🦆 Interaction Nerds by UXA
Hello! This week we started "hunting" HCI talents who successfully developed creative confidence. Plus: an exclusive poll on UX Design internship at Start-ups & Large-corps.
👋 TGIF — Greetings from the Interaction Nerds
Welcome back! This week, we invited BHCI representatives to share their UXD internship adventures in two environments -- aspiring startups & established corporations. We hope their distinct perspectives could inspire how you explore future opportunities. 🔮
We also launched a new series called "Spotlight," focusing on learning how peers around us leverage opportunities on campus and successfully develop creative confidence.🪴
And, as promised, we prepared a new batch of what's up in UX for you at the end. 🧠
👉 The Sidebar — Check out XHACKS 2022
UXA and AMA are co-hosting XHacks 2022 from April 1-3. XHacks is a design hackathon with a primary focus on applying digital design and product strategy to real-world problems.
If you are interested in creating tech solutions that leave no human behind, learn more about the challenge from our Hack-site. 👾
In addition to practicing innovative thinking, you can also connect with current and future creative technologies throughout XHacks.
We invited ACM Distinguished Speaker Carol Smith to give hackathon participants a Keynote on Ethics and Trust for merging Technologies. 🤖
✌️ The Spotlight — Adhiti Chundur
Each HCI student at CMU has a different story to share — and what better way to explore these than through cool projects that these HCI students had curated? 😎
Inspired by our peers on campus, we decided to launch the "Spotlight" project — a series of investigations on how HCI talents showcased design thinking and creative confidence in their practices. 🤩
To kick start the project, we invited Adhiti Chundur, a senior majoring in Cognitive Psychology and HCI, to give us a taste of her journey & growth as an interdisciplinary designer! 🌱
👍 The Inquiry — A conversation on UXD @Startup vs. Big-tech with Kate and Namita
We invited Rachel Lee to share her experience and takeaways from her UX Design internship @Amazon in our last issue. And you might have started wondering, “What about UX Design internship experience at startups?”
Guess what? We were super lucky to bring Kate Zhao and Namita Rao on board to uncover the difference in the work environment, collaboration style, and mentorship culture between established corporations and aspiring startups.
Being open-minded and not closing yourself off to one idea or a specific mindset. Because in design, you're going to talk to and be exposed to so many different people, beliefs, and thoughts. It's important to consider all that for your future growth and be able to design a solution that's meant for a larger range of people.
— Kate Zhao
One of the challenges of working in this type of environment was that my manager wasn't fully convinced by the value of UX. I had to push for sound UX principles, which wasn’t a great experience. However, looking back, it helped me understand why we need UX principles and practices.
— Namita Rao
🤌 The Supplements — An article a day keeps the doctors away
🤟 The End — Stay tuned and dig in
TALE OF THE WEEK
You and a friend are having a picnic by the side of a river. Suddenly you hear a shout from the direction of the water-a child is drowning. Without thinking, you both dive in, grab the child, and swim to shore. Before you can recover, you hear another child cry for help. You and your friend jump back in the river to rescue her as well. Then another struggling child drifts into sight... and another... and another. The two of you can barely keep up. Suddenly, you see your friend wading out of the water, seeming to leave you alone.
"Where are you going?" you demand.
Your friend answers, "I'm going upstream to tackle the guy who's throwing all these kids in the water."
— Dan Heath, “Upstream: the quest to solve problems before they happen”
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Who’s behind the scenes? 🙈
Thanks for reading this week’s Interaction Nerds by CMU UXA! The editors behind this work are Neeha Kurelli, Sunniva Liu, Rebecca Jiang, and Bill Guo. In addition, we received generous support from our “lovely critic,” Michelle Lee.
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