Hey there, it's been a while since I haven't updated the blog, but here I am with a few updates. 📰

I started my first semester at Georgia Tech in January with a class in Human Computer Interaction, and I gotta say that so far I am truly enjoying the material and how the class is structured since it makes the remote learning experience much more enjoyable.

There's a lot of writing involved with this class as each single week we're required to write an 8 pages paper related to the course content we're learning, but I think that overall having to write this much was helpful for me in that it gave me structure and room to properly organize myself with my full-time job at Cloud Academy.

Having less time at hand paradoxically makes you value the time you have much more, and this helped me establish a good routine to take care of both HW and my daily work as a FE Engineer (also WFH is a boost in this scenario as there is no commute).

 

Anyhow, some of the main key takeaways from the HCI course are:

 

• Think about users first anytime you're thinking about creating a new interface for a product.

• Ask yourself the right questions early on, and iterate as much as possible to refine the feedback cycle and come up with creative alternative solutions.

• Brainstorming is important, and you have to take it as a creative exercise as inserting a "random" element can actually allow you to think outside the box and find new ways to tackle a certain problem.

• Beware of biases, as you will encounter so many of them along the way and the more you know about them the better you will be able to recognize them.

• Get confortable with the concepts of gulf of execution and gulf of evaluation as they are vital points which will eventually determine the overall perceived usability of your interface/product.

 

Hope you found these points somewhat helpful/insightful, and I will come back with more takeways once the class is over in May so stay tuned for that!

🖖