My own parallel Universe: When I got into a Human Computer Interaction Master’s
If you read everything until now, you know that I have a BA degree in Social Sciences and a Post-Grad one in Digital Media, right? You might guess by all the information given that I have more experience in Anthropology as well. And you’re right. But what I didn’t tell you until now is that I have as well been a Master’s student of Human Computer Interaction. Here I’m going to tell you about some of these experiences.
First one: My research
The HCI field is connected with the Computer Science post-grad program at my University. Many of the problems we tried to solve were then connected with Computer Scientists experiences. Mine was no different.
It is common for devs to create websites and apps without a proper designer professional and/or method. This means that many products are really functional, but do not solve problems from the real world. HCI professionals here are really interested in making some changes in this area. My advisor used theories from Donald Norman and Jakob Nielsen theories, allied with Organizational Semiotics Methods and an anthropological background with the goal to create methods that could help these developers to be more aware of the real world while creating online solutions.
As I already had an anthropological background, I leaned over the possibility of creating a Socially and Culturally Aware Framework for Early Stage of Design. To do so I reunited the 10x10 matrix of Edward T. Hall’s “Silent Language” book with the Semiotic Onion and the Value Pie. My goal was to make the development of online and offline solutions aware of the impact they would have in people real life problems and day by day living — later I learned that I was worried of designing the User Experience and with Service Design, both stuff that I really love to work with nowadays.
While I was developing this research I presented in some conferences and wrote some articles, one of them actually turned out as a book chapter.
Second one: The group Research
In parallel to my own research, there was a group research project that reunited HCI teams from two different universities.
The challenge here involved a children’s hospital that dealt with face malformation. The research goal was to develop an internet of things solution that helped children to chill out while they were undergoing preoperative procedures and exams.
To do so me and another anthropologist were sent to the hospital for about a week to make a short ethnographic immersion at the hospital daily operation and all the people that were involved with the process that began with welcoming the child and its family and ended with sending them home after the procedure finished. It was an intense week in another town where I learned a lot about face malformation, hospitals and exams. But mostly I could empathize with those children — which was great.
Besides the ethnography part, I participated in group sessions with HCI experts to share our finds and co create possible solutions. The chosen one was a Teddy Bear that responded to the strength the child applied during the exams, promoting the relaxation of applying attention in something else, but also the value of hugging and holding on to something during hard times.
Some other solutions, created by other experts, were going to be validated as well.
Besides all the research work we also did some usability tests and validated solutions created by other researchers from our university, even if they were not part of our HCI group. There were many solutions related to accessibility, universal design and online education.
At that time I got contact with eye tracking, metadata analysis, heuristics and even some dev languages. This experience has given to me all the technique skills required to work as a UX Research — even without using that name.
