Scientific Ink

Tag: Web

  • We Feel Fine / by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar

    We Feel Fine / by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar

    So, in Meyers-Briggs personality lingo, I am an intuitive feeler (INFJ). I’ve seen this type described more than once as a “dolphin,” essentially navigating the world based on complex emotional echolocation. (warm…warmer…nope cooler again…drat!) How I feel about things is crucial, and I am at least wise about myself enough to know that it is difficult to project how I will feel about something until I experience it.

    In practice, what this means is that I make mistakes and “bump into walls” as I figure things out. It can’t be helped; it is my process. Maybe actual dolphins are more graceful in practice.

    That most of us are bad at predicting how we’ll feel in a new situation is one of the themes of Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness. Research sugests that we can understand how we *might* feel about something by talking to someone who is having that experience.

    Ah hah! I can use books and other people’s brains to help me narrow down the set of things I need to go out and experience to understand! Amazing. Maybe I can avoid a few walls that way.

    For that reason, I find the exploration of emotions aggregated from blogs in We Feel Fine interesting. I don’t yet know how to interpret it. I have to spend more time experiencing it. But, it gives me a sense of being connected to others through the irrational network of emotion. That’s kinda cool all on its own.

  • Usability Professionals’ Association

    Here’s my statement of interest for becoming an officer of the local chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association.

    I am ready to volunteer as an officer of the Michigan UPA. I have enjoyed the UPA events I have attended over the years – they often provide me some nugget I can go back and apply. And, I believe we really do need to pay attention to how we make things (software, websites, alarm clocks, projects, teams) so that they reflect and enhance our experience, rather than bother us. UPA has been a source of inspiration for me in this regard. Recently, I’ve been able to apply ideas from Lou Rosenfeld’s search analytics talk in January and many of the February Internet User Experience talks (schedule, photos). Additionally, I enjoy the other folks in the group and want to help support the local chapter.

    My background includes project management, technical writing, and project work where I always maintained a focus on the needs of the end user of the product, application, web site, or device. I’m good at seeing things that need to be done and figuring out the what, who, and how to get them accomplished. So, logistics, communication, organization, and team building. I also have some rusty PR skills I could dust off and put into service.

  • Calendar

    Everybody is cheap about different, weird things. I’m cheap about calendars. I balk at purchasing a calendar in December when one can be had half-price or better in January. I am the calendar-buyer in the house. Each year I pick up a few in January, one for the house, one for my husband’s work, one for my work…

    A couple of charities sent me tolerable calendars this year – the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, the Nature Conservancy – so the only calendar we needed was the one for my husband’s office. Well, I have been fooling around a lot with taking aerial photos while my husband enjoys his pilot’s license. And I have been posting some aerial and some candid photos onto Flickr.

    Flickr has all sorts of relationships with vendors who will happily slap your photos onto business cards, mugs, t-shirts, calendars, and whathaveyou. So I decided not to cheap out this year; I’d custom-make a flight calendar for my husband for Christmas.

    (more…)

  • Geeking out

    In August, I attended an Usability Professionals’ Association Meeting “Obsession: the Sympathetic Heart of Design“, given by Tom Brinck. Among other things, his definition of “Web 2.0” was the ability for people to “geek out” about stuff they like. Geotagging photographs and now organizing my bookshelf and rating books online seem to be two shiny objects that have my attention.

    His site for organizing books was LibraryThing.com. When the inspiration struck, I couldn’t remember his site, and so I found and am fooling around with aNobii right now. aNobii hangs up a lot, and has fewer books on its shelf than LibraryThing (16K vs. 6 million), so for the networking potential/Metcalfe’s Law, I’m in the wrong pond…..but it’s oddly sticky, maybe it is just “sunk cost” of time spent.