The lab that makes the "Future" video

So I’ve mostly been writing about my weekend excursions in Berlin so far and I have one in the back burner for my Paris visit. But I think it might be more interesting to talk about I’ve learned from HPI over the last few weeks.

So it’s been about 4 weeks since I’ve started! Oh wow… So far it’s been great working with this wacky group. Coming here was a great decision. This is my first foray into HCI research and it’s been both refreshing and utterly frustrating at times. The group’s agenda is to project what the next thing in 10-20 years will be. It’s almost as if they are building the next “What the future will be” concept video that Microsoft loves to make. Patrick Baudisch is relentless on his students when it comes to not settling any less than the super future. He seems to veer towards that once he understands a new concept and has demonstrated it to the world, it is time to throw it away and work on something else. I'm not sure if I fully agree with this way of working, but it does seem to force the lab to always continue to discover instead of polishing an old idea just to have another paper for the next conference. There was actually a series of lecture/invited talk yesterday talking about what is worth publishing and what is a good research topic. Highly thought provoking, but I will save that for the next post.

Something that also is completely new to me is their process of brainstorming. Almost every other day there would be a brainstorming session. After a quick overview on the topic for the session, everyone would have a stack of 3x5 index cards and 5-10 minutes to draw and fantasize about the topic. Everyone then presents their ideas and group them in a way that somehow weaves a complete story.

 I found it really difficult to force myself to think of ideas that were none obvious and actually found this process to be kind of annoying. I tend to enjoy a more organic process of discovering ideas, either through random hall way chatting or simply when I’m sitting around and have an interesting revelation. Nonetheless, I have gained some interesting insights through forcing myself to think outside the norm. It is particularly beneficial for finding a different research topic however. Through this engagement, sometimes you spark conversations outside the meeting or,and find a solution to a problem that’s been bugging you. Often times the conversation tend towards a philosophical nature, which is quite interesting. There is definitely merit to this method and I plan to incorporate this. Probably more sparingly though.

That being said, after 4 weeks, I have yet to completely converge on a project because of the high expectation for a project that is “worth doing.” It does seem like I have more or less decided on a project to do with the other intern from Austria, Alexandra Ion. We shall see how it goes.