Q1MatthewClark

Document Q1MatthewClark

1. Your Name

Matt Clark

2. Your field of study?

Computer Science

3. In which semester of study are you?

Final semester of an MS degree

4. Why are you interested in taking this course?

I think the well known quote by Bjarne Stoustrup sums up my feelings on human computer interaction, "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone."

5. What courses / work activities / background knowledge do you have which might be relevant to this course?

I have worked for several years doing technical support for a local ISP, so I am familiar with people's struggles with technologies. I also see the tendency for technologically savvy people to discount the experiences of the struggling users as user error.

6. Indicate your own digital literacy / fluency:
6.1. Describe your programming experience (languages, projects)

So long as the systems are from ten years ago, I am fluent. I don't have a myspace or facebook page, I don't twitter, have a blog, or a tumblr. I have programmed in most languages. My most successful project was a program that uses Python to parse sendmail logs and winds up exporting the data to MS-Excel for graphing.

6.2. What applications are you familiar with (e.g. Photoshop, Canvas, Dreamweaver,...)?

In terms of applications with a learning curve, I would say Photoshop, the GIMP (GNU photo editing), EMACS, ChessBase (chess database software), and Blitzen (internet chess interface).

7 Give a brief description of the most important book / article which you have read with respect to the topic of the course.

The Mythical Man-Month - tells about software engineering disasters, and hopefully how to avoid them.

8. What do you hope and expect to learn from this course?

I think collaborative systems are the only way for organizations to manage documentation, so I am interested in learning about advanced wikis, and other systems.