Advisor Meeting: Travis Vermilye

Talking with Travis is always relaxing. I feel like he really listens to me and tries to advise me in a direction I want to go, not just the direction he himself would go. It’s reassuring to let down my defenses against getting influenced unduly (see: Michael Salamon, who can make an entire class excited to wireframe all of facebook in 3 days).

I appreciated that he responded to my desire to publish. I am really excited about both my subject and the process but I also feel strongly that those of us who want to be strong user advocates have got to speak up. Publishing, being mentored and mentoring, making cool user-friendly stuff both for work and on my own time – I really want to be doing this my whole life. So to have Travis suggest that this aspect was  worthy was to spend my time – well, it felt good. It’s not ‘a painting’, you see, so publishing an article feels self-indulgent and outside the constraints of this thesis. Travis assured me that not only should it be done but that I should try to get into conferences, too. I felt good about that.

Travis mentioned that I should look at both the history of UIs and the current use, and that I need a better idea of what my outcome is going to be.

…’cause, y’know, this is a bachelor of ARTS and I have a gallery showing at the end of this.

 

OH YEAH! Gallery Show omg!