// engageID // 04.15.04
the institute of design bi-weekly newsletter

--> id news
--> student activities: recruitID till infinityID
--> alumni spotlight: Tania Schlatter
--> of interest: Lee Bontecou at the MCA
--> internship spotlight: Julie Guinn - Microsoft

Congratulations.

Congratulations to Adriano for winning the I.D.E.A. award!
Congratulations to everyone who helped put recruitID together! You
people are putting us on the maps. Finally, congratulations to everyone
associated with this school for being associated with such a fine
institution.

Even though we ain't got money, I'm still in love with you, honey.

Furthermore, we ain't got much time left before the end of the semester. I
am procrastinating as we speak! Oh sure, we're all going to finish our
projects the week before finals week and sit out on the terrace drinking
frozen beverages, emitting airs of designerness. Piff poo piffy piff.

Wrong. If I'm lucky I'll have a computer that works, my eyes will be
permanently injured and glazed over from staring at the screen, my
projects will be done to 70% completion, and my girlfriend won't leave
me for spending too much time doing grad school stuff! And what was
that about a light at the end of a tunnel? Well, if by light you mean an
obstacle-filled pursuit for an internship that probably won't pay me what
I'm worth, leading up to a summer of hard labor, only to return to the
slimy groggy depths of another semester of graduate studenthood, then
YES! There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Seriously though, you gotta love it. No, really, love it, because otherwise
you're screwed.

Are we lucky to be here? Yes. Are we crazy? Maybe.

-engageID posse

--> id news

All this news and more is available on the ID website at:
http://www.id.iit.edu/news/news.html

"Bloodvalve" Project Wins I.D.E.A. Award

We have received advance word that Adriano Galvao's 2002 demo project,
BloodValve, has received a Silver award in this year's IDSA /
BusinessWeek design competition, probably the most prestigious product
design competition in the US. This is the second IDEA award in three years
the school has won for a health-related project (Brian Stonecipher's
PediaPod project won the Gold award in 2002.)

** NOTE: any formal publication of this news is expressly prohibited until
the June 25 issue of BusinessWeek hits the stands. **
More about the project
More about the competition

The Job Market is Back

RecruitID, the Institute of Design's annual career networking and
placement event, attracted nearly 50 companies this year, leading to 150
interviews and quite a few very excited students. Companies included
ABN/AMRO, Cheskin, eBay, Ecco Design, Fiskars, Ignite Design,
Johnson Controls, Jump Associates, Lotus, MAYA Design, Mayo Clinic,
Microsoft, Pitney Bowes, Sapient, Teague, and VTech. Many of the
people doing the recruiting were ID alumni themselves. For more
background and a downloadable book of resumes, link here.

Spreading the Word: In Print and in Public

Context-Sensitive Design Research at the Chi Conference: Professor
Keiichi Sato and Ken Douros of the Motorola Human Interface Lab will
host a Special Interest Group Session on "Context-Sensitive Design and
User-Centered Interactive Systems" at the CHI2004 Conference in
Vienna on April 29th. All are welcome to attend. Download a two-page
description of the session here.

"Product Design 101": The Institute of Design was featured in the
April/May Dwell Magazine roundup of top worldwide design programs.
Link here.

Human-Centered Innovation in NEXTD Journal: Patrick Whitney spoke
with GK VanPatter of the on-line design journal NextD about the state of
graduate design education today. Read it here.

The Institute of Design, Circa 1938:
The Institute of Design's history and its founder, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy,
were profiled in a "Flashback" piece on the back page of the Chicago
Tribune Magazine on April 4.

Design at Work: Current Projects

Project Infusion: A high-level systems design project exploring
opportunities for a global technology firm like IBM to create products and
services for the developing world market.
Link to the Project Infusion Gallery here.

Alumni News

ID Alumni Salaries Beat the Industry Average By $20K
Preliminary results are in from the 2004 alumni survey. The median
annual salary of surveyed alumni was $77,500 - as compared to the
industry average for graphic and industrial designers which is
approximately $53,000. The average salary for MDes alumni
out of ID more than 7 years was $100,000.

IDSA Midwest Conference: 04/16/2004
Event Time: 12:00 am - 11:00 pm
Event Location: W Chicago City Center, 172 W. Adams

-Vince LaConte

After receiving countless rounds of thank yous from ID faculty, staff and
the student body, the recruitID planning commission met this past
Tuesday to discuss ways to make the event even better, so they could
garner even more accolades.... (greedy bastards).

