ANIMATED CHAOS
A metal bird makes one last turn
as the final rays of a setting star
glance over its wings
disappearing into the soft milkiness
as light as a lovers’ first kiss
leaving behind a glowing belt of pink.
The night has arrived.
And so have I.
I had one of the best and most relaxing hackathon experiences yesterday at EIT Alumni Startup Days X Women@EIT.
Together with the amazing Mohit Ahuja and Leire Carreras Orobengoa we tackled the case of online shopping and badly fitting clothes provided by the awesome sustainability-oriented company Afound.
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Screens surround us everywhere. There is the TV screen, the computer monitor, the annoying moving advertisement that takes up the whole wall of the building right next to the bus stop, and the part that we poke daily on our smartphones.
But what is a tactile screen?
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When I started my Master’s, I basically saw it as a way to live abroad for a while, experience new cultures, and meet new people. It has been all that and much more!
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I had the opportunity to translate a poem for one of my projects (FireFlies). To be fair, we formulated the project in a way that created this opportunity. I adore writing little rhymes and poems myself and wished to try translating the work of others.
The only obstacle was that the original poem was in Old Dutch and I was very far from being proficient in Dutch. In fact, I only knew a couple of elementary words, such as please and thank you and how to ask for a marshmallow.
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When Kasper invited me over to help with building stage decor and said that my task would be playing around with a jigsaw, I had pictured sitting on a clean floor, putting together nice puzzle pieces. You can only imagine my surprise when I was handed a humongous wooden board and an actual power tool. Plus, when we ended, the floor was far from clean.
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The domain of Human Computer Interaction is riddled with dilemmas affecting both users and designers. Let some of these problems be presented as follows.
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People behave in different ways when being recorded.
Some prefer sitting down. Others get a more powerful voice when standing up, supported only by their own two feet.
Those who sit may start fidgeting and swivelling and, thus, ruin the recording by introducing chair noises.
Those who stand may start shifting their weight from one foot to another distancing themselves from the microphone occasionally. Sometimes, they have squeaky shoes.
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In the middle of a vast field of greenery grew a bedazzling lone Wildflower. She was born deep in the ground.
“I am so lonely. The grass is so tall, and I am so small. I wish someone noticed me… I wish I had someone to talk to…”
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Yesterday, somebody asked me what a hermit crab is. I told them to look it up.
Today, in a group chat full of IT people, I asked what I should know if I wanted to create my own web page. They told me to look it up.
In both of these scenarios, those who had been asked knew the answer but refused to share it. Instead, the enquirer was directed to the vast search space of the Internet. On their own. With no support.
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