Day Sayven

Moved cubicles today!

I'm finally sitting in the design team aisle. I felt kind of like an outcast before. I always had engineer type people walking by thinking, who the hail is this guy? Now, when I have a question or want to bounce an idea off someone, they're right across from me.


James' cubicle directly across from me.


Brooks' cubicle to the left of James. Brooks is mainly in charge of storage (i.e. hard drives, etc.). And, next to him, Belgie, who is mainly in charge of Blade Servers. Keith is on the end after Belgie. Across from him is George, the design manager. I'm not quite sure who's next to me. I don't think that person is ever there.



Had to take this stupid entrance exam today. It's required for all new employees. You have to read company polocies and then they give you scenarios at the end and you have to answer questions. It was super long, but I really didn't have much else to do today anyway, since James was in that meeting all day again.



I'll have to attend some seminar for all new hires next week. I'm sure that will be even more exciting than the online version. But, I think I get some free HP branded stuff :)

I was pretty bored today. Not having James around kind of sucks. I need some more work and I need to bounce some ideas off of him to see if I'm heading in the right direction. I find myself getting bored with the work that I have. I do a whole bunch of concepts, but I can't sit here and force stuff out all day. They need to be developed with the rest of the team.

Anyway, just another day at the office...

Day Six - A New Week

Bored out of my mind today. James has been in a meeting allll dayyy (without me). But, he hopes to include me in that tomorrow (Im sure the meeting will be boring too, but at least I'll get to know what's going on).

Worked some more on the graphics for the software project. I think it's heading in a good direction. Did some more photoshop mockups and a quick after effects sample.

Found it really hard to work today. I guess you could say I have a case of the "Mondays". I sure hope someone's not tracking my internet activity, b/c I'm pretty sure that outweighed my actual work today.



Got in a small fender bender yesterday (my first wreck). Stupid girl turned right from the left lane and I nailed her rear door. I was on my way home from a Sirtified meeting at Agora on Westheimer. I don't know what she was thinking. Didn't call the cops. Barely did anything to Charice(that's my truck's name...don't ask), so I got her info and we went our ways. There was a really cool guys who stopped to be a witness. He saw what happened and was totally on my side. I'm really glad it wasn't bad. Her door was pretty messed up, but her car still driveable. It would have been way more trouble than it was worth to do anything about it for me. Hopefully it doesn't come back to bite me...

Day Five

Pretty slow day until 2:30 when I met with James and Belgie in our room downstairs. We went over the graphical layout and structure of the management software as well as concepts for the hardware project. That lasted about an hour, and then the design team left early and went to Juan and Lefty's for Happy Hour drinks and some pretty good Mexican food. Got to chat it up a bit with the rest of the design team. Went home and relaxed. The rest of the weekend was spent with the family. Indya's graduation + party was Saturday.





Tried to eat healthier today...



Traffic was TERRRRIBLE everywhere...but it was Friday...at Five...


Nice day though for the most part...

Day Four

Man today seems like it has gone so slowwww. Yesterday seems like it flew by. Maybe it's because I seem to be watching the clock more today.

Traffic was good this morning. I was starving this morning, so I took an early lunch, around 11:30 or so.



Lunch + Paper



No meetings today. Maybe thaty's why it seems kind of slow. I actually enjoy being included on meetings and stuff. I like to know as much as I can about what's going on.

James and I went to look at a space downstairs in the Human Factors lab that we want to convert to a studio space (so we can get out of our cubicles and have a place to brainstorm/throw out awesome ideas). It's a nice room with plenty of white board to write/draw on. The only thing is that since it's a human factors research room, one wall has a two way mirror, so when we're in there doing what we do, people can walk by and stare at us and we may never know (not that we'd be doing anything questionable anyway...i hope...).


As for my work today, I've just been continuing on the UI (User Interface) for the management software we're working on. I'm making some progress. Lots of revisions. I already have plenty of ideas. I'll see if James wants to talk about them tomorrow.

I did a little work on the server project today too. Fired up Solidworks and did a little surfacing of all things! I didn't touch it yesterday. I've got this one main idea that I really like and I'm going to do a few variations on it. I hope to show you eventually. I've had all kinds of crazy off the wall ideas, but I've tried to bring them back down to Earth to a more realistic design.

That's really about it. Just stuck in my cubicle and on the computer. I did take a walk around the building to go exploring. I still don't have a feel for the building. It's huge! And, there are more buildings on the site!