Most notably in attendance was Rebecca Hoffman, an ID administration
rockstar, who was instrumental in making the event a success. The
planning board discussed ways to make recruitID a year round quest,
making resumes more accessible to companies and perhaps having two
events: one in conjunction with the HITS conference in the Fall (smaller
and more focused on management consultants and those with early
recruiting schedules); and the regular Spring event, which would fall a bit
earlier (early March-ish).

Other issues that were raised were allowing Foundation students more
opportunities to schmooze, schmingle and present during the event,
having the interview sign-up process not suck for those coordinating it,
and having more resume writing workshops and templates for students
ahead of time.

If you've read any of the major journals, you'd know by now that the
event was a great success, and many interviews begat and are begetting
many jobs and summer internships (numbers are still being tallied).
Rumor has it that Jeff Dunn got a call from Sen. Kerry's campaign for a
running mate interview. Good luck Jeff!

-Lucas Daniel

I advise anyone in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's community
on communication, design and publishing through MIT’s Publishing
Services Bureau and design applications, identities and web sites with
fellow ID alum Christine Costello and another partner though our own
(and as yet unnamed) company.

At MIT I meet with anyone - students, administrators, marketing directors,
etc. and help them define and document their communication project
goals. I then help them set schedules, find and work with outside
resources - designers, writers, photographers, printers, programmers –
anyone they might need to complete their project(s). Examples of larger
projects are redesigning the Arts@MIT web site and developing a new
identity, Web site and collateral materials for the department of Brain and
Cognitive Science. I facilitate positioning workshops, which involves
gathering a large team tasked with developing a new identity and getting
them to focus on and articulate the characteristics of their department or
organization. I write requests for proposals and evaluate creative work
throughout projects. I participate in usability studies for Web projects and
make recommendations based on prototypes and designs.

In working with my new partnership I position our work and our company
to potential clients, respond to proposals and requests for work, provide
time and cost estimates, listen to clients' needs and steer them in the
right direction and create designs for identities, interfaces and web sites.

Tell us how your time at ID prepared you for your professional work:

I was a professional designer for many years before I went to ID. Going
to ID taught me how to be a designer, and not just a graphic designer.
Meaning, at ID I learned methods and skills for designing anything. The
constant requirement to present myself and my work was valuable, as
was the lesson that the process is relevant and important and can
increase the likelihood for meaningful results.

What advice do you have to offer ID students?

Do as much as you can at ID. I wish I could have taken both the
Communication Workshops and the Strategic Design Planning
Workshop. All the classes I took at ID are relevant to my professional
design work. Working hard at ID and working with other designers is
essential preparation for professional design life. Look for work in the
areas that interest you - not just that fit the ID model.

-Eric Holubow

--> of interest

Lee Bontecou Retrospective at the MCA

If you're looking for a reason to get outside and enjoy the great weather, I
suggest you take a walk from ID to the MCA, then get back indoors to
look at the Lee Bontecou Retrospective.

I recommend starting at the end of the exhibit. Lee's work in the last
couple of decades is little known and has never been exhibited publicly.
She was an acclaimed artist in the 60s and 70s for her large and eerie
metal and fabric sculptures. Taking a backwards tour through her artistic
vision is an interesting perspective in the retrospective. The recent work
is amazingly detailed and displays a great breadth to her approach. It's a
fun exploration of artistic evolution.

The exhibit runs until May 30 and is free every Tuesday from 5-8pm. You
can top off the evening with a Ghiradelli's chocolate milkshake nearby.
Damn, they have some good chocolate.

http://www.mcachicago.org/

-Lucas Daniel

Tell me about yourself:

Well, I’m 27, from Philadelphia, and have a human factors degree from
Tufts University. What else, I spent a year with Americorps VISTA in
California, working on housing and homeless Issues, then started doing
usability and user research stuff out there. I decided to come to ID
because I was disillusioned with usability testing. I wanted to stay in the
user field, but get into a broader range of products and methods.

Tell me about your internship search last year:

Well, I didn’t start last year until after spring break, but I mainly looked at
companies in Chicago and Philly, since those were the places I wanted
to be for the summer. I looked at websites like coroflot, idsa website, the
usability association, etc, and made a list of companies that I wanted to
work for, then I called and asked if there were internship positions, and
sent cover letters and resumes to a bunch of them. I looked at
companies that had research departments, especially product design
consultancies. I applied to Insight, Conifer, etc.

