Human Computer Interaction
Karen graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 1985. Twenty years later she took her son, Peter back to CMU for a visit and she was surprised that Peter expressed his desired to attend CMU. She told me: “After meeting with few students he said to me that he wanted to study here. Of course, I was glad but I wanted him to visit several other universities before making decision but he insisted: “Mom, if you went here, I want to go here too”.
Today, Peter is a system architect for Facebook. He told me:” There are a lot of hard works but I enjoy every minute of it. I am working on a major project to make things easier to users to share information and have our system perform better. I primarily work on the mobile team, helping to organize information and making it accessible and useful. Facebook is a young company, there are many things to do, many new ideas, and a lot of young people like me who want to make technology easy to use for everybody.”
He also said that he is surrounded by many CMU graduates at the company: “I know many of them, since we met each others in classes at CMU. So I feel working for Facebook is no different from doing project at CMU. We work together, play together, eat together and many more … it is like a family here.”
Peter’s mother, Karen told me that she was very happy to have her son attended her old school. She knew CMU would allow him to continue exploring his own interests. She said: “He wanted to learn more about computers and design, as well as have a broad view of the industry. CMU definitely had that close relationship with the industry. During the time when he was there, he met so many people from the industry and they told him what they need. He had strong technical foundation in the first two years then he stepped outside of programming and reaches other different disciplines such as System Architecture and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and he loved it. One day he came home and told me that he has found his passion. He said: “HCI is about solving problems for people; it is about human-centered design for all things to do with technology. It was a great area for me.”
Human Computer Interaction is a field focusing on topics related to computer technology in support of human activity and society. Although it is a computer science discipline but it also interacts with other fields such as social science, humanities, business, design and art. The idea for a Human-Computer Interaction can be traced back to 1967, with three CMU professors and Nobel Laureates Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and Alan J. Perlis. They believed that the computer science should include the study of phenomena surrounding computers, not just the theory and design of computation devices themselves. HCI area focuses on how people work, play, and communicate within groups, organizations, and social structures. It includes the design, creation, and evaluation of technologies and tools to support human and social activities.
Pete explained: “That is what Facebook is looking for. Today there are only few schools in the world teaching HCI. Why go somewhere when the founders of HCI were from CMU. They received the Nobel Prize for their works here and this is the place where top people all over the world came and conduct research.”
He smiled and said: “During my Capstone project, I received a phone call from a person who said that he has read my notes on the project and he wanted to ask me few questions. We talked for about fifteen minutes about computer and social interaction and he said that he liked my idea and asked whether I would like to work for him. Because I was so excited and very passion about the topic I forgot to ask his name. He said: “I am Marc Zuckerberg from Facebook, please come to see me.” Of course I did and I had a job offer five months before I graduated.”
He credits his success to his CMU experience. He said: “The school really allows people interested in doing a lot of things to succeed. CMU’s trainings provide me with a lot of skills so I could go out and work on a variety of things that others may not.”
Karen told me that she never dream that her son is now a multi-millionaire after only three years at Facebook. She said: “They gave him a number of stock options but he did not pay much attention until the company filed for initial public offering (IPO). He called me and wanted to buy me and my husband a new car because our car is over ten years old. I told him that he must save money. He said that he had half million shares of stock and he could sell a few to buy me a car. My husband checked the market prices and we were shock that our son already own several million dollars. Both of us have been working for over 25 years, but we did not have much. I think technology is something amazing that our generation could not even realize.
I asked Peter to give my students some advices. He said: “Technology is only a first step, it is more important to interact with people when working in technology. Do not work in isolation; do not stay in front of computer all days. We are living in a connecting world where everything is connected. Students should join groups of people who share the same passion, and doing something exciting. They should create new things, new ideas, using all the tools that they can get. Technology is a wonderful thing but it needs more people to use it to make the world a better place.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
