Humanize AI Pro vs Phrasly

My interest in HCI did not arise from any computer lab or classroom experience, but from observing my grandmother trying to use a telehealth app when she had an emergency. Here, all the necessary technology existed to save a person's life, but at the time when she needed it, it could not help her. Bad color contrast, confusing icons, and hard-to-use navigation turned the technology that could have saved her into something inaccessible.

During my undergraduate years, I became interested in both sides of this story – the technical limitations and capabilities of software and the user's psychological peculiarities that influence his or her interaction with the program. I noticed that no matter what I worked on during classes or my own projects, the places where the intent of the user conflicts with the execution of an algorithm interested me more than anything else. While working on a mobile app for local public transport together with other students, I came to the conclusion that the ability to write code was not the main thing; it was the interviewing of users, the creation of a user journey and redesign of information architecture that made the project alive.

I want to get a master's degree in Human-Computer Interaction because I think that technology cannot be considered effective when it is not taking into account people's emotions, cognitive abilities, and diversity. I would like to find out how such new paradigms of interaction as voice interface, multimodal AI and ambient computing may become not exclusive but accessible to everyone.

I believe that your program will provide me with the interdisciplinary academic setting I need for the purpose of my research. By learning advanced user research methods and technical prototyping, I want to explore the ways how to develop adaptive interfaces that will give an opportunity to the underrepresented communities, including older people and digital illiterates.

It all started when my grandmother couldn’t figure out how to use a medical platform that could of saved her life. I was always interested in HCI but when that happened I knew I wanted to focus on that field. She was scared and didn’t understand why she couldn’t read what was in front of her. Low contrast colors, unclear icons and navigation that you could barely make out took away from this helpful piece of technology. I became passionate about HCI because I felt that technology isn’t useful if we don't learn how people think and act when using technology.

While in college I wanted to dive deeper into both aspects of the technology and user. I learned many programming languages and found myself drawn towards why people couldn't understand certain pieces of software. Whether it was for a class or my own project I was always interested in how users interacted with our code. While working on a project with mobile applications I learned that coding great software isn't the only key to making sure your product is successful. Interviewing users, understanding their journey and redesigning the flow of information is what makes a product useful. We need to make technology work for people not force them to learn our ways.

I want to study Human Computer Interaction at the graduate level because I believe there is so much more technology can do if we understand our users better. I would love to learn about more new technologies and see how we can better our current interfaces. From voice commands to learning more about AI and how it will affect our society we need to continue building off what we know about HCI.

Your school provides this opportunity for me to further my knowledge on HCI. By allowing students to dig deeper into user research and create new technology we can change the world one person at a time. I hope to study more about HCI and learn how we can improve current technology for people that may not have access to it or don't understand how it works.