Hi,
First of all, I just wanted to thank all of you students and Dr. Elmes for a great couple of days. I really enjoyed my time helping teach the course, especially the discussion about poor designs of everyday things that you've encountered and all your comments about how you communicate. I think I probably learned as much or more from all of you as you did from me!
I was looking back at the questions posted to the blog, and I think there were three folks whose questions I did not answer yet. I'm sorry I ran out of time during the class. So here are the answers online.
Sallie: I learned about the job opportunity at Bell Labs when a recruiter came to UCLA. A good friend of mine at UCLA took a job with Bell Labs one year before I did, and he told me he liked it. So when the recruiter came during my last year of grad school, I went to talk with him. Most of the systems and applications we design at Bell Labs are intended to be used by "average" people, so people like Customer Service Reps, Inventory Managers, Outside Plant Engineers (remember the Steveland Morris story?!). They may have specialized knowledge in their work domain, but they are not rocket scientists. Speaking of that -- the work on the computer for the Space Station would certainly be an exception to that, if you consider astronauts to NOT be average people. We also do design some things that are products for consumers, though less of that at Alcatel-Lucent than at AT&T because ALU makes more telephony equipment (stuff behind the scenes making phone calls go through) rather than consumer products.
Liz: I've always been sort of interested in technology, I guess. My dad was an engineer, so maybe I got some of that from him. BTW, though, I was very upset as a kid when I realized that he was an engineer but not the kind that drives trains. My favorite project was one that I didn't talk about. In the early 1990's I worked with a team of trainers in Atlanta to design and develop a series of interactive multimedia training courses on CD-ROM (slightly before the web became popular) for technicians who worked with DC power systems. This was an entirely new type of user interface, plus I got to directly apply some of my knowledge about human learning and memory (though the trainers knew a lot too), plus I got to do the main part of the programming of the course using a very good multimedia tool, plus the people I worked with on the project were sharp and a ton of fun to work with. By far the worst part of my job was the layoffs in the early 2000's.
Caroline: your question is a really hard one. I guess I'd have to say that my time at W&L was most directly useful during my time in grad school. About 40 of us started Psych grad school together that year at UCLA (in all fields -- cognitive, physio, developmental, clinical, etc.). These people came from all over as you might expect, including quite a few from Ivy League schools. But a guy who had gone to Haverford and I were by far the best prepared of the 40 because we had done so much research with our undergrad profs, and we had done so much writing in our undergrad years. We were lucky and knew who we wanted to work with and what we wanted to do. A lot of people spent years (literally) trying to figure that out. I also should say, though, that my time at W&L plays a role in lots of what I've done, and I hope I was able to show some of that during the classes.
Once again, I really enjoyed being part of the class. Good luck to all of you with your papers! If you have more questions, please feel free to email me at: mikeburns@comcast.net.
Mike