Sandra Davila

Tacos coreanos!

Me encanta cuando mi profesora de idiomas no logra explicar una regla compleja de gramática y termina sus esfuerzos con la frase… Así es como es…

Si les pidieras a mi mamá o a mi mejor amiga que describieran lo que hago, creo dirían que trabajo en algo relacionado con la tecnología. Posiblemente mencionarían los lugares y las empresas en las que he trabajado… pero estoy casi segura que les sería muy difícil describir lo que hago con certeza.

No las culpo, de hecho mi profesión es muy nueva y está en constante definición. Pero uno debe siempre encontrar palabras sencillas para describir a lo que se dedica.

El nombre de mi posición es distinto en cada empresa, así que no será lo que describiré inicialmente. En pocas palabras soy la arquitecta de aplicaciones principalmente digitales; aunque en algunas ocasiones he trabajado en productos físicos. Diseño planos que describen la experiencia de una persona que usa alguna aplicación compleja como lo puede ser un sitio web donde se realiza alguna transacción (pagos, publicación, reservaciones, mensajes, etc.).

Pero no construyo el sitio, o escribo el código. Tampoco soy la diseñadora visual. Ni la que construye la interfaz (aunque en ocasiones en proyectos más sencillos puedo llegar a estar involucrada en estos roles). Soy la de en medio que entiende los requisitos y limitantes del diseño visual, del ingeniero de interface y el programador. Mi principal responsabilidad es el entender la metas del usuario de alguna aplicación y detallar esas interacciones. 

Al final produzco planos, esquemas, historias, plantillas que permiten a todas las personas involucradas imaginar cómo funcionará una aplicación.

 Sobre los nombres… Actualmente trabajo como Arquitecta de la Experiencia de Usuario. Pero también me llaman Arquitecta de la Información. Anteriormente trabajé como Gerente de Producto, Diseñadora de la Interacción, Diseñadora de la interfaz ó Diseñadora de la Experiencia de Usuario. Los nombres varían, por ejemplo en mi empresa (Dow Jones) a los Diseñadores Visuales los llamamos Diseñadores  de la Interacción.

Jesse James Garrett diseño un esquema buenísimo que describe los distintos nombres. Su libro es uno de mis favoritos: The elements of User Experience.

En el metro de Nueva York escucho conversaciones que me cautivan. Los invito a escuchar esta conversación por celular donde el señor sentado a mi lado argumenta con tintes trágicos a su receptora sobre la hipocresía que estamos viviendo.

Habla sobre migración, Santo Domingo, sobre hacernos víctimas y culpables.

Bravo Nury!

Last week in a visit to the MET museum with very unusual friends we were looking through the ancient greece section when one of my friends mentioned that a sculpture resembled Mick Jagger, I look at him clueless… I responded who is Mick Jagger. He gazed at me and exclaimed: the Rolling Stones!, to what I said… I don’t know the Rolling Stones. He starting reciting different songs, even singing out loud. And well… yes of course I’ve heard the name “Rolling Stones” and I told him: I would lie if I could tell you more than that. 

I constantly deal with similar moments, raised in a small village, I was not exposed (or intrested) in the 60’s 70’s and 80’s english music scene. 

Of couse I responded to me friend a little bit annoyed if he knew Cantinflas, or at least Cafe Tacvba. He was clueless as well… he kind of understood. 

But the truth is I have no real excuse not to know who the Rolling stones are. So today I’m doing some research… So far I’ve found the following: 

Interesting to find out that a rolling stone can be used as a noun “a person who is unwilling to settle for long in one place”. Thesaurus goes as far as shortly introducing Roling Stone: an English rock group… “featuring singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards. Originally a rhythm-and-blues band, they became successful with a much-imitated rebel image, and are known for songs such as ‘Satisfaction’ (1965) and ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ (1968)”. 

I’ve found through Spotify the song symphaty for the devil. I’m also about to see Rolling Stones: Stones in Exile in Netflix. 

If you have any favorite song, or anecdote please do share…

(my friends at the museum)

For the past month I’ve been doing design work for an early stage startup that helps and motivate individuals to have more active and social lifestyles.

More and more online platforms and social networks are providing events and more things to do… more options. These services offer individuals with easy methods to export these entries to the calendar application of our preference.

