Career

A Chance With The Cognitive Science Engineering Laboratory & Klein Associates

I was speaking with my professor, Axel Roesler about the day’s lecture on cognition and its influence on design. He studied conigition and interaction design at Ohio State University earning a Ph.D. His time there provided opportunities to work with leading members of design engineering studies such as Gary Klein and Edwin Hutchins. I have read Gary Klein’s book - The Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions - and loved it. It was one of the literary pieces that has put me on track in studying human interactions and cognition with application to design practices. As a result, I am presented with an opportunity to study at the CSEL Institute working with CSE graduates in Ohio State University this summer and potentially an intership with Klein Associates working on research studies. Wow! Alas, Microsoft is conflicting with the summer opportunity because of my six month co-op. My hope now is that they are still looking for researchers next summer when I graduate from the University of Washington with a B.S. in Informatics.

We develop decision-centered solutions for our clients by improving interactions between technology and people, among team members, and between decision makers and their environments. Our goal is to enhance the performance of those confronted with judgments and decisions in situations marked by high stakes, time pressure, ambiguous or conflicting information, and rapidly changing situations.

Background
Enthnography and anthropology are becoming a growing influence on design principles as well as studies in psychology and sociology. The idea of user-center design is such a buzzword that breeds a new form of designers. More over, newer emerging design concepts and frameworks are growing popularity such as ecological interface design and cognitive work analysis. With all these design and engineering techniques, a revolution is admist in the world of design.

Cognitive Engineering combines these interdisciplinary perspectives to advance our understanding of how highly technological worlds make new claims on human ingenuity and to lead to practical advancecs that aument human decision making from the board room tot he operating room

-C/S/E/L Website

Among these new frameworks is my interest in cognition and human interactions. Last year, I read Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell which was an interesting non-fiction on sub-conscious behaviors. He made a reference about intution from Gary Klein’s, The Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. Originally, I wanted to read Klein’s book to help me be a better decision maker. Instead, it helped me learn about human interaction and thought processes. This was incredibly interesting and I wanted to learn more. My elective course work turned to human interactions and congitive work analysis. Last quarter I took a class with Raya Fidel, in a graduate program (LIS 515) on Ecology in Information Systems. Now I am taking a three course series in the Industrial Design program in the Art School studying Interaction Design, Interface Design and ending the series with an Open Project Design course. Now I need to find jobs that want designers of my breed.