{"id":118,"date":"2005-02-20T20:54:55","date_gmt":"2005-02-20T20:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josh.ev9.org\/weblog\/?p=118"},"modified":"2005-02-20T20:54:55","modified_gmt":"2005-02-20T20:54:55","slug":"what-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/josh.ev9.org\/weblog\/archives\/118","title":{"rendered":"What a day!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If my worst days are like today, then I think I’m doing just fine. The two effectors: Flat tire on the car & getting locked out of the house. The latter was my fault, the former a freak accident…<\/p>\n

Went for a run this early afternoon. I had planned my day perfectly…my run was to be 45 minutes long, giving me just enough time to shower, eat, and make it to school right on time for my 1:30 meeting. I was on my way, about 1\/4 mile away from home when all of a sudden my right ankle started giving out. “Crap” was all I could think. I’ve been working so hard not to injure my knee, then all of a sudden my ankle is in major pain. I walked back to the house, convinced that my pain was due to the fact that I was wearing ankle socks, causing major coldness. As I walked past my car, I realized that the rear passenger tire was completely flat. Upon inspection, I noticed that there was a big metal slab jammed into the top of the tire (foul play?). I went in, put on some longer socks, and headed back out to change the tire, mad that I wouldn’t get my full run. I changed the tire (all by myself, there’s a first time for everything \ud83d\ude42 and headed back out for my run. It was an ok run…though shorter than I would have liked. I’ll make up for it tomorrow. Longer socks totally did the trick, still injury free. <\/p>\n

When I got back from the run, I turned the door knob only to realize that I was locked out with no cell phone and no one inside. Luckily, I was able to find a way to break in to the house. It was much easier than I would have expected, which is *really really* scary. I was able to shower and eat and get to school only 5 minutes late, which is good considering all the mishaps. <\/p>\n

So now I’ll have to buy a new spare tire. Big woop. Hopefully it won’t be too expensive. I guess it’s better to have a tire pop in your driveway than when you’re driving on it. The funny thing is that I just filled my tires with air yesterday…could I have messed it up somehow? Who knows…<\/p>\n

I think my most recent project is going well. We finished the bulk of our 3-5 page single spaced paper today. From here on it will be rewording and reworking, just to make things sound good (and right). <\/p>\n

I’ve really been thinking about the Contextual Design process lately…it’s what I have been bred on. It’s in my roots. It just feels right. In every other project I have worked on, I have gone in to the idea generation phase with a relatively blank slate. My designs are creative, but I just have not been at all comfortable with them. After doing Contextual Inquiry and modeling, I feel really comfortable in generating ideas. I feel like I’ve deserved the right to create human-centered designs. I think it comes down to the fact that I’m a really visual person. If I can look at human behavior, then strip it down into its smallest pieces by way of external representations, then I am more likely to understand the real<\/i> problems at hand. But maybe I’m just not thinking deeply enough. Perhaps I’m not opening myself up to other lines of thought. <\/p>\n

Is it really true that one should play their weaknesses in school? Should I drop the things I know and head blindly into the unknown? Or maybe I can play my strengths and burrow further into the intricacies of cognition and design. Do I go for breadth or depth? I need to answer these questions for myself. All I’m saying is that I never truly realized exactly what it meant to be an HCI\/Designer with a Cognitive Science background until I gave my Distributed\/External Cognition talk last week. It didn’t go well for a few reasons: <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I had not thoroughly prepared the material.<\/strong> This was due in large part to the fact that I decided to change my topic at the last minute.<\/li>\n
  2. I did not convincingly make my point.<\/strong> Probably because I’m a bit inexperienced at making presentations.<\/li>\n
  3. And finally, I think most of the members of the class do not think of design from the angle I do.<\/strong> This is due to the fact that they don’t have backgrounds similar to mine. I could have set up the presentation so that it would have been easier for a general audience to decipher…but failed to do so<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’ll have to figure out a way to have my cake and eat it too. There must be a way. There’s no reason that I shouldn’t be able to focus on aspects of cognition while acquiring the breadth of knowledge that I would like to have. I can do it, because “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog gone it…people like me.”<\/p>\n

    Ah…Graduate School…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If my worst days are like today, then I think I’m doing just fine. The two effectors: Flat tire on the car & getting locked out of the house. The latter was my fault, the former a freak accident… Went for a run this early afternoon. I had planned my day perfectly…my run was to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hci-topic"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t