Week 11

Summary

We have a new intern, Wei; he happens to be Jingya's friend (they're from the same university) and a comic book/movie fan (like Pranav). I interacted with a lot of people and projects this week--that is, I got to participate in an InMind (middleware) meeting; a rapport training session for SARA; a game simulation for SCIPR; and a luncheon for DREU.

Things I Learned

  • Lauren has a tiny Charizard atop her shelf!
  • the locations of all the bulletin boards in Gates-Hillman
  • how to play Outbreak
  • there's a Google street view game (where you have to guess where you are)
  • I am apparently stingy when it comes to Scotch tape

Research

Trying to get everything (i.e. stuff for conducting the user study) on my laptop to work.

Also, setting non-laptop user study things up: everything from getting some questionnaire modifications approved by the IRB to spamming (recruiting) people via email to tacking up flyers.

Meetings

Middleware Meeting

Tuesday, everyone involved with the phone middleware (Timo, Oscar, Sushma, Yoichi, Florian) met to talk about that sort of thing.

DREU Lunch with Justine

Justine took us DREU interns out to lunch (at The Porch) this week! We talked about countries, grad school, and desserts.

Rapport Training

Three other interns and I got to help Florian and Jingya annotate rapport for conversations from SARA's trip to Davos. (Background: at the start of 2017, SARA went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and helped attendees meet similar people, find relevant talks to attend, and learn about nearby places to eat.) To prepare us for the task, Jingya held a training session to i) go over rapport and ii) get us (via practice and discussion) to reach inter-rater reliability.

SCIPR Simulation

The SCIPR team taught me how to play Outbreak (a collaborative sort-of board game? it's super complex slash super hard to win, but all very interesting), and I joined in on a game with some of the interns plus a virtual peer (which was being controlled by the rest of the SCIPR interns). Afterwards, we all chatted about what went well/went wrong and how the virtual peer could improve for next time.

Daily Logs

These are more or less lifted from Bitbucket, where I keep a README of these things.

Mon 7/31

Resolved middleware issue; mtg with Lauren; mtg with Florian; user study; phone testing.

Tues 8/1

User study advertising; middleware mtg; DREU mtg.

Wed 8/2

Phone changes; phone testing; user study logistics.

Thurs 8/3

SCIPR test; DREU lunch; SARA training session; hardcoded phone for user study.

Fri 8/4

User study prep and runthrough.

Not Work

Whistling While Working*

I celebrated the first weekend of August by doing summer cleaning. By "summer cleaning," I mean rigorously evaluating all of my possessions, putting new slash improved organizational systems in place, and planning for the next season (aka "cleaning" both literally and figuratively).

* not really; I can't whistle and cleaning house isn't working working (although actually, Snow White was referring to cleaning, so I guess it's okay?)

Miscellaneous

  • participated in a user study that involved a driving simulation (which was cool, because dialog systems and driving, and helpful, because I have my own user study to run)
  • Sarah, Linh, and I spontaneously went to get pho, which I've been craving since coming to Pittsburgh
  • read, but failed to write, some poetry

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