🦆 Interaction Nerds by UXA
This week from Investigation & Connection: HCI-related stu-cos, student research, and interning in HCI fields!
👋 Announcements — Welcome to Investigation and Connection!
The Interaction Nerds are so excited to bring our first Investigation & Connection issue of the summer! This week, read about fun HCI stu-cos, see how CMU students are getting involved with research on campus, and learn what it’s like being an intern in an HCI field!
What is Investigation and Connection?
Last week, Archive and Collection brought you cool readings and interesting resources. In each Investigation and Connection issue you’ll find stories from students, professors, and industry professionals, giving you an inside look into classes (Campus Compass), student work (Student Spotlight), and work in HCI (Field Trip). Our goal is to connect you to HCI resources on and off campus!
Who are we?
New year, new team! Before we dive into this week’s issue, let’s meet the creators behind this issue!
Sophie McGrady is a rising senior in HCI. She’s most excited to meet other students within the HCI community, listen to their stories, and help connect them to resources across campus she wishes she knew about as an underclassman!
Emily Liu is a rising junior in Design. She’s also just happy to be here.
Caleb Sun is a rising sophomore in Design. He’s probably running off of too little sleep and too much caffeine. But most importantly he’s excited to be here.
🧐 Campus Compass — HCI-Related Stu-Cos
Still looking to pick up a few credits and expand your HCI knowledge? Here are some stu-cos that are still available for this coming semester! While these may not count for HCI credits, they are a low-stakes way to explore new topics that can expand off of your existing experience, or branch out into other fields.
🤖 98-012 Fun with Robots
In this course, students will learn the basics of programming, sensors, motors, and controls. Students will receive a Romi robot and program it using the Arduino IDE. Students will also build a basic breadboard circuit, understand standard hobby servo motors, and use real sensor data to navigate. The course lecture format will include instructional slides and teaching at the beginning of each lecture, along with a brief lecture on how what we do in class connects to real world robotics.
This is a great introductory option if you are interested in pursuing UX applications with robotics!
🎮 98-127 Game Creation for People Who Want to Create Games
In this course students will learn the basics of game creation. The course is intended for both beginners and experienced game designers. In addition to project work done in class, students will learn fundamental tools like Unity. The intent of this course is to expand the community of game makers at CMU to those who are interested in making games but may not have had the inclination to pursue it through more intensive means such as GCS or IDeATe. The course also serves as an additional place for those already involved in the community to learn and collaborate.
Interested in Game Design but have no clue where to begin? This stu-co is a gentle introduction into the world of Unity and may be a great way to learn some creative applications to technical skills you’ve picked up!
🤗 98-019 Effective Altruism: How Can We Do the Most Good
An introduction to effective altruism and how its principles can be used to shape your career to do the most good. The course explores frameworks that could be used to make a rational career choice, with helping others in mind.
This course is an introduction to altruism in our own lives and future careers. The skills taught in this stu-co can be applied to help you navigate a world with both positive and negative UX applications, and choose a career path within UX that reaffirms your morals.
🤩 Student Spotlight — Erica Fu
How can students get involved with research on campus? What’s it like working in a CMU lab? There’s always something new and exciting happening in CMU’s HCI labs, from teaching people important cybersecurity habits to creating new ways to test machine learning models. 🤩
This week, let’s dive into our conversation with Erica Fu to learn more about her experiences of working on two HCI research projects this summer! ☀️
You won’t really find the kinds of HCI labs and research CMU has anywhere else, so if you’re interested in HCI research, this is the place to get involved. Don’t hesitate to reach out to projects!
—Erica Fu
🌟 Field Trip — A Chat with Eric Zhao
When you finish the final project or exam of a course, have you ever wondered how it will impact your career interests? Or how might this course help you in your future career? 🤔
This week, we chatted with Eric Zhao, a conversational design intern at Meta this summer, about his experience at CMU that prepared him for his current job as well as advice on preparing for the academic year. 😎
Have some idea of what you want as a job, but to keep your mind open and see if it changes.
—Eric Zhao
🤔 Who’s behind the scenes?
Thanks for reading this week’s Interaction Nerds by CMU UXA! The editors behind this work are Sophie McGrady, Emily Liu, Caleb Sun, and Rebecca Jiang.
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