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This is an email message I wrote to Rhett Allain about his excellent article in Wired this morning titled “Science Fairs Have Lost Their Way. Let’s Make Them Cool Again”. Dr. Allain, My name is Greg Walsh and Im a professor at the University of Baltimore. I saw your article about Science Fairs in Wired this morning and was very excited to see it. I have a 7 year old and have judged several science fairs. At best, participants follow the formula you bemoaned and my least favorite is when students build something without asking any questions about why or how…they can only tell you they saw it on the internet. ...

[You think] they’re saving the seat on the rocket ship just for you? Youve been manipulated to feel like youre part of something - like you’re special. But you’re not. Frank Walker, Tomorrowland I watched Tomorrowland with my family this weekend. I’ve been a big fan of Brad Bird’s work since The Iron Giant and then again with The Incredibles. I’m also a huge fan of the Disney Theme Parks (especially EPCOT) having cited them as the main reason I’ve gone into interaction design and user experience. When I heard that he was directing a movie based on an area of the Magic Kingdom, I was terrified that this would be another awful piece of Disney Shovelware like Eddie Murphy’s The Haunted Mansion. The trailer was intriguing and who wouldn’t want to see a movie with jetpacks and wheat. ...

Why GREs Our IDIA program requires the GREs. When people ask me about the admission requirements, they either sigh at the mention of the test or try to negotiate not taking them. As a program director, I find them valuable for reasons that were not necessarily intended by the test makers. First, I understand no one wants to take an extra test in their life. Plenty of controversy has surrounded the test since 1993. I did not want to take them way back in November of 1996 and again in summer of 2007 when I applied to my master’s program and PhD program, respectively. They can be stressful because someone is testing you on at least one topic you don’t feel you are good at. ...

As the program director for the MS in Interaction Design and Information Architecture and the User Experience (UX) Design Certificate, I often get asked why a person should choose UBalt over another school, particularly a non-University like General Assembly or Betamore. My answer is the same for each person: It depends…maybe that other program is right for you. I respect GA and have guest lectured there, but, it is certainly not for everyone. The model of 8-hour a day classes for 6 weeks is really hard for someone to do unless they are unemployed. Sure, they work on lots of projects (sometimes with actual clients) and learn how to do UX but I don’t know if they get the opportunity to learn why they learn the things they do. GA seems like a good choice if you have some experience in the field (especially through self-learning or some on-the-job experience) and you want a boost forward. It’s essentially a trade school for the 21st Century and I’m sure that you’ll have the skills you need for your first UX job but that’s where it ends. I’ve talked with employers who are reticent to higher someone who has gone through these kinds of programs because they weren’t sure if they knew prototyping beyond Axure or Invision. Did they know why we prototype? Did they understand user research? ...

Our Advanced #IxD partner Baltimore Orchard Project @CivicWorksInc We'll design space-making interactions #ubuxpic.twitter.com/cOYQ5rK6nA — Greg Walsh (@gxwalsh) February 10, 2016 Last week, my classes began working with the Baltimore Orchard Project, a non-profit here in the city that seeks to connect people to food and each other through orchards. The two classes that are working with BOP are my Interaction and Interface Design (IDIA 612) and Advanced Interaction Design (IDIA 712) students. The connection was facilitated by our Director of Experiential Education, Darien Ripple. I talked with them in an initial meeting about problems they might be having (we approached them, not the other way around) and was there any online, or in-person interactive “things” that they liked. I compiled a list of interesting problems to solve and brought that to the class. In true User Research fashion, the classes met with the client and asked them hours worth of questions to better understand the situation and really find out what the problems were. ...

I was able to refactor this and include other python files to make it more manageable. I had written several scripts that were doing the same thing with small differences. Instead of re-typing code, I used python’s import function and put most of the repeating routines into a separate .py file that I could import.

If you can read this, then I uploaded my blog automatically with the command line tools. I chose to use duck which is the command line executable of cyberduck. I was having a lot of problems using the default python tools and the simple FTP client for the command line.

I recently implemented a site archive which is made up of flat files generated from the Wordpress’ exported XML file.

One of my goals this year is to write everyday. For years and years (and years), I use Wordpress to manage my blog. It worked well but there were always so many features, that I stopped using it. It sounds weird to stop using something because of too many features, but, it is true. There was always lots of SPAM as well in the comments and I got tired of keeping up with them. ...

See it here: http://flic.kr/p/s3Jpbq