An Interview with Timothy George, Graduate of UC Irvine’s Master of Human-Computer Interaction and Design
After completing his undergraduate in Civil Engineering at UCI in 2009, Timothy George worked as a structural engineer, then construction project manager until he was accepted as a proud member of the first cohort of UCI’s MHCID program (2016–2017). During his time in construction, Tim worked on many design-build projects and developed a taste for design elements that served the end user. After graduation from MHCID, he worked as the Lead UI/UX Designer from Project Jupyter, where he ran an intern program for three summers, and launched JupyterLab in 2019. He is currently working full-time on his own startup, C19, that allows people to communicate their risk of Covid-19 exposure before meeting up in person.
Before you started the MHCID program, had you ever worked remotely for a substantial period of time?
I had done some single projects remotely, but nothing ongoing. So basically, no. Most of my work had been in-person.
How did the MHCID program or studying remotely prepare you for a COVID work situation?
Well, when I got my first new job after the program, it was working on open source software for Project Jupyter. I was actually already working in a fairly similar situation to how I’ve been since COVID, in that all of my meetings were on Zoom already and all of my work was performed asynchronously. So in terms of my work being very similar now to how it was before COVID, I could speak to how MHCID program prepared me for that.
That would be great. So how did the MHCID program prepare you to work remotely as soon as you graduated?
So the first thing is, I always second guessed myself and my own ability to work remotely, because I have the tendency to be distractible. I’m also extremely outgoing and very social. So I’ve always worried that I wouldn’t be able to thrive in an at-home work environment.
But in the MHCID program, especially with the Capstone project, I was able to work on a team where everybody knew their strengths and knew what areas they wanted to be working in. Having that clearly communicated gave us all an opportunity to efficiently do our own work and then collaborate when necessary. The weekly cadence of collaboration that we were on met some of those social needs. I think maybe 15 years ago that wouldn’t have been possible, but new technologies have changed that. Three or four years ago when I was going through the program, it was already possible. I’d say it’s even easier now to connect with people in a way that feels face-to-face, even when it’s not.
And what’s something that you thought might be a problem studying remotely that wasn’t an issue after all?
Group projects. As anybody who’s worked on a group project knows, there’s always a potential for people to not pull their weight, or for work to fall through the cracks.
I found that going into the Capstone project, I was a little bit nervous and therefore front loaded a lot of discussions about accountability and how the team dynamic would work remotely. People pulling their own weight wasn’t an issue at all, but a lot of that was based on good planning with sufficient follow-through. This put us in a very good place.
We clearly communicated who was doing what responsibility and we prioritized what tasks we were either able to do or interested in. Where there was interest but not ability, we partnered up. And where there was both interest and ability, we were able to basically tear through our work really quickly.
Do you have a tip that you would be willing to share about working from home?
Start your days by listing what you want to get done and what you think will distract you and then try to follow that up at the end of the day, when you maybe take twenty minutes to evaluate how effective you were at avoiding those distractions. Pre-loading what you expect to be distracted by can help you avoid repeating time sinks.
Do you have a tip about virtually working with a team?
Yes. I think it’s important to work together in-person initially, even if it’s for a short period of time. Our Capstone project group spent time together — when we were tired and overly caffeinated and working through problems together — and that experience paid dividends. It doesn’t take that long to develop history, but you need to develop it.
And the second tip would be to take time at the beginning of every zoom or facetime meeting to humanize everybody on the call. And so if you have 60 minutes, then open up with 10 minutes of chatting about work and life. Make sure you let everybody have a chance to talk about themselves and what’s going on in their life, quiet down your extroverts and let your introverts share as well. Remind each other that you’re all human and feel human about each other. This makes it a lot easier to accomplish work together.
What do you think work will look like five years from now?
I think companies will wise to two things. One that their workforce isn’t as productive as they thought it was. And two that working remotely didn’t really impact that positively or negatively. And so I think people will become wise to the fact that your buttocks in a seat doesn’t actually mean that you’re getting work done. And even the fact that companies have had to lay off so many people and then have still been able to keep things running, I think will demonstrate that some people are very effective and efficient at their jobs.
I think the stigma related to remote work is going to disappear because we now have evidence that suggests that the productivity is probably more based on the person-to-job fit than it is on whether they’re working remotely or in an office. So I think we can finally put to rest this notion that being in the office makes you more productive and that we may actually find that being in the office can make workers significantly less productive.
