My Best Experience Online

Posted in Floating Thoughts, On HCI by

It was last year around late January. I remember myself sitting in front of my computer doing some work when I received an email from LinkedIn. I don’t really check LinkedIn very often so I decided to let it deliver emails to me when something happens. When seeing the LinkedIn logo, I thought it must again be some random person appears from nowhere who desperately wants to connect with me no matter how. But it was not. Well, it was somebody who wants to connect with me, but it was somebody I knew. Besides, it was somebody I knew for a very long time – a primary school peer, who also attended the same middle and high schools as me. He sent a direct message, reintroducing himself (since we haven’t contacted for so long) and asking me if I would also intern in California. He said he happened to find my personal website, which is also my blog, and from there knew that I would intern at Facebook. “Are you interning at the Facebook headquarter in California?” he asked, “if so, then we might meet again in the summer! Because I will be interning at LinkedIn, very close to Facebook.”

I was very surprised, not because he searched my information and tracked all the way down to find me (anyway, my website is public, as you can tell), but because he reached out after searching. My impression of his is still the 8-year-old skinny, pale boy who was very shy but kind, and who often brought chocolates to us girls because his mother was working at a chocolate factory. Recalling those delicious chocolates, I replied him right away (“Yes, the Facebook HQ!”) and asked for his WeChat account so that we could reach out to each other more easily. I was sure he must be on WeChat; every Chinese uses WeChat. I’m on WeChat 24/7.

I have to confess that at that moment I truly thought that’s it, that if anything would happen we sure have to wait until summer arrives. But things didn’t turn out as I expected. Within three or four days, he, a computer science major (oh yes I looked him up online too), successfully found me on all the major social networks and started commenting on my most recent posts. I don’t really hide my identity on Facebook, so that was okay, but I worried my secret little site would also be discovered: I have been on a very low-key Chinese social networking website for more than a decade with millions of personal posts. I did try to hide myself so nobody from my real life would know me on that site. As if reading my mind, he followed me on that site exactly the next day and even commented on a fairly old post of mine. I panicked. “How did you find me on that particular site?” I texted him on WeChat. He replied with a very long message, apologizing and promising he would never do such a thing again. But how did you find me? I insisted, because I thought I’m tech-savvy and conscious enough to have done an outstanding job of deleting all identifiable information. He answered: “I googled your email address.” But I don’t think I had turned on the privacy setting of “find me via email.” “Certainly you didn’t,” he affirmed me, “but you did reply a few other people’s posts with your email address on the same site. Google it yourself.” So I did, and he was right. Those posts are too old for me to remember, must be from five or so years ago. I surrendered and deleted my age-old replies. I do not want to contest my computer expertise with a computer science major.

What makes this experience my best experience online is its ending. After the first few imperfect exchanges, we started chatting more and more often, on WeChat, on my secret site, and elsewhere. We weren’t in the same city so we stayed online to keep in touch. We both found the other quite lovely and familiar, and by now we have been seeing each other for a year. Whenever somebody asks me how we got to know each other, I will tell this story and then reflect on the role played by the internet and all these communication technologies. I sure wasn’t as careful about my online privacy as I thought, but I also realize how an online, virtual world strikingly resembles the real world. First, everything I did on the internet leaves a trace, just like everything I did in the world. Maybe I will forget what I did, but my mom will tell that story of a young girl who rejected to go to school as vividly as yesterday – so does the internet. The only matter is whether one has the ability to find the trace or not. Some do, like my partner; some don’t. Second, same as our real world, everything is connected in an online world. What differs is that you may be six steps away from a stranger in the real world but wow, the online world can offer you much more information about this person in way less time; you can even connect to him if you want, assuming you get his social networking account. The internet makes everything faster, easier, and more efficient. At the same time, it also makes some of us more powerful and the rest more vulnerable. I wonder if it’s possible to be entirely anonymous online. Perhaps not, maybe only when one has never been online. But then this means one does not exist online, which is different from being anonymous. The other way to put this is if one is online, then one is never anonymous. Such a conclusion scares me, because I believe privacy is also part of human right. This time the guy who stalked me online was an old friend so everything was fine, but who knows what might happen next time? If the online world is indeed similar to the offline one, then we must fight for our safety and privacy, just as we do in our everyday real life.