But individuals are encountering some challenges when managing and interfacing with their calendar applications. Below some issues: 

• Individuals own more than one device, iCloud and other services are out there to supposedly solve this issue but they are not yet cross platform, and there a lot of manual work and maintenance needed to make sure you have no duplicates and right settings. 
• More and more online calendar systems provide their own calendar tool such as google calendars, Facebook events, meet up calendars.  They all provide export functionality but users encounter previous issue by struggling to manage all their devices calendars
• Individuals have diverse groups in which they segment their events such as friends, work, classes, these groups make people use other calendar applications not necessarily the application of their choice. For example my friend uses Outlook at work and gmail to schedule personal event and Facebook to share with other friends.

A solution would be to establish a standardized structure to create events. Perhaps it’s own xml structure, in such way that an event really becomes. There is a lot of opportunities to improve the experience on how we manage our calendars but it will require commitment to improving the experience and a lot of collaboration between software and web application developers. 

Immersive subway reading #kindle (Taken with instagram)

too much to carry to 2012 (Taken with instagram)

I’m relocating. Now back in the states. Going to live in NYC for 2012

Don’t put monney… only caps… !

My first pledge on Kickstarter :)

You don’t have the one euro coin necessary to get a shopping cart, instead you take a basket. Your shopping is then limited by the size of the basket. You can see many other customers struggling with their full/heavy baskets. They too are avoiding to use an euro to take the shopping cart.

The experience worth detailing is at the register. For some reason, probably reduce costs, italian supermarkets (I’ve also seen it in Spain and France) expect customers to pack their own groceries. The process ideally goes like this:
1. You tell the cashier how many plastic bags you want. Because they cost, or you care for the environment, you ask for a reduced amount.
2. The cashier rings your things
3. If you forgot to weight your fruits and vegetables… you are in big trouble. First you get a horrified face by the cashier, then he/she calls someone in the speaker phone to come and pick up your goods and go back to the fruits and vegetable sections for weight.
4. You get at the end of the line and start organizing your things. Order doesn’t matter here, you have to pack as fast as possible.
5. Paying time. Most likely the cashier will finish before you are done stuffing your plastic bags, you have to interrupt what you are doing and pay.
6. Get back to your bags. If you shopped a lot you are punished, because the cashier will most likely finish with the next customer before you are done with your bags. The cashiers starts putting the goods of the next customer in your line and often items are confused.
7. In your attempt to save the environment (or save some money) you miscalculated the ammount of bags, most likely you won’t ask for another one so you stuff your bags and you risk braking them.

At this moment you stop packing for a moment and look around. You notice that other customers are stressed and nervous like you.

Is it worth it?

Yesterday walking in Milan I noticed a big crowd buying tickets for something. So I trusted the crowd and got in the line. I told the teller UNE she asked for my first and last name and 4euros and gave me a card with my name in return. I follow the crowd as they where entering a film theather. I was in the Cineteca at a local cinema festival that is going on until Sunday. I watch a documentary followed by two short films. They were ok… 

http://www.cinetecamilano.it/

When I start feeling too comfortable I know is time to change I knew that the change that I was looking for I couldn’t find where I was.

About love and batches… we would leave that for  another recap. 

During this year I worked at Interactive One and QMA. At i1 I had the opportunity to have an amazing mentor, work on social media, do research and build online products. I learned about software development practices, about being agile and waterfall. My references where: Cooper, Maeda Garret and Krug. I read: Measuring the User Experience , My favorite book: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (P.S.), and The Elements of Style.I went to conferences about usability, online media. I felt comfortable calling myself an Interactive Designer.

At QMA I thought three courses all around online media. My students learned how to build websites with Wordpress.

Finally the year ended with a trip to Mexico. I went to la Sierra Tarahumara, Monterrey and Mexico City. I was sad to see the transformation of Monterrey and Creel, both cities victims of the violence. Imagine being in the center of creel at 7pm and there is no one walking, only some vans with loud music that intimidate passerbys. My family experienced the now common fake kidnapp call. The called to say that they had me kidnapped. I was about to get to a bus, but we  were lucky my family was able to get in touch with me before I did. This event didn’t stop me from traveling but it did made me really cautious and sometimes paranoid. Hopefully things would get better, but I can’t be really optimistic.

In the fall I went to Quebec for a short trip to visit my roomate’s family. I love quebec and I can see myself settling there int he future.

After Madrid I did a short express trip to Tel Aviv to visit a good friend of mine. It was only three days, but i got the chance to see Jerusalem.