Categories: graduate school, learning

The IU (Indiana University) Human Computer Interaction Design and Computer Science graduate students visited Silicon Valley to get a glimpse of the corporate life of many well-known high-tech companies. For many of them it was their first trip to California and it was a ton of fun showing them where I’m from.

In two days, we met with seven companies and had lunch and dinner with IU alums in the Human Computer Interaction Design program. It was great getting to know people in the industry and their stories about their transitions from Indiana to the Bay Area. The first day most of us were on caffeine highs, we started early at 8:00am and didn’t get home until 10:00pm.

Yahoo!
The campus is enormous. We toured of the gym, basketball & volleyball courts, and our tour guide whizzed us in and out of various buildings. To the point where I lost track where we were. As a coffee enthusiast, I do recall being in coffee heaven. The campus practically had full-coffee stations everywhere with a good range of menu options.

The highlight was interacting with former Indiana University alumni and the Yahoo! UED (User Experience Design) panel about company culture, their backgrounds, and their time at Yahoo!. The UED panel consisted of:

• Joy Mountford, Vice-President of UED CCF
• Chris Moeller, Director of International UED
• Micah Laaker, Director, User Experience, Applications Platform

Google
Google clearly demonstrates a company that is practicing green global/sustainability. 30% of the power used on the main campus is powered by solar energy, they offer company bikes for their employees, and an organic garden is located at the center of the Googleplex.

Jenny Rahn and her husband Nathan, a User-Experience Researcher and a former IU alum, had lunch with the group and answered our questions about Google’s usability process, current projects, and “Google’s 20 percent time“.

Autodesk
Fortunately, we didn’t need to travel from Mountain View to San Rafael in order to meet with Autodesk’s Geospatial Product Design Group. Its about an hour drive North without Bay Area traffic and it was the peak of rush hour. We conveniently met them in Mountain View, just 10 minutes from Google.

After Christian Beck, gave his perspective on working at Autodesk and their design process I was amazed to see how their (and Ebay’s) design approach to a problem closely resembles what we’ve practiced in our first semester. To me it validates that our academic curriculum is retrofitted well around the industry.

The day ended with an Indian buffet with IU alums. After eight pieces of naan, two full plates of Northern Indian cuisine, and a long day of information sessions, I was exhausted.