#i wholeheartedly believe in the principles of human centered design

[glitterdustcyclops]

because i am a total nerd who actually loves their job i gotta brag for a second

so sometime...god, i think last year? at this point?? i found out about the concept of a research repository & decided to implement one for our usability team because i was basically tired of people not being able to find all of our research reports, or asking us to do projects we'd literally already done

so i took the initiative of researching research repositories (heh) from other companies, best practices, tools available, you know, i basically did a whole internal usability project with our team to design our ideal solution & presented it to IT

and it just so happened at the time i presented my findings IT was beginning to transition our internal company knowledge base from salesforce to something else, so they told me to hold off but they would make sure whatever new tool they selected would have a place for our repository

and because of corporate nonsense it took a few months so round the beginning of this year once the contracts had settled i got the green light to start figuring out how to adapt my idea to our new KB platform

and then there was another 3-4 of designing the information architecture & collaborating with the team to get all of our research migrated & tagged properly

and then another couple months of shenanigans while we waited for the company to have enough licenses for people to actually see the dang thing, but now the word is slowly spreading and it's just so so so exciting & satisfying to see more people discover it and tell me "i love this so much it makes it so easy to search a question and find data"

and our team has started using it as a hub to kind of keep all of our assorted knowledge on how to do ux research as well and i'm just 🥰

that was ME!!! i did that!!! i saw a user need and created a project to meet that need and it IS MEETING IT and that was MY WORK

HELL YEAH

[juniebugs]

assigning marvel heroes engineering majors (1)

i tried to write this so it makes sense even if you don't know much about engineering!! this post has my headcanons for peter parker, steve rogers, tony stark, and clint barton!!

as a preface, i am very aware that most of the marvel heroes would not in fact be in school for engineering even in an alternate universe. unfortunately, my fixation on both superheroes and engineering knows no bounds.

please feel free to ask me any questions about eng or for further explanation my reasons for these picks!! i am only in one type of eng but know many people in other disciplines so hopefully i'll be able to answer :)))

Peter Parker - Mechanical & Biomedical

I truly, truly believe the correct peter parker engineering take depends on what portrayal of spiderman you are looking at. like tobey's spiderman? would not touch biomed with a pole let alone mech. ... that peter parker is so far from engineer...... i dont even know where i would put him. materials? pls send your opinions if you have them.

BUT MCU, tom holland, spiderman would definitely definitely be in mechanical & biomedical. i actually got this from an irl friend, so if you see this somehow pls say hi LMAO

mechanical is one of the most common streams of eng and, while absolutely not something i ever want to touch, is really neat. it centers around keeping things in motion (contrary to civil engineering where if something is moving you're in trouble). it applies physics in really cool ways which i imagine would be a draw to peter just on the sole basis of personal interest. mech also plays with materials as it explores elasticity, deformation, fractures, yield strength, and other materials things i have blocked out LOL. when i think of that aspect i feel like it matches really well with the designed suit, the webs, and, if you listen to the science jargon he throws around in the movies, some of his prior knowledge.

biomedical engineering is actually used by some (the insane) as a gateway into med school. it covers human anatomy and genetic engineering (radioactive spider????). i do not believe peter would do med school too (because that student debt tho) but i also can't imagine him not trying to apply what he learns to helping others. i am personally partial to applying engineering principles to physiology and i can just imagine him implementing his mechanical knowledge into making prosthetics. if i had the brain power for this degree i would love to do that.

Steve Rogers - Civil Engineering

.... listen. steve rogers would fight a war before sitting in an hour lecture about dirt. i know this and acknowledge this wholeheartedly. HOWEVER,,,, I have a friend in civil with a special interest on sustainable design and you cannot, cannot tell me that isn't steven rogers coded.

civil engineering is not architecture, like at all, which i think is a common misconception if you don't know engineering well ( totally understandable!) unfortunately, i don't think civil caters to his artistic side that well but as someone who likes art but only does it as a hobby next to eng, i think thats okay.

civil engineering is kind of the mother to environmental engineering in the sense that they both look into wastewater treatments, geology, and even environmental planning (in some cases) but civil will also go into more detail with structural components and design of buildings. you'll find civil engineers involved in every building being made and in every town council ensuring clean drinking water and working sewage systems. typically they specialize into one or the other but shhhh ignore that for this post.

what i am trying to say here is that this would give steve a shit ton of wiggle room which i think he would use to help both the environment and people. paying engineers is expensiveeee especially for qualified, capable ones. i think steve would find deep satisfaction in working either for free or for the bare minimum cost (not that you should - know your worth :) ) and i think that he would actively use his work to call out designs that endanger communities or their environments.

this man knows his local engineering ethics code and WILL call someone out.

Tony Stark - Engineering Physics

when i started writing this section i thought it was going to be the easiest but unfortunately i did in fact have to phone a friend. tony stark is THE engineer so narrowing him down to one discipline felt impossible. my friend suggested engineering physics so i went with that.

the thing is eng phys is THE engineering degree. it is wonderful because you look at almost every thing mech, elec, and comp related (will explain more below) without specializing too greatly. it is also difficult because you don't specialize. for tony stark, who did not have to go into that internship grindset mentality, it would all be net positives.

to make the suit i immediately knew tony needed to have an extremely good knowledge on BOTH electrical (circuitry, coding, wires, magnetism, fun stuff) and mechanical (explained in peter's section!!). i was considering a double major but then was stumped because i love my elec and mech friends but they have no desire to produce a new element and also... creating an arc reactor??? plus AI's??? while likely related to software, it he would have bare minimum had to have had a good computer engineering (kind of how it sounds, engineering related to building and using computers and components of computers, lots of overlap w/ elec) background.

to wield the amount of science knowledge tony stark has an be able to apply it in an engineering context he would either have to be a genius (which like canonically he is so yknow) or take every course offered to engphys students (and some).

i think as a student he would have also enjoyed that not having to specify aspect. i imagine him always in the pursuit of knowledge. yay eng physics!!!

Clint Barton - Materials Engineering

If you've read the reasonings for some of the characters above you have likely thought to yourself "wow, such clear arguments, time must have been put into this" which like yes but also no because for this decision i am going exclusively on vibes.

materials focuses on, well, materials. it looks at both composition and properties (plus how composition effects properties). my friends in matls tell me its pretty research heavy which doesn't really fit with clint, i am aware. but every person i have met from this faculty i am convinced would get along with him.

I KNOW THIS ISN'T GREAT REASONING. i think that engineering would always be second to other things or interests in his life (even when he's a student) but I think the promise of a stable job and the hypothetical applications are really interesting. matls and mech can be surprisingly similar and i think he would find more satisfaction in manipulating materials to better fit his goals than in being stuck within predefined constraints.

plus, imagine creating a new material for like the tensile strength of your bow. incredibly cool

I'm thinking i'll work on doing more of these as i find the time!! i definitely have a few ideas for other characters, i just need to figure out how to articulate my reasonings haha.

if you have any ideas or shared interest in engineering and superheroes please let me know!! i have also been recently into the bat family, as you could probably tell by my reblogs, and am thinking of doing a version with them also!!

[glitterdustcyclops]

working in a tech-related field during the current AI hype machine is interesting. surrounded by colleagues who have fully drunk the kool-aid about how it's going to ~revolutionize~ all of our jobs while in my head i'm thinking "you're an idiot trying to have a glorified chatbot do your job for you, this is hell, get me out of here"