MIT Climate CoLab
Center for Digital Technology and Management (TUM/LMU Munich)
Psychology, Communication Science, Photography
★★★★☆ Fabrication & Craft
★★★☆☆ Design
★☆☆☆☆ Programming
★★★★☆ Psychology of HCI/Human Factors
★★★★☆ Design Thinking
For non-material “things”, I’ve made time for a 4 month backpacking trip across North America – and later 2 more for parts of South America.
Other than that, I am a craftsy, girly DIY-person and life hacker who can solve almost any problem with a hot glue gun, soldiering iron or duct tape. I love floral designs but hate glitter. Nevertheless, the Arduino sketch I recently made within a 2-day course is a shiny R2-D2 robot made from a colander, glitter tape, and yes, hot glue. I also made my own desk from wood boards to fit the exact measurements I wanted and hacked some of my other furniture (back in Germany). I love the set of concert photography that I have gathered over the years, blogging and shooting concerts with my Canon 5D. I’m also really proud of a gift wrap that let me trick my mom that her birthday gift was an old photography book that was supposedly a classic (definitely not) while a kindle reader was hidden inside.
A computer? I have used an abacus and printed media, wood cutting machines and watercolor paint, bikes and surfboards, and logic puzzles from metal, and while some may require more motoric skills or mental strength than others, you always know that input equals output, or at least given circumstances will lead to a certain result. And even though technology and digital media are ever becoming “more intuitive” and “bigger than better”, we are sometimes surprised by the outcome of our interaction with those devices – and even more so are people who are not trained to use them or do not experience pleasure from trying to figure out what buttons they have to press. And even though I love and value my computer more than most of my other material belongings, sometimes I want to throw it out the window (I hope I won’t because I just spent tons of $$$ on it.)
I want to finally apply in practice insights from cognitive psychology and ergonomics in HCI, which has often gone short in classes with a short HCI section. So far our capabilities are applied either in the digital or analog world, but these worlds barely ever touch on one another. This class seems like an approach to change this. It looks like a lot of hard work, but also great learnings. I want to work in an interdisciplinary team, learn from my classmates, put all my heart in this and design (paper) prototypes, deny sleep deprivation and deliver an awesome demo.
With cognitive psychology, human factors and ergonomics – the scientific explanation behind HCI –, Design Thinking, photography and videography as well as my experience in journalism and storytelling (makes great demo videos).