Link to my website: https://maxmgirard.wixsite.com/home

Link to our reviewer response table https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HGQbf5sCXETxoGjCpZXnDe8yd31MtZy2lor8-W8oODY/edit?usp=sharing

Our ultimate goal is to submit our paper to CHI. Patrick was telling us about the process and how great it is to be published so I am excited at the opportunity of having our paper published. Especially after listening to our interviews, I think that our work has the potential to support a lot of grievers.

On Monday we conducted our pilot interviews with Anna. It was very useful for me to listen to Anna run the pilot because it helped us to realize that some of our questions needed to be reworded for clarity. In our second pilot we used my phone on speaker and the quality was not very good so we know that using my phone is not a good idea. We are recording the interviews and transcribing them so we definitely need to have clear recordings. I am worried that the actual interviews will be too much for me. We are interviewing people who are grieving and I know that if I hear someone crying I will start crying as well.

We were going to conduct our first interview over the phone on Tuesday. Unfortunately the phone number we were provided with was not in service so we ended up having a meeting instead. The meeting was very useful because it gave Meg and I needed some more direction on where we should go. The main focus we have now is prototyping and storyboarding the technology we would like to create for grievers to use. Anna has done a few interviews later at night so Meg and I were not able to be there, but on Thursday we were able to sit in on one interview. It was awesome to listen to the woman’s story and to see how Anna phrased questions and spoke to the participant. I am worried about not knowing how to respond to what people may say on the phone so it is helpful to listen to Anna.

So far Meg and I have been storyboarding separately to get our own ideas on paper. We had a meeting with Anna and we shared our ideas with each other. Anna liked our storyboards which was awesome. Where I was more detailed Meg was more focused on functionality so when we go to work together I think we will be able to use both our strengths to create a really great prototype.

Overall, meetings have been going well. Anna has given Meg and me more freedom to guide ourselves. Of course she is always willing to talk with us but it is nice to have the responsibility to guide ourselves.

In regard to our timeline we are on track. We wanted to start storyboarding and interviewing people and we were able to get rough ideas for our final product. It is exciting to see our ideas coming to life. Hearing people’s stories has been very inspirational.

Gabi and Sergio needed people to participate in their mock focus group and Meagan and I decided to participate. Julia and Ciabhan also participated. It was funny because we were pretending to be the actual people that they will be interviewing in real life. The personalities of our characters fit us so well it was almost weird. Meagan and I were the people who really only gave ideas or contributed to the discussion when asked and Julia and Ciabhan had larger personalities.

Fun this this week:

A few weeks ago I learned that my roommate/research partner Meg had never seen The Princess Diaries. I feel that this is a classic for our generation. Sunday night we watched The Princess Diaries and Monday night we watched The Princess Diaries 2. They are such good movies- highly recommend.

Wednesday night after work we had a girls night. All of the Pro-Health-SROC girls went to dinner at Red Robin. We played hangman while we waited for our meals and it was fun to play a game as a big group. Then had our nails done at the mall. we bummed around the mall a bit and I ended up bonding with the two employees at Francesca’s because one of them mentioned cats and I showed them a picture of Petey and then one of the girls showed me a picture of her cat.  We went to Baked and got cookies as well. They were amazing cookies. It was really fun to hang out with everyone outside the office. We also don’t get to see EJ often since she is in SROC so hanging out with her was fun.

Petey is doing very well. He is healthy and three weeks now.