A Personal Paper-Reading Method

Posted in reflection on research by

I was thinking about how I could read and understand academic publications better. I came up with the following skeleton for myself.

First, grab the following points (bolded are the must-learns):

  1. Topic: What are the relevant fields of this paper? (Later, how are the authors contributing to these fields?)
    • Audience: To whom are the authors speaking?
  2. Argument(s): What statements/arguments are the authors making?
  3. Research questions (RQs): What research questions do the authors ask?
  4. Methodology: How do the authors answer the research questions?
    • Theoretical lens: Have they used any theoretical lenses in answering RQs?
    • Model: Have they applied any models?
    • Experiment: Have they conducted any experiments?
  5. (Findings: What do they find to answer RQs? How do the findings relate back to RQs?)
  6. Contribution(s): What new/critical knowledge have the authors produced?
    • Novel theory: Have the authors produced novel or built upon existing theories? Theories can also be models, frameworks, etc.
    • (Theoretical) New perspective: Have the authors offered any new perspectives to understand existing phenomena?
    • (Theoretical) New methodology: Have the authors offered any new methodologies for answering a certain type of RQs/phenomena?
    • New intervention: Have the authors built any new, important, meaningful interventions?
    • (Empirical) New, important ways of using technology: Have the authors discovered any novel and critical ways of using technology? Usually, such empirical findings can feedback to new learnings to existing theories or even inspire new theories.

Second, while reading, I can ask these questions to myself (bolded & italicized means it’s only important for myself):

  • Significance: How do the authors argue the significance of the study?
  • RQs-Contribution: What is the relationship between RQs and contribution(s)?
  • Related work: How do the authors write Related Work (to support their arguments, maybe)? (How does this study build on past learnings?)
  • Actors: What are the actors (human or non-humans) involved in this paper?
  • Terminologies: What are the terms the authors relied on? Did they create any new terms?
  • Strength and weakness: In my opinion, what is the one single strength (and weakness) of the paper?
  • Future work: How can future work build on this study?
  • Personal belief/value: Is this work speak to my belief/value? Why or why not? (Do I want to become a researcher who does this kind of work?)

Stories from Beijing

Posted in Informal Fieldwork by

A few things/people I encountered when I was in Beijing doing fieldwork in Fall 2018.

Story 4. Aug 21st, 2018.

11:05 pm. I was just out from Dongzhimen subway station, back from an interview. The was another 10-minute walk before I could get back home. Clutching my backpack tightly in front of me, I kept reminding myself that this is Beijing; it’s safe and there’s nothing to worry about. Before long, I saw evidence of such safety. A guy in a white shirt was throwing up intensively in the hollow made up by two tires stacked together neatly. Apparently drunk, but harmless. Not sure why there were tires though. A few steps later, there was a couple sitting on the ground beside the walkway. The man was smoking silently, forming clouds above himself. The women had her head down on his laps, crying loudly.
The Beijing with a midsummer night’s dream.

Story 3. Aug 21st, 2018.

I don’t think I have seen anyone carries his/her wallet around. Neither cash nor credit cards. But definitely a smartphone and maybe also a battery bank (in case there are no public battery bank leasing cabinets). At restaurants, you scan the QR code on your table to order and pay inside the restaurant’s WeChat mini app. On subways or buses, you tap your phone screen to the card reader to pay. To enjoy any street food, scan the seller’s personal WeChat QR code to pay; he/she will print out the QR code on a piece of paper and stick it on the food truck. Internet is never an issue. Mobile connectivity is so good no matter you are indoor, outdoor, underground, or high up on Mount Everest. All you need is a phone connected with China Mobile’s network, with your WeChat logged in and a bank account registered.

Story 2. Aug 14th, 2018.

McDonald's WeChat mini app

I was at a McDonald’s, ready to order from one of the big screens standing in front me. Almost touching the screen with my finger, a woman’s voice rang into my ear: “Ma’am, are you our member? You can become our member from within our WeChat mini app and you will get daily special discount exclusive to our mini app. You don’t have to use this screen to order; just open your WeChat and go to our mini app.” Following the voice, I saw a young woman with McDonald’s uniform and another older women busy working with her phone — apparently, she was instructed as I did moments ago.

