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| by Davide |
Who is Will Howard and why does he come into the office every day?Will Howard is a User Interface Engineer at Meetup. He tries to make our site easier to use, and has helped build some cool features for the site (Drafts, and posting your RSVP to Facebook are some recent highlights). Sometimes he enjoys talking in the third person.
In two years —switching teams and projects— you must have sat in many different areas of the office. What's your favorite spot? Where do you feel the safest?
I'm not sure I have a favorite spot. I'm pretty happy anywhere in the office as long as I have headphones and music. I do miss sitting all the way in the back of the office sometimes. The whole engineