after that but being a intern I figured I should stay.

Unfortunately I can’t talk alot about what I’m doing, the client is USAA a banking/insurance company that caters mostly to US military personal. What I can say is that the project has the chance to re-define what online presence banks and insurance company’s have, and the way their clients view them.  Plus, I apparently get to work on mobile work too, which will be awesome.

In all honesty this hasn’t been a huge production week, I spend a lot of the time brainstorming or attending meetings to discuss the progress or listening to client interviews.  I am kind of missing exacly what my job is though, there doesn’t seem to be hard defined jobs or tasks for me. Cheryl my mentor is a nice woman, a little scattered but clearly a veteran IA, but I am really wanting a more clear goal. Oh well, I am looking forward to next week, CM culture is quite relaxed (I wore a button down shirt and got accused of going to a job interview (There’s a running job at CM, if you dress up, you must be doing to another job interview.) alot of people spend time watching youtube or in the case of the woman who sits next to me, shoe shopping. I’m not totaly positive CM is were I belong, but the first week is always strange. As for the week, production wise there hasn’t been anything I can’t handle, Visio is a weird program, very touchy, but I’ll get used to it.

Anyway this post is long and rambling so I’ll cut it short now, to my fellow INTE’s, good luck and may your second weeks continue to be excellent!

I get a couch and chair with my new place in Calgary. This is good cause it means I don’t have to run around Calgary searching for a couch or chair. I am slightly worried at the description, “ugly as sin but comfy enough to keep around” but we shall see! Less then a week left in class. That will be it, no more school, no more projects from teachers, soon it will be real deadlines, real projects, real consequences. I can’t wait.