anneconnell

Mary: Are you afraid of the nipples?  I’m afraid of the nipples from Madagascar.

Christian: Well, my hands hurt because I’m tired. Because they hurt.  Ouchie. Ow, ow. [because he was asked to take his plate to the sink]

Mary: You have to get up so I can wear Tigger. I want to wear Tigger always. Because I am Tigger today.

Christian: I want a snowboard because I am fast and I am not afraid to go over that hill mommy. You’ll see that I am tough.

Mary: Are we going to see Nick and ZQ? [surprised how often and randomly both M and C remember these two guys, made quite an impression!]

Christian: Well, remember you said that I could have a cookie ‘l’esterday? I want that cookie now. [It was more like three days prior and he wanted it at 8am].

Mary: I’m just taking care of Doe because her nose is wet. [poor Doe, our dog, is putting up with blankets, kleenex and a fake thermometer that Mary keeps trying to put in her mouth]

Christian: I’m just Christian Connell, I’m not a superhero… yet.

A conversation between Christian and me yesterday morning over breakfast:

C: Mama, let me tell you about the earth [hands in front of him, mimicking how I speak to him when explaining something complex].  It is round and we live on it. And if a big spaceship, or rocks hits the earth, it will hurt the earth and put a big whole in the earth and we’ll all be dead.  And Saline Street will have more holes in it.

M: Wow, buddy, that’s a lot of information.  You know, I kn0w about the earth, too. But where did you learn this about a spaceship or rock hitting the earth and hurting it?  Did you see it on Transformers or something?

C: No [rolling HIS eyes]. The earth needs the sun, and if the sun doesn’t burn up the rocks that will hit us, the earth will get hurt. I saw this from the museum where I drove the spaceship.  The place where the sperm whale ate the giant squid.

M: Oh, ok, that’s cool.  So that’s where you learned this?

C: No, I learned this from my brain. That’s how it does. It learns stuff.  I learn new stuff always. I have an idea, we need to go back to the Discovery room, I think.

M: We’ll go back soon. Wow, honey, you sure are smart.

C: Yes, my brain is smart. [skips away]

I truly love entering this new phase of everything being ‘amazing’. He is so much fun, and he is so serious and wide-eyed when he talks about “interesting stuff”.

[I'm downstairs doing laundry, Mike's at the store.  Phone rings.]

Me: (yelling) “Don’t answer that, let the answering machine get it.”

[little footsteps running... phone rings three times. answering machine goes off. Mary picks up phone. conversation captured on speaker.]

Mary: “Hello. Who are you?”

Person: “This is Central Blood Bank. May I speak to Mike Connell?”

Mary: “This is Mary Connell.”

Person: “This is Central Blood Bank. May I speak to your daddy.”

Mary: “Is this Aunt Peggy?”

Person: “No. Is your mommy or daddy home?”

Mary: “THIS IS MARY CONNELL, I said.”

Person: “Ok, honey, we’ll call back later.”

Mary. “NO. GO AWAY.” [click]

——-

This is the new official policy in dealing with solicitors at the Connell home.

While charged with a project to design a site to showcase a font collection, I fell into the flawed approach of “designing for the self” instead of the user that the Contextual Inquiry was actually *performed*.  Luckily, I caught myself before any methods of the research toolkit were breached.  Sometimes I look back and wish I’d had the a-ha! moment earlier (would’ve saved me several hours on brainstorming). But I’m glad it wasn’t any later!

During my MHCI Capstone Project, I became fascinated with visualizing networks and information.  As a team, we used several methods to visualize networks (speed dating, participatory design, peer critiques, etc.), we came up with many ways to visualize networks in the form of people, content, and resources.  But, what I think is even more interesting is identifying information that is not there and visualizing ways to represent these “gaps”.

Information can be presented in a manner that is straightforward or curious. If we opt for curious, we are guaranteed not only attention, but likely higher engagement as well.  As human beings, we demand to know more. What was known information (a book we’ve read many times) that might have been ignored has been converted into something unknown, something mysterious, something that demands resolution (a movie adaptation of said book where the ending has been changed).

When we become aware of this missing information- when something changes from being known (or so we thought) to an unknown state—we become curious. This is the explanation of curiosity posed by behavioral economist George Loewenstein in his Information-Gap Theory. Loewenstein says “curiosity happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge.”

The feeling we get from these information gaps is best described as deprivation, which is critical to understanding why it is we are motivated by curiosity. In order to “eliminate the feeling of deprivation,” we seek out the missing information. This is ironic, considering people routinely seek out puzzles, mystery novels and other curious situations that create this sense of deprivation. However, it’s important to note that many researchers once viewed curiosity as something averse, this view suggests we should only want to know something if it helps us make more informed decision.

In “The Psychology of Curiosity,” Lowenstein surveys the body of curiosity research and how it resolves many of the debates surrounding curiosity. He sums it up as: I’m curious because there’s a gap between “what I know and what I want to know.” Two notable implications come from this perspective:

• Loewenstein’s tests confirmed that subjects were more curious when given parts of a greater whole—the need to complete enough of a picture puzzle in order to determine what it was (a picture of an animal) resulted in more interaction than a scenario where each block was a discrete picture.
• Curiosity correlates with our own understanding of a particular domain. The more we know about some topic, the more likely we are to focus on our own information-gaps. If I know 8 of 10 items, I’m more curious about the remaining 2 than if I only know 2 of 10 things.

I want to visualize the 2 of the 10 things I don’t know, but what is the best way to do this?  And, how much does a user have to invest in the information to want to do this?  My belief is that the best way to get people to spend time doing this is to embrace both the highly-motivated, highly-curious users as well as those that “stumble-upon” the information via social networking tools that are available (and avoid bias simultaneously).