But you ended up at Microsoft?

Well, its funny, I hadn’t even looked at Microsoft, since they were out in
Seattle, so this position sort of landed in my lap. Well, it didn’t land in my
lap, but basically what happened was that this guy from Microsoft came
to RecruitID, and basically said he would interview anyone who wanted
to talk to him.

But he specifically asked to speak to you, I remember.

Right, well, it was probably because I had worked at Intel and Propel (a
software company), so I had experience at those sorts of high-tech
companies. Anyways, he didn’t have a specific position in mind, but we
had a good conversation, and in May he emailed me and asked if I was
still available because a position had opened up. I said “sure!” and then
he set up a day of interviewing for me in Seattle, I met with maybe 5
people throughout the day. Things went pretty well, so I got a position as
a user-research intern, working on this project designing socializing
software for teens.

What did you think of Microsoft?

Well, I thought I wasn’t going to like them, because I thought they’d be like my previous experiences with hi-tech companies, where they don’t take user research seriously, and there is a lot of red tape, and boring engineers, so you just end up rubber stamping stuff, kind of generally disheartening. But the group I was working with was actually really cool, they were in downtown, not on the main campus, and were a bunch of young hipsters (maybe because they were designing for teens?) Also, the product was specifically for hipsterteens (early trend adopters, really social, popular, into brand names, etc). Anyways, I really liked the people, the space was really awesome….all the desks were in a big open area, glass wall looking over the bay, everyone had toys all over the place, kind of like the product room, except you were looking over the Bay. The people were young, energetic, creative, and really excited about the work.

Julie's Boss, at Microsoft.

Sounds amazing! What did you do there?

Well, I did three things. First, they’d just finished doing a bunch of
interviews, so I compiled a report about it with some preliminary
recommendations. Second, I ran a participatory design session with 5
teenagers. They designed stuff and made models out of foam….our topic
was ”the future of social gear”. You know, looking at how they keep in
touch with people, what new technology teens were looking for, stuff like
that. Last, Microsoft wanted to release an instrumented version of a
software product to collect user data, so I wrote a research spec about
how many subjects to recruit, and worked with the developer to set up
the research project

In retrospect, what is your overall impression of Microsoft? What did you
learn from the internship?

Well, it was really interesting to work at a company with such a strong
culture. Its like planet Microsoft when you get there. People hang out a
lot outside of work—everybody’s friends. You are basically immersed in
the culture. In terms of skills, I had never done a participatory design
session before, so I had to talk to different people about how to do that
kind of thing, and read up on it and stuff.

Would you want to work for Microsoft again? You are this summer, aren’t
you? How did that come about?

Well, I mean, I don’t want to sound like I was brainwashed, but I had an
awesome summer out there. The intern program is just amazing… they
treat you just like an employee, give you very little oversight, an
enormous amount of responsibility and budget, so its really exciting.
They also let you pick your own projects, and you feel like you are almost
not an intern. You feel like you’re an employee for the summer.

So how did you get this internship at Microsoft this summer?

Well, the group I worked with last summer sort of worked with another
Microsoft group that needed an intern for the summer, so they asked me
if I was interested in going back. Right now I don’t’ know much about the
work I’ll be doing, just that there are several options to choose from, sort
of like a “lets figure it out when you get here thing.” I know one of the
projects is digital photography and sharing images and stuff.

What advice would you give to ID students looking for summer
internships?

Well, I mean, its interesting because none of the work I did actually led to this specific internship, but I think its important to remember that even if a company isn’t looking for interns, it doesn’t hurt to talk to them and interview with them. I interviewed with a whole bunch of companies that didn’t end up hiring me, but I don’t think its wasted, because they could always call you back later. I think its just so hard to find a good person, that if you make a good impression, then they’ll call you if they find a position for you in the future, so don’t cross them off the list just because they say that they don’t want someone at the moment.

ID representin', Summer 2003

Any last remarks?

If you moved the round table out of the product room into the round room,
come talk to me because you misplaced my keycard, and you owe me
$35.

-Jenny Fan

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HTML Authors: Geoff Colbath, Lucas Daniel

Contributors: Sara Cantor, Jenny Fan, Philip LaFargue II, Christine Choi,
Taylor Lies, Hillary Schuster, Lucas Daniel, Eric Holubow, Vince LaConte

to send newsletter submissions: newsletter@id.iit.edu