Adventures in HCI

If you know me, you know I love a good challenge and the recent HCI assignment was just that. The Assignment: create a chat bot for Slack that attempts a task that requires a human connection. Choosing the task was probably the easiest part. Professor Li provided some examples, such as teaching the user Bayes rule, or counseling someone that is struggling emotionally, but one example really caught my eye: debate a contentious topic. What sounds more fun than making a bot that can argue with its users? Whatever you answered, it's probably true, but that's debatable (get it?...cuz we're making a debate bot, haha). Bad jokes aside, making a debate bot is super relevant and the contentious topics are plentiful, all thanks to today's divisive political climate. From abortion's pro-life/pro-choice debate to debates about trans* bathroom use, there is a plethora of options for us to choose from. One that has been reignited recently with his debut as a Nike sponsor...

Oxy's wonderful Computer Science and Cognitive Science Professor, Justin Li, presented his students with the task of redesigning the website of an organization (on- or off-campus) as a mobile app. I am one of those students, and, let me tell you, this was one of the most engaged I have ever been in a project. Let me tell you how I did it. As soon as we got the assignment, I immediately thought about the poorly designed website that the Occidental College Dance Productions Club uses as its main platform. The main points of tension for me was their application of drop-down menus, what they decided to put in them, and what content was on the page. Sometimes it made sense, and other times, not so much. One of the aspects I had already pushed them to change was to put the "Dance Drop Form" under their existing "Contact Us" tab rather than the "Get Involved" tab. "Get Involved" doesn't necessarily indicate "Drop Dance" or "I...