How to embrace them all?  How to get people motivated? What’s the best way to visualize these gaps?  In progress…

Say it with me people, D-O-N-E.  Wow.  I fell like a huge weight has lifted.

I also feel very lucky to have worked with Nick, ZQ, Varnali, and [yes, even him] Paul this summer.  I learned so much.  Even though I felt very old being around a bunch of bright young things [age range of 23-28], whom did not share my lifestyle (husband, kids, job), I am so glad I went through with the project.  For the most part, people treated me with kindness and respect.  I was even “sought out” on occasion for my input, which made me feel fabulous!

Since the project was funded by my boss, I feel like the value of the experience can be added directly to my  job.  How cool is that?  He’s awesome.  Most importantly, Mike was on board with this and supported me entirely.  I am a lucky girl.It always seems that I’m on the difficult path toward a destination, but that makes arriving there so much better! At least, this is what I choose to believe.

Here are some lessons I’ve learned from Grad School:

• Never go part-time
• Don’t have kids along the way
• Never leave a good lunch in a ’shared’ refrigerator
• If you do, seal it in a plastic bag and mark it “live sample” with a date that is a week old — no one will touch it
• Do not fall asleep on a ‘public’ couch, not unless you have your own blanket and pillow to put your head on
• Group Projects are about group conflict and how to resolve it in an optimal way
• Grad students will eat anything for free [only sleep deprivation trumps this]
• Do NOT complain to another grad about what you owe in student loans, for they also have debt
• Presentations matter more than final artifacts (at least in a Masters program, not so much for PhDs I hear)
• Take lots of pictures of your process, you’ll need it – nothing provides better context than a picture of you/group doing the work
• Never say user testing isn’t needed.  That’s like trying to say you will “un-know” your own code.  For example, once you saw Bruce Willis die in “The Sixth Sense” you can’t forget it.  Search out users for objective input and you’ll be surprised at what they point out – this will make your product better!!!!!
• Sleep is overrated
• If you do have kids, accept that you won’t be the best mom or dad during this time of your life but you’ll do much better later, you’ll have guilt to sustain a lifetime
• Grad school allows you to make wonderful contacts in an area you are heavily interested, be good to these people
• Appreciate the feedback, especially the negative feedback, this will make you better at whatever it is you do
• No feedback is a bad sign
• Try to reach out to the person that is the harshest critic,  this way you’ll arrive at a refined solution earlier
• Every person on your team serves a purpose and has value to contribute, you must be willing to adjust when necessary

That’s all, for now…

For the last six months Christian has been talking to and about two imaginary friends, Sharky and Stuart Little.  There were family dinners where we had to place extra plates at the dining room table to accommodate these ‘guests’.  If he was talking with no one else around it would be to either Sharky or Stuart Little.  If he talked to one of these imaginary friends in our presence, we would ask what they were doing.  Christian would tell us that Sharky was swimming next to him, or that Stuart Little was enjoying the corn, etc.

Suddenly, he no longer referred to Stuart Little, only Sharky.  This begs the obvious question, “what happened to Stuart Little?”.

“Oh, he’s gone”.

“Where did he go?  Did Sharky eat him?

“Just nothing.”

I kept asking, but Christian would not fold under questioning.  I’m genuinely curious if Sharky ate him.

On our way into school this morning, Christian informed me that he will perform a play for me tonight *provided* I take on the role of ’starscream’ and he will be ‘megatron’.  I am thrilled that I will be entertained later this evening by taking part in my son’s first play.  A play in which he scripted by watching the Transformers cartoon many, many times. Since I have absorbed some of the cartoon as well I ask:

“But what about optimus prime and bumble bee?” Thinking he can include his little sister in the play…

to this Christian responds:

“Mommy, I tell you what to play.  Dietrich will be ‘optimus prime’ and Ben will be ‘bumble bee’.  They are coming to my house tonight. We are going to have chicken and chocolate milk and play Transformers.  You can watch or you can be ’starscream’.”

“But what about Mary?”

“She can be ‘bulkhead’.”

It turns out that when we arrived at school, Christian had invited his friends to our house the day before.  Quite the social butterfly.   I’m so glad to be included, but will have to cut short the invites not cleared with parental units.  Hopefully he’ll still want to perform.  Perhaps Nala and Doe can be the understudys for Dietrich and Aeden tonight…

For the past four nights our son, Christian, has been waking up at either 1:30am or 5am and robbing us of at least two (but usually 3) hours of sleep.  Mary, our daughter, who is 20 months old, doesn’t do this.  Why does he have such terrible sleep patterns?  When will this end?  Why can’t someone make a device to keep kids in their beds until 7am that isn’t *quite* a jail cell?  I’d pay cash money for anything that gets me even 15 minutes more sleep per night.

And to think I wanted a third child at one point?  See?  I am sleep-deprived.  ‘Cause that’s nuts.

I was just told a cute story by Judy Abrams (Director of Cyert Center for Early Education) that President Cohen visited the school yesterday and Christian was the only child in Pre1 who would talk to him.  Since he was tall and no one had seen him before all of the other children just looked down or away.  But our Christian walked from across the room right up to him and said:

CC: “Vrrroommm, vvrooommm…”
PC: “What’s that you got there?”
CC: “It’s a boat.”
PC: “That’s nice.  What’s your name?”
CC: “I’m Christian Connell.”
PC: “Well it is lovely to meet you.”
CC: “Peace to you.” While shaking his hand.

So proud of my little future politician…