Day Three

Had a meeting today to bring me up to speed on a user interface project I will be working on. Conference call to Austin. Pretty cool stuff. It's management software. I'll be working not only on the graphical layout, but how the user accesses the information.




Couldn't stand it. Had to bust out the Mac again. I really really hate trying to hit Apple/Command when I'm on the PC. I either hit the alt key or the windows key. Why do they even have a windows key? It makes so much sense on your hands to put the Apple/Command key right next to the spacebar. Instead, I have to reach all the way over to the ctrl. key on the PC. Even though I have CS4 on the PC, I feel like I can't work at all.




I feel like I'm in an airport every time I come in/out of work.




It's nice to get some natural light in the hallway (even though it's all fluorescents in the cubicle area)





So at 5 today, the fire alarms were going off. I didn't even notice since I had my headphones on. I looked up and the strobes were going off. Everyone started rushing out of the building. I couldn't decide if we HAD to evacuate or if it was just 5 o clock and they were trying to get the hell out oh here. So, I packed my stuff up and left with them. But, getting out of the parking garage was a nightmare!

So What is it That I'm Actually Doing at HP?

Well, I am officially in the "Enterprise User Experience" Department, which means I am working with the team on Graphic User Interfaces mainly, as well as some hardware stuff too. I am here for the summer for a three month paid internship. HP's (massive) campus is up on 249 just North of 1960. The commute is about 40 minutes from my place without traffic, but I'm going out of town when everyone is trying to come in, and vice versa, so it's not too bad.

I'm excited to be able to work on both hardware and software because I'm really interested in User Interfaces and how people access data and interact with devices. How the user interacts with products plays a very important role in the design of the product, and afterall, I am a product designer, so I'm excited to be working on the physical design of these products as well.

I think I'm am going to get a good mix of projects while here at HP and I hope to learn a lot.
So far, so good!

Day 1 + 2

So James (I guess you could call him my boss) e-mails me yesterday wondering if I would like to blog about my experience while at HP. I thought this was an excellent idea. I had thought about doing it before I started here, but got so caught up in getting started that I forgot about it.

I really enjoyed reading Wyatt's Blog while he was in New York at his internship. So, I will try to do the same.

So, this being the third day of my internship, I need to catch you up on the first two days...

Day One was great.

I got settled in with my ID badge (with awesome photo...all you can tell is that I'm a white guy) and my cubicle. Man cubicles suck. They are so boring! Plus, we are designers. Why is the design team separated into little boxes. We need to be in a studio environment where we can actually work as a team. (Ok, first rant, done).








Went to a meeting about some super cool stuff I know you want to know about, but I probably shouldn't tell you about (I'm sure there will be a lot of that).


Had lunch with James and Belgie down in the cafeteria. The food is decent. I mean, it does the job. If you're hungry, you eat it. And, it's pretty reasonably priced (which is something I wasn't expecting).


Went to another meeting. This time, staff meeting. It's for the Designers. It happens every Monday. This is where everyone catches up to speed on everything that is going on.


Back to my cubicle. Slit my rist (only kidding). I'm probably going to be making a lot of corporate world office jokes, and I may seem like I'm having a terrible time, but so far, that is not the case. I actually think I am going to like it here. I just like to comment on the guy who sits by himself at lunch looking completely miserable, thinking "God, I hate my life". I don't want to be that guy.


One super cool project they have me working on is a hardware + software project. It's kind of like a "My First Server". Say you had a small office or even wanted to have a server at your home, this would be the product for you. You could share files and backup to it, and hopefully access it from anywhere in the world. Now, I'll be talking about my thoughts on this as I go on, but already, I think corporate is going down the wrong path. They want it to be very server like, but I really see it as a consumer product. The person buying this isn't going to have any real knowledge of servers. It needs to be completely intuitive and hassle-free. Anyway, more to come on that as we go on. So, I'm super excited about this project.

Day Two...

Now, I'm not much of a writer, so bear with me. And, why is it that Windows doesn't have spell check? That's another thing. I'm totally a member/follower of the Cult of Mac, however, being that I am working for the largest computer company in the world, I'm stuck with their computers, which happen to run Windoze. I'm ok with that. However, I have my Mac and I'm not affraid to use it.

Yesterday, I whipped it out to do a bit of saladworking (Solidworks). We do have the Adobe CS4 suite on our workstations, but it's still Windows. I just feel so lost and unproductive in this OS.














Thanks to a very special lady friend of mine for giving me this sweet bottle for me to sip on cold water all day...