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twenty-sided woman Posts

The past our parents don’t have

Published April 22, 2011

I got a LinkedIn request the other day: “I think I have a funny photo of you next to my Van de Graaf machine when you were an intern at MAYA Design.” I actually laughed out loud when I read this. I can totally remember the day I was playing with the Van de Graaf machine – I can only imagine how silly that photo looks. And it’s a summer of fond memories, too – MAYA was my first internship and my first interaction design job. It was pre-dot-com burst, so the office bore the hallmarks of a bunch of…

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Life in the Theatre: My latest project, “All I Ever Wanted”

Published April 21, 2011

On Friday, April 22, I will be opening my next theatrical run – a world premiere play called “All I Ever Wanted“. If you’re in the Seattle area, please consider joining us – we’ll be performing Fri/Sat/Sun (excluding Easter) through May 8th. All performances are in TPS Theatre 4, which is on the 4th floor of the Seattle Center House. It’s a great honor and challenge to get the chance to originate a character (to perform a role in a premiere production). Especially for me, in this role – it’s a stretch. I play a married Midwestern woman 10 years…

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On Service Design: Pain Medication

Published April 18, 2011

Service design is another branch of interaction design, like user experience, that focuses on a holistic view of systems that may or may not involve technology. In simple terms, service design seeks to improve how humans interact with a service or provider.

While many of us have encountered narcotic painkillers like Vicodin or Percocet (hello, spambots) for use after minor injuries or procedures like wisdom tooth removal, it’s a whole new ballgame if you’ve had the misfortune of needing a serious procedure due to illness or injury. Based on my personal experience and the experience of close friends, it feels like there’s a major hole in the service offerings of most medical providers when it comes to ending the use of this sort of medication.

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Demystifying Job Shadows

Published April 14, 2011

They’re a rather mysterious concept out of context – after all, I never did a job shadow when I was growing up or even when I was in college. The closest I ever got was visiting my dad’s engineering firm, running around, playing on the computers and being AMAZED at all the choices of beverages he stocked. (How prophetic, since almost every place I’ve ever worked is a member of the free-soda-and-assorted-beverages club.) And I think that’s part of what can make it difficult to find volunteers for job shadows – the uncertainty of “What on earth would I do with…

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Computer Engineer Barbie: How Interaction Design can entice a new generation of women

Published April 12, 2011

When I heard the news that I’d been accepted as a lightning round speaker at IxDA’s Interaction ’11 conference, I was delighted and just a bit terrified. I’m very passionate about the subject, but had no idea whether it would resonate in a sea of interesting design theories and case studies. In short, my theory is that the direct social benefit we perform in our careers as user experience professionals is the perfect antidote to antiquated technology curriculums that have scared off women (and some men) in droves. (If you didn’t get a chance to see the talk, embeds are…

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