Have You Met… Peter Haggard?
Have you met Peter, Web Designer for IST — Finance & Administration? Spend the next few minutes getting to know him a little better.
Where is your favourite place on campus?
The industrial design building. My degree was in industrial design and I have a lot of good memories from that building.
Tablet or paper?
Tablet. I read a lot of comics, and I’d have to haul a small suitcase around with me on vacations and stuff if I didn’t have it all in one spot.
Name one thing you’ve brought to work from home.
My camera. I do a lot of photography for our team, and I like to have my camera on hand at all times.
What is the one thing you can’t live without?
Coffee. It’s the first thing I need every day.
If you won airfare to anywhere in the world, where would you go?
I’d like to fly to New Zealand to do a backpacking trip across the mountains.
You can invite anyone — alive or dead, real or fictional — to dinner. Who would it be?
Reiner Knizia. He’s a board game designer who’s designed hundreds of games. I think he’d be somebody interesting to meet. When you play his games, they’re always unique in very odd ways — you think they shouldn’t work, but they do. He must have a very interesting way of thinking about things.
If you could switch jobs with someone else on campus for a week, what would you do?
I’ve had many roles on campus as both a student and as an employee, so I might just say the president. That’s the real high level, looking at the university as a whole type of job — the type of thing that I’ve never encountered. It would be a completely new experience.
What does “uplifting the whole people” mean to you?
As someone whose job is design, I think a lot about user experience and things like that. So in a way, uplifting the whole people to me is a kind of a user experience. Whenever you’re creating something like our web pages, graphics — anything — you really want to think about how everyone on campus is going to use it and how its going to fit into their lives. I think a lot of what my team and I do is think about what we can do to best help everyone else.
If you could solve any problem in the world, what would it be?
Global climate change. I’m sure that’s a common answer. If there was one problem that would probably have a lot of trickle down effects and create a lot of positive change in more than just one sole area if solved, that would be one of those things. Plus it is obviously a very pressing concern.
What 3 words best describe your U of A experience?
Collaborative — I have a really great team and we work closely with each other.
Creative — I love making things, be it in my personal life or at work.
Diverse — I’ve been on campus since 2000, and I’ve had a lot of different roles, two degrees, and just a lot of different experiences here.
About Peter Haggard
Peter Haggard is the Web Designer with the Communications team in Information Services and Technology. Peter graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Design. When not in the office, he can often be found climbing at the Wilson Climbing Centre or at home involved with all things board games.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
