Websites, machine learning, elevator pitches, and prototyping…

Hi All,

So we are back again and today I learned about and will be addressing professional website making, machine learning, elevator pitches, prototyping, and a restaurant you should check out if you are ever in Bloomington!

Professional Websites:

Our guest lecturer for today Anna didn’t go super in depth about any of this but she did make two great suggestions for websites you should check out if you would like to build a professional website. If you are a bit more comfortable with frontend and backend web development she suggested to check out wordpress and if you are not so savvy with these quite yet, no worries you should check out wix.

Lastly, she also gave us some good general tips and tricks in regards to creating your website that I thought were useful:

  • Use web safe fonts
  • Avoid clashing/crazy colors
  • Consider the size of your images and graphics before uploading
  • Design for responsiveness (still true?)
  • Perfect the elevator pitch, in website form!
  • Make your contact info accessible.
  • Link to your professional social networking sites (LinkedIn, Google+,
  • Twitter, etc.)
  • Consider having separate sites/blogs for personal and professional content.

Machine Learning:

Today another one of our guest lecturers was Dr. Sriraam Natarajan the resident Machine Learning expert in the Informatics department. Dr. Natarajan did not allow us to have our laptops open while listening to his lecture, so I did not obtain to many notes on his lecture. Yet, I do have to say this is a very interesting field and if you have any curiosity about it at all you should defintely pursue it!

Elevator Pitches:

An elevator pitch is an interesting 20-30 sec snippet that addressees a persons research interests and experience.

So, what goes on in an elevator pitch? Here are a few ideas:

    • Introduce yourself and where you are from
    • What is your broader research area?
    • What is the problem?
    • Why is it important?
    • How will you address it?
    • End with an interesting question or intriguing contribution

There you go, now why don’t you try it out!!!

Prototyping:

One of our last guest lecture’s of the day was Fernando and he introduced to us prototyping.

Here are some of my notes from the lecture:

-What is prototyping?

  • Represents and materializes design concepts
  • A way of making progress in the design process
  • Answers questions and supports designers
  • Gives you a reflection

-The Triforce of prototypes:

  • Look and feel –> sensory feedback
  • Role? –> How is it useful?
  • Implementation –> Software coding, Arduino, etc.

-3 main types of Prototyping:

-Paper Prototyping:

  • Paper, sticky notes, etc.
  • Script is needed!
  • Advantages: quick, cheap, very easy to iterate
  • Disadvantages: co-located interaction.

-Digital Prototyping:

  • Sketch, Adobe Xd, InVision (interaction)
  • Advantages: looks and feels like the real thing and some interactivity.
  • Disadvantages: Not so cheap and takes longer.

-Video Prototyping:

  • Any video software/device.
  • A storyboard is needed!
  • Advantages: looks and feels like the real thing & shows full interaction.
  • Disadvantages: Not so cheap, takes longer to create and iterate, and no direct user interaction.

ALERT ALERT Great Restaurant on the Loose!!!

During our lunch break another fellow REU student and I checked out a new restaurant called FARM. I highly recommend it if you like farm to table food and a comfy yet quirky place to dine! The atmosphere was fun and the food was yummy! Check it out if you are ever in Bloomington!