Final Thesis Proposal

That’s my presentation – without my words, of course, and modified a bit because slideshare doesn’t allow the fancy motion graphic effects.

 

The morning was beautiful and I had a big breakfast. I sang all the way into town and I felt good about my upcoming day. I got into the room early, tested my tech (bluetooth old-skool mouse as a ‘remote’ – thanks BrotherBud!) and then I suddenly (somewhat randomly) realized that the advisors called a very important 8:30am meeting and no one, not a soul, had ordered coffee or brought anything for the students to eat.
Which, speaking as a Producer, is an anathema. You cannot expect people to be motivated, awake, engaged, tired AND hungry. Not gonna happen. Not for our poor hard-working teachers and especially not for students who’ve been up all night, some of them.  And for whatever reason I just couldn’t do nothing about this.
So I called Jme and when he came into work at 9:30 he brought us all the best donuts I’ve had in Colorado. Maybe ever!
And I felt better. I don’t know what that’s about, that flash of almost-mothering I occasionally feel. Sheepdoging, Jme and I sometimes call it – the impulse to gather and caretake and keep safe.
No one failed, though I swear I saw smoke on occasion as someone divebombed into the ground. But we all did ok. I felt very confident with how I presented and what I said, though Mages and Leister kept asking me questions about why I wasn’t doing (to me) crazy artsy-impractical things like mocking up a real gesture interface in paper and seeing how people would ‘really’ use it (irrelevant) or using the DAC motion capture lab (as if they’d let me). I could see that for Jason and Michael doing UX, reseach and presenting this was enough but I guess I can’t blame the others for not really understanding what a large undertaking that is and how worthy user research ethnography is. And perhaps that’s my fault – I needed to make it clearer that I don’t WANT to do performance art or painting or somesuch – I want to do user-centered design. I want to look at a small question in a tiny lens and use my meager skills to illuminate a modest area. That’s all.
It may seem small – but Marie Curie was doing something very similar to me for a very long time and look what happened there, eh?