National Geographic Speaker Series

This year, Clint and I bought season tickets to the National Geographic Speaker Series at Benaroya Hall. But, Clint signed up for classes at Seattle Central (painting and woodworking, he's quite the artist and carpenter...), so he had to miss this first one. Lucky for me, Colleen was free!

We met for happy hour at Von's, and then made our way over to the theater. Taylor and Sarah also have tickets, so we got to visit with them for a bit before heading in.

being cultured

The speaker du jour was Hilaree O'Neill, a mountaineer sponsored by North Face who has gone on some crazy climbing expeditions. The story she told us was about her and a team of six who went to Southeast Asia to climb its highest peak. Just the part of how they got to the base of the mountain (buses, scary train rides, a hike through the jungle) was ridiculous. If you have 25 minutes, you should watch this video that National Geographic filmed of the whole thing.

It was a really cool talk, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series now!

Goodbye, adult braces!

Last March, I decided I wanted to do something about my crooked front tooth. I had been debating over getting Invisalign or not, but after a visit from my dentist I was convinced I should do it. They told me that straightening my teeth would most likely help with the gum recession issue that had been going on around my bottom front teeth. I also had a bit of an overbite, so my bottom teeth were causing wear to my top teeth. So now I was doing it for the betterment of my dental health and not just for vanity reasons...right?!

My dentist recommended an orthodontist, Dr. Cohanim of Cohanim Smileworks (side note: I couldn't remember his first name, so checked the website and it's nowhere to be found! Guess I never knew what it was. After some internet sleuthing I found it...Bobby. So there goes all credibility and respect I had for him, ha!). The office is nice and convenient with free parking, plus the staff is nice. I wouldn't say I loved Dr. Bobby, but he's done a solid job.

After 11 months, 18 office visits, 28 sets of trays, and countless rubber bands, I'm finally done! I have a retainer (that looks similar to the Invisalign trays, clear plastic) that I'll just wear at night now...for the rest of my life. Here's hoping I stick with it. Clint has one he wears each night, so I'm hoping his habit wears off on me!

my old passport photo - but a good
shot of that front crooked tooth

a terrible photo of one of the worst
days ever, covered in bed bug bites and
my first day of adult braces

the day I thought I was done, until they decided
I needed another round which doubled the time

day 1 of round 2, now with rubber bands!

ALL DONE!

Spa Day

Last May, my friend Melanie from work got married! She asked if I would help with designing a few things, like the programs, menus, etc. It ended up being a scramble the week before the big day to get everything finished and printed, but I think they turned out just fine. And Melanie loved it. So much so that she invited me and a couple other girlfriends who helped with her wedding to a spa day as a thank you.

We met at the Elaia Spa at the Hyatt Olive 8 downtown on Saturday. We hung out in the relaxation room while sipping tea and chatting, then headed in to use the steam room, sauna and jacuzzi. We then had lunch before it was time for our massages. It was such a nice treat! Something I don't typically splurge on for myself. At the end of my massage, I had to fight the urge to fall asleep. I wanted to enjoy every minute!

Becky, me, Melanie and Kate

Kim and Melanie

Thanks again, Melanie, such a fun time!

The Global Brand Marketing Sales EXPO

I am part of the Global Brand Marketing group for Boeing, and we get to work on a bunch of really cool projects. Last week, we hosted an EXPO for the sales and marketing teams to come take a look at the new and innovative stuff we've been doing, and share our capabilities. Each sub-team (web strategy, data analytics, airline promotions, advertising and my team - design services) had their own area at the Boeing Customer Experience Center (a really fancy high-tech facility where we typically host customers). 

We had a pretty good turnout for the event, and everything went off without a hitch! Here are some photos from the event.

A quick video of the space that my coworker Paul and I
were in charge of

Seahawks are playoff bound!

Last Saturday, Clint and I watched the NFC wild card game from my place while we had friends who actually braved the cold and went to it. After an exciting Seahawks win, we decided to meet up with everyone at Girin Steakhouse down by the stadium to celebrate.

gang's all here

the guys had already done quite a bit of celebrating 

also ran into Henry, I think this photo best
describes how he probably remembers the night being,
blurry and off center

After drinks, a few of us headed over to Purple Dot in Chinatown for a late night feast of honey walnut prawns, fried chicken and mongolian beef to name a few. Such a fun impromptu night catching up with friends who we hadn't seen in a while!

21 Day Fix

My friend Kylee recently became a Beachboy Coach (I realize now I spelled that wrong, thanks Mom, but it's too funny to correct). She holds challenges that last for 21 days, and each day you do a 30 min workout, have a Shakeology drink and portion control the food you're eating. You can easily stream the workouts from an app on your phone, and the shakes are pretty tasty. You then log everything you do in the app so she can keep everyone accountable :)

I gave it a try in November, seeing as how I thought it'd be a good chance to get in shape before our cruise. However, ten days in and I got sick. Like stay home from work sick with a sore throat and chills. Jumping around in my living room working up a sweat was the last thing I wanted to do. But, in those ten days I did feel like I was getting somewhere. I was actually looking forward to the workouts! So, I'm ready to try again.

It officially starts next Monday the 9th. I figure if I post it here, it's even more of an incentive to stick to it! Will keep you updated on how it goes.

The pukey color comes from adding spinach, but still tasty!

Back to school

In the fall of 2015, I made the lofty decision that I wanted to go back to school to pursue a Master's degree. After some research, I found the Human Centered Design & Engineering program at UW, and  thought it'd be a perfect fit for me. The degree entails taking courses in design, research and engineering and is all about making things (websites, mobile apps, physical objects such as chairs and desk spaces) more usable for the people using them – hence the "human-centered" part. Not only do we learn how to design and build these things, but we learn the best way to approach how we're going to do it through research – interviews, focus groups, usability studies, etc. The UX (user experience) design field is becoming bigger which means the demand for these skills is growing as well. Once I've graduated, I'll be able to advance my career here at Boeing, or be able to branch out and work for a number of large companies in the area.

So far, I've completed 4 quarters, and have 4 quarters to go with a target graduation date of winter 2018 (yikes that sounds far away!). I've really been enjoying the courses though. I take them during the evening from 6-10pm on the main Seattle campus. It's been so much fun to be back, makes me wish I could quit work and do school full time just collecting all sorts of degrees :)

official student - Husky Card

very first day of class – fall 2015

first day night of class – winter 2016

first day of class – spring 2016

first day of class – fall 2016

stuck in the snow – fall 2016

Just for fun, here's a list of all the courses I've taken so far:
User-centered Design 
An introductory course to what user-centered design means and how the process works. For our group project, we created an app that helps people understand candidates' positions on issues during an election season, and gives them info on how and where to vote. This was back when Trump running for president was just silly talk. We sent out surveys and conducted interviews to find out what people really wanted, and after multiple design iterations we came up with Ballot Buddy.

Usability Studies

For this course, we were split into groups again and were paired with a company sponsor. My team worked with UX Designers from REI to help them conduct usability studies on their online shopping website, in particular the product details page. We ran tests with users to see how their experience was and gave recommendations on what REI could include or change.

Theoretical Foundations

Your typical required core course on all the theories and practices of interaction design. A lot of reading and a couple presentations. 

Empirical Traditions

In this course we learned how to evaluate the validity of research papers, and how to write our own. Again, another class filled with tons of reading and writing. It was a fun course, however, since there was only six of us students. A lot of fun discussion.

Information Visualization

All about data! We learned how to use Tableau, and our group project consisted of picking a dataset and then using it to visualize something useful. We chose to use data from Yelp, and used it to help travelers pick a city and time of year to travel based on their interests (restaurants, nightlife, hotels, etc.). This turned out to be a difficult class as everything was new to me, and we crammed a huge amount of learning into just 10 weeks. I think we came out with a pretty fun end product, though!

Navigating Design in Organizations

Here we learned about the business side of design. In our group projects, we were to come up with an idea for a company, and then create a business model – revenue streams, key partners, value props, etc. We had a fun product we liked, virtual reality tours of vacation homes for AirBnB, but then the instructor pulled a fast one and made us swap with another group in the class. We ended up with an online shopping business, not something we were totally interested in, but we made it work.

Tonight I start my one of two classes I'm taking this quarter, visual communications. This happens to be what my undergrad degree is in, so I'm looking forward to reviewing what I already know and hopefully coasting through an easy class. I'm also taking a introduction to computer programming course which will be all new to me. Looking forward to the quarter!