James Dyson Award

Published on May 23, 2012 in Competitions, Current Students and Scholarships. 0 Comments

The James Dyson award is run by the James Dyson Foundation – the charitable arm of Dyson, which supports engineering education.  It’s the eighth year of the award, with James Dyson at the helm, and the Foundation is seeking entries.

The competition is for college-age students, many actually submit their final design projects.  There is a $16,000 cash prize for the winner, and the Foundation also gives $16,000 to the student’s university department.

Previous winners have tackled issues from energy, to transportation, to affordable prosthetic limbs and each found a unique way to answer a problem, big or small.

The submission process is quick and easy. Entrants submit footage, images and sketches to www.jamesdysonaward.org along with a brief synopsis detailing their design process and inspiration. The more creative the better. Their ideas will be evaluated by Dyson engineers, a panel of international design experts and ultimately James Dyson.  The winner will be announced November 8, 2012.

Entries close August 2 and the winner will be announced in November.  More on the award below and here: www.jamesdysonaward.org. Continue reading ‘James Dyson Award’

Tableau Software Info Session, 5/23

Published on May 21, 2012 in Current Students and Employment. 0 Comments

Join Tableau Software for an Information Session on the UW Seattle campus, May 23rd from 5:30-7:30 PM at The Career Center, 134 Mary Gates Hall.

Tableau’s culture is casual yet high energy. We value work/life balance, efficiency, simplicity, freakishly friendly customer service, and making a difference in the world.  This is your opportunity to help us build one of the most important companies in the software industry.

Our award winning products make it easy for people to transform data into smart visual analytics using a drag & drop interface. People who enjoy working with fellow superstar engineers on a cutting edge product will feel at home here.  Continue reading ‘Tableau Software Info Session, 5/23′

World Lab Summer Institute

Published on May 18, 2012 in Current Students, International, Masters, PhD and Undergrads. 0 Comments

There are many urgent problems facing the planet: a degrading environment, a healthcare system in crisis, and educational systems that are inadequately training innovative thinkers to solve the problems of tomorrow. A balanced approach is required to solve these problems: a balance between design and technology, a balance between human-centered and technology-centered approaches, and a balance between different world cultures and ways of thinking. The World Lab is a new research and educational institution that is ideally suited to tackle these grand challenges. The World Lab is sited jointly between two of the world’s leading computing and human-centered design institutions, the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The World Lab Summer Institute at the University of Washington brings together students from technology, design, social science and business backgrounds, and challenges them to create prototypes for products and services that solve pressing social problems.

Institute Calendar: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/landay/teaching/world%20lab%20summer/

If interested, send a note to James Landay describing your background and your interest. This Institute is open to undergraduate and graduate students.

Continue reading ‘World Lab Summer Institute’

UX Designer Position at CollaborativeHealth

Published on April 30, 2012 in Current Students and Employment. 0 Comments

CollaborativeHealth is looking to add a talented user experience designer to their team: someone who is bright, insightful, and appreciates the value of gamification (though need not be a gamification expert).

CollaborativeHealth is innovative, transdiscipline company with a simple mission: build an online/mobile wellness service that makes good health easier. After 3 years of intense research and development, they’ve designed the initial wellness service, RapidHealth, which leverages an breakthrough combination of Hollywood quality entertainment (like this video), advanced behavioral science, social interaction/support, and gamification.

For more information, visit CollaborativeHealth’s website.

The Online Revolution: High-Quality Education for Everyone (5/8)

Published on April 26, 2012 in Community and Events. 0 Comments

Title: The Online Revolution: High-Quality Education for Everyone
Speaker: Daphne Koller (Stanford University)
When: Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 3:30pm
Where: Electrical Engineering Building (EEB) Room 105

Abstract

Last year, Stanford University offered three online courses, which anyone in the world could enroll in and take for free. Students were expected to submit homework, meet deadlines, and were awarded a “Statement of Accomplishment” only if they met our high grading bar.

Together, these three courses had enrollments of around 350,000 students, making this one of the largest experiments in online education ever performed. In the past few months, we have transitioned this effort into a new venture, Coursera, a social entrepreneurship company that partners with top universities to provide high-quality content to everyone around the world for free. In this talk, I’ll report on this new experiment in education, and why we believe this model can provide both an improved classroom experience for our on-campus students, via a flipped classroom model, as well as a meaningful learning experience for the millions of students around the world who would otherwise never have access to education of this quality. I’ll describe the pedagogical foundations for this type of teaching, and the key technological ideas that support them, including easy-to-create video chunks, a scalable online Q&A forum where students can get their questions answered quickly, sophisticated autograded homework, and a carefully designed peer grading pipeline that supports the at-scale grading of more open-ended homework, such as essay questions, derivations, or business plans. Continue reading ‘The Online Revolution: High-Quality Education for Everyone (5/8)’

Mobile UXCamp Seattle (5/19)

Published on April 26, 2012 in Community, Current Students and Events. 0 Comments

MobileUXCamp Seattle aims to bring together professionals, academics and enthusiasts to share the current state and future direction of mobility and mobile technologies.

MobileUXCamp Seattle is an unconference so it’s all about you! Anyone can present a session. The timetable is determined collaboratively at the beginning of the day. Topics may include mobile user experience, mobile apps development, social mobility, mobile storytelling, mobile strategy and integration with other platforms, gaming, entrepreneurship just to name a few.

MobileUXCamp Seattle will be hosted at the University of Washington’s beautiful and spacious Mary Gates Hall. We have six rooms and five time slots – that makes for 30 sessions of mobile goodness. So get ready to BYOT (bring your own topic)!

Date: May 19, 2012
Price: $10 for students
URL: https://mobileuxcampseattle.eventbrite.com/?nomo=1

Lecture by Dr. Hans van der Meij on Designing Procedures that Work (4/25)

Published on April 18, 2012 in Community and Events. 0 Comments

Dr. Hans van der Meij, University of TwentePlease join the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) on Wednesday, April 25, for a guest lecture by Dr. Hans van der Meij from the University of Twente.

Title: Designing Procedures that Work
Speaker: Dr. Hans van der Meij, University of Twente
Date & Time: 4:30 PM, Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Location: Allen Auditorium, Allen Library, UW Seattle campus Continue reading ‘Lecture by Dr. Hans van der Meij on Designing Procedures that Work (4/25)’

First-Ever Startup Weekend GOV (4/27)

Published on April 17, 2012 in Community, Current Students and Events. 0 Comments

Startup Weekedn GOV logoThe first-ever Startup Weekend GOV is taking place at Seattle City Hall on April 27-29th. Participants gather Friday evening to pitch ideas for Web and mobile apps that integrate open government data sets (http://data.seattle.gov, http://data.wa.gov and http://datakc.org), improve public safety and/or generally improve the lives of Washington residents. One Bus Away is a great example of such an application. Everyone breaks into teams and designers, programmers, and non-technical teammates work at City Hall throughout the weekend. On Sunday evening, every team demos their apps and a panel of judges provides feedback. Seattle Channel will be filming the event and government officials like WA CIO Bharat Shyam and Mayor Mike McGinn, in addition to the city IT department, will be on hand to answer questions and interact with teams.

Tickets are available at http://seattlegov.startupweekend.org. There is special student pricing. The ticket includes food, snacks, and drinks throughout the weekend in addition to event swag and unlimited coffee. Continue reading ‘First-Ever Startup Weekend GOV (4/27)’

Alumni Portfolio Info Session

Published on April 12, 2012 in Alumni, Career Resources, Current Students and Events. 0 Comments

Two HCDE alumni, Elly Searle and Chad Driesbach, will be hosting an information session on how to create and present professional portfolios on Thursday, April 19, at 6 PM, in the Allen Auditorium. This event is open to all current and past students of HCDE (or TC).

If you would like to attend this event, please RSVP here: https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/gbruno/164282

Elly Searle is a graduate of the MS in HCDE and is a passionate user advocate who is brimming with pure win. She punches mediocrity in the mouth by designing to help users do what they want to do. She never writes error messages without first forcing the PM to show her the entire flow, and like the honey-badger, she is fearless and crazy.

Chad Driesbach is a graduate of both the undergraduate and the Master’s programs of HCDE. He took classes both in and outside of the department, including interaction design and visual design classes. Currently, he is an Axure ninja and UX guru for a boutique technology firm. One of his most notable accomplishment is creating an Axure version of Angry Birds. He has lots of thoughts on how to pick classes based on portfolio-quality projects, and how to adjust your portfolio to showcase what the hiring company wants to know about you.

DIY 3D Printing Club

Published on April 10, 2012 in Current Students. 0 Comments

A group of students have formed a DIY 3D Printing club and are hoping to get HCDE students involved! See below.

ME, CSE, EE, HCDE, Industrial Design Students and others who are interested,

We are starting an informal student club focused on DIY 3-D printers. (If you aren’t sure what that is, see links below.) If you don’t have a 3-D printer, this would be the club that helps you build your own. As a group we may even be able to get price breaks on printer parts.  We are looking into the possibility of building a number of printers as a group that can be shared by all club members.  If you have already built or are building a printer, the club will be a good place to troubleshoot and share ideas. We will also schedule “how to” workshops concerning both hardware and software to help you get up and running with the necessary skills.

Our first meeting will be on Thursday April 12 at 4:30 in MEB 103. Continue reading ‘DIY 3D Printing Club’