Past and Present
How did I get here?…and where am I going?
It all started after I discovered Psychology and made it my primary focus of studies at University of Nevada, Reno. A keen interest in human behaviour (and French) led me to earn a double major in these two subjects.
During this time, something sparked my interest in Informatics. A module called “Computers in Psychology” taught me how to program my own perception-psychology experiments in Visual Basic.NET. Although I enjoyed learning computer programing, it wasn’t enough for me to want to become a programmer. My academic interests were still in the study of human behaviour.
I knew I wanted to be involved in Informatics… I just didn’t know how.
Shortly after graduating, I began exploring possible “bridges” from Psychology to Informatics. After reading a few interesting articles I discovered the work of Mary Czerwinsky, a Researcher in Human Centered Computing at Microsoft. She earned a PhD. in Cognitive Psychology, but crossed into Informatics via something called Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Getting to know what HCI as a practice was career-defining for me.
HCI was immediately appealing to me because of its muiti-disciplinary roots. It is based primarily on Computer Science, Psychology, Human Factors and Engineering. It involved something I was already familiar with, and something I wanted to know more about. It felt like it was the right career to pursue.
Being an interdisciplinary field, I was expecting to engage in a post-graduate programme that would be just that: Interdisciplinary. I didn’t know there would be such a thing as a Human-Computer Interaction Masters or Ph.D programmes. This was until I discovered various post-graduates programmes –amongst them, the Human-Computer Interaction MS program at IUPUI, where I am currently a student.
It was at IUPUI where I was introduced to some of the many ramifications spanning from HCI: Usability, Interaction Design, Psychology of HCI, among many others. The training I have been receiving in this programme, ultimately allowed to find a job as an Interaction Designer at Pearson Education.