I did what I heard. I saw the WeChat McDonald’s mini app recognized my location and then identified the store I was at without making any mistakes. Then I ordered what I wanted — the meal was much cheaper (as today’s daily special) than buying the sandwich alone, so why not buy the meal? The mini app naturally prompted payment with WeChat pay. Then I received my calling number in the mini app. I hit the top right black dot and ring button. The mini app closed, I was brought to where I was at in WeChat.

A few minutes later, my number was called at the counter. I showed my number and grabbed my dinner. Efficiency.

Story 1. Aug 13th, 2018.

Beijing Transportation Card in iPhone wallet

Right after I landed at Beijing airport, I got notified by my iPhone, saying that I could add the Beijing public transportation card to my phone wallet. I did that and then loaded money to the card directly (“you will get your 20 CNY deposit back!”). The entire interaction was very smooth. Next day I hopped on to a bus and tried to tap my phone to the card reader. I touched my phone once. It didn’t work. I looked like a hopeless barbarian. A girl with a modern look beside me held my phone impatiently, changed my phone angle swiftly, touched the reader again, and the reader uttered a clear beep sound. Wow! What a sound that welcomes me to the mysterious digital Beijing!

Research in Academia vs. in Industry: From My Experience as a UX Research Intern at Facebook

Posted in reflection on research by

I spent the past three months at Facebook as a user experience researcher intern. I worked in the Facebook App Monetization org and did research with two different product teams. I interviewed Facebook users inside and outside of the US, and I also conducted usability tests of prototypes. This is my very first formal industry experience as a user researcher, so everything (literally, everything) was new to me. The journey has been more challenging than I expected, but it was definitely a great learning experience. I applied for this position last Fall, wanting to know what research is like in industry (or at Facebook, in my case). Luckily I got in, and more luckily, I got most of the answers I was looking for — if not all.

1. Objective. The focus of research in industry is to point out directions and offer recommendations for product design, development, and more. So it’s all about the product. Research in academia cares more about studying and exploring important questions in the field. If not necessary, it is often unlikely for research in academia to be related to any product.

Hence, the significance of research in industry is to help product teams make appropriate decisions that fit the company’s overall mission/goal/plan/interest. What about defining research questions? What about finding the right methodology and implement it? These are all important. However, in industry, oftentimes decisions are not made solely by the researcher but based on the entire product team’s discussion or the product’s current need/requirement. For instance, if a product team wants to know what a certain population will think about the product, then the researcher can only research this topic to find answers from users that will guide the team’s decision-making process.

In academia, research questions are usually determined by one or several principal investigators (PIs, who are commonly professors). Things can be researched no matter it’s a new topic that worths studying or a critical realm that worths being dug deeper (even though one might not get an answer). How do you know if a research topic is significant? It all depends on how the field looks at it. A research topic about how a mosquito’s flying will be affected if its wings are hit by raindrops sounds meaningless to our real lives. But if it’s meaningful for its field, then it could be studied. What is not important is whether it can lead a product. This is why many studies in academia look imaginative and less valuable to the reality. This is also why research in academia is way ahead into the future.

2. Significance. Research in the industry is unnecessary. Without researchers, product teams can still make decisions and keep developing products. The point of doing research (i.e. user research) is to establish the communication channel between users and product teams, so that product teams can make informed, wise, and better decisions. There are product teams who develop products freely without taking into consideration of researchers’ suggestions — but this is another story.

Because research is unnecessary, there are cases that researchers are neglected by the product team. Researchers thus have to work on helping the team to understand the value of research.

In comparison, academia is all about research. A research university (my institution is an example) pays all its attention to research. Professors and their teams have to do research and meet a certain criterion of research, especially before professors are tenured. So the importance of research in academia goes without saying.

3. Resource. Facebook as more than 40,000 people in total with hundreds of UX researchers, which is a lot in the industry. Naturally, more people get more resources. Examples include research labs built especially for conducting user research (better than the labs I have seen in academia) and a separate recruitment team for helping researcher recruit participants. Researchers also support each other by running training and creating discussion groups.

On the other hand, I think the resource in academia mainly comes from connections. Industry depends heavily on connections as well, but best researchers mostly stay in academia. Connections in academia can lead to knowing more researchers in the same or related fields and then creating more opportunities. In my opinion, the distinction between resource in industry and resource in academia lies in their types.

4. Who does the researcher represent? At work, UX researchers represent users in product teams; they speak for users and communicate users’ needs and difficulties to product team members. UX researchers represent their company in front of users.

Researchers in academia represent experts in the field. They represent themselves too.

5. Forms of outcomes. Researchers in industry present users’ needs and recommendations to product teams through presentation slides, charts, tables, reports, etc.

In academia, the major form of presentation is publications, such as conference papers or journal articles. Publications present research outcomes (e.g., new experiments, new methods, new algorithms, etc.)

6. Pressure. This is really all about my personal experiences… In industry, user research is only a small part of the product team and it is usually in the earlier stage of product development. Designers and engineers wait for research outcomes to move forward. This means researchers’ pressure often comes from their product team members and the progress timeline of the team. The quality of research is crucial too, but not as crucial as some other things, relatively speaking. That why people say “done is better than perfect.” It’s not okay to ask your colleagues to wait for you.

About pressure in academia… Can’t finish talking about this in one paragraph lol. I feel stress in academia comes not only from producing high-quality research that will truly contribute to the field (which includes a lot more smaller “sub-pressures”) but also pushing oneself to his or her intellectual and mental limits of learning and pursuing knowledge. Because of this, I will not recommend anybody doing a PhD degree without true passion and love of research…

7. Income. Of course, industry offers higher income… Much higher than academia, in fact.

There should be more about research in academia and industry, but I can only think about things listed above for now.

If you ask me which one I will choose… Actually, I still have no answer. But at least I can see more clearly the differences now since I experienced.

Dynamics

Posted in reflection on research by

I went to CRC (Georgia Tech’s gym), drank iced milk tea, ate crispy chicken nuggets, and did grocery shopping this morning. This was all because I submitted a conference paper last night. I guess I need to celebrate, so I offer myself some treats.

I don’t have many experiences with writing conference papers. Previously, I had turned in two papers with myself being the first author and co-authored another paper. Yet writing a conference paper always teaches me new lessons. The lessons that I’m going to share might be cliché — smart people may learn this quickly, but I need to wait until I’m writing another conference paper. A bit dumb.

The thing I learned is that different papers have different dynamics. I know, this seems obvious — this seems obvious only when we are reading papers. It may not be the case when we are the ones who are writing. Why? I didn’t really feel this when I was writing my first two papers. I thought it was me who was writing, and since I was the author and I did not change, so I supposed the papers should look pretty similar in terms of style? Well, this is not true. The paper that I was writing recent days had an entirely distinct dynamics in a sense that it kept leading me, instead of being led by me. It refused being structured. The findings of this study were complicated. There were so many details and I didn’t know which ones I should pick. In fact, I couldn’t even find a proper way to tell a story for a couple of days. Findings were already messy, hence the Discussion section was even more difficult to write. I remember I had a hard time on the day I planned to write the Discussion section. Sitting in front of computer screen and hearing my heart bouncing anxiously, I told myself that no matter what I had to at least outline the section before I went to sleep. I jotted down whatever I thought of that might be useful in the section, and to my surprise, these random lines seemed to represent some commonalities that I could talk about. The paper had something it wanted to say. I was only its medium.

I want to record my feelings and thoughts because they are important to me as forms of reflection. This is also to remind myself that I learned a lot by going through the process regardless of the outcome.

A rotten tomato

Posted in Floating Thoughts by

I had a really hard time sleeping well these days. It has been a while, for at least two weeks. This is quite odd for me since I usually experience no difficulty at all to fall asleep. Every day, from 11 pm to 7:30 am in the morning, I’ll be roaming in my own dream freely. But it looks like I’m running out of luck.

It’s really not because of work. I have no problem completing my jobs these days, and I have not been complaining about my workload for a quite long time. For what reason am I prevented from going to sleep? No clue. All I can tell is that I am, subconsciously, being disturbed by unknown anxiety.

When I failed to sleep, I could hear a lot of sounds. Last night I woke up three times. One at midnight, one around 2 am, and the last one around 5 am. I heard heavy raindrops hitting my window crazily. I could also hear different kinds of birds chirping. I heard my cat licking his paws. I even heard the sound of a new message’s arrival from one of my neighbors. I heard all the sounds that I wouldn’t notice normally. Insomnia is like a huge ship, it carries you to the ocean and all you can do is to float along the waves. Surrendered.

All I can do is to wait for the first beam of sunshine to arrive. And then I will play the roles I’m supposed to play (assigned, yes) — as usual, as nothing has happened.

A few days ago, I stood in front of my fridge, examining what’s inside carefully and trying to come up with a plan for lunch. I spot my last tomato and some eggs. Might be good to cook them with some wontons. The tomato looked as fresh and as lovely as always. I cut it into halves, but it was rotten. Its core, the central location, displayed a greenish black and started melting. I was deceived by its appearance. With no other options but throwing it to trash, I wondered when it went bad.

I think it’s a rather crucial quality to be able to distinguish an about-to-rotten tomato from others, especially when I’m one of the tomatoes.

A List for My 2017

Posted in Floating Thoughts by

People often list things that they want to do or places that they want to be before the start of a new year. I don’t really have such a practice, but I can still clearly remember what I posted on Moments at the beginning of 2017; I hoped I could sleep and exercise more. Have I completed these goals? I’d like to make a list to answer this question.

  • I think I have slept more because I no longer registered more than one class per semester. I again went back to China to do research in summer, but my past summer was way friendlier than the one in 2016. I also stopped TA-ing in the fall semester, leaving me much more flexible time (and much more time to sleep as well).
  • I also exercised more. On average, I went to the gym five to six times in a month. This is definitely not frequent but already more than last year. I got my driver’s license in June and was then able to go to the gym more often. I started living alone since September, so I was also more flexible due to this change.

Hence, I think I have, at least to a certain extent, fulfilled my goals.

I also did some other things:

  • I traveled quite a lot. I went to Denver (for CHI) in May, visited London and Edinburgh in June (for DIS), went back to Shenzhen for the rest of the summer, drove along California 1 in November, and now I’m in Florida ready to drive US 1 tomorrow. I never really like flying but I had no other options for long-distance travels. Driving is a lot of fun but can be exhausted too. I think travel is, in general, a double-edged sword to me – I enjoy it and I hate it at the same time. Let’s see if I get to travel this much again next year. (My next summer is already booked for California because of Facebook.)
  • As a Ph.D. student (which is, um, my “official” role), I published two first-authored papers at top-tier Human-Computer Interaction conferences. I’m happy with this solid start even though I didn’t really appreciate my first paper-writing experience.
  • As a Ph.D. student (again), I passed my Qualification Exam. I guess my worst two days in 2017 were March 20th and 21st. The exam was so damn cruel.
  • I know I mentioned just a few lines above, but still – I’m thrilled to get my Georgia driver’s license. What a mark of my yet another step towards independence!
  • Finally, I got an intern offer from Facebook. I promised myself that I would get one. I’m happy I keep this promise.

Of course there were pains too:

  • I have been in relationships with guys (different ones, of course) since 2008. The year of 2017 marks an end. I broke up with my boyfriend and started my expected-to-be the longest period of my single life. I had always wanted to be single and cool and live alone since I was pretty young, but you know dreams change as people grow. I enjoy being single quite a lot, but sometimes it could be difficult too.
  • It’s still hard for me to get used to living in America. I mean, I have already been here for four and a half years, but I still can’t see myself as part of people who live in the United States. I hate most of the foods here, I hate how things are designed here, I hate the system here, etc. I don’t really like here but I have to stay here. This pain is in no way a new one, but it keeps burning me. I think it will still do in the future, so I’d better find a way to get along with it.

I learned many things throughout this year. One thing that struck me the most is the importance of waiting. Actively waiting, not passively. I had to work hard consistently for a (sometimes very) long time to get certain stuff (e.g., a research intern in the States). Maybe more precious things need more time to reach me. I’ll keep waiting for them.

I hope these are enough for a year. And for those of you who read till this line, thank you for bearing me babbling. Happy New Year!