It’s been little over a month now since I joined HP Labs, and I’m finding work interesting. It involves listening to a lot of music! Understanding music from an emotional perspective is very fascinating, coming across all those amazing apsects of a song I’ve never even bothered thinking about. I hope to learn as much as I can here, and gain some perspective on what I would like to do after say, a year.

During the first month, there was a workshop in collaboration with universities in UK and Europe, titled “Winter School on Interactive Technologies”. As an interaction design and HCI workshop, it focussed on trends and upcoming technologies from a design perspective, showcasing interesting projects going on in UK and Europe. It was a good opportunity to meet people there and learn about work abroad. The lectures were interesting and fun! (5 years back, I never knew I’d actually say anything even remotely close to this ) It was a two day workshop, the second half of the day consisting of bootcamps (hands-on sessions) on realizing concepts and prototyping. I worked with Prof. Alan Dix (Lancaster University) on a rather empowering topic, and we came up with some interesting insights (read more about it here). Alan has jotted down his experience in India too in his blog.

It was a great source of inspiration and it was well timed (beginning of my project)! Hope to attend more workshops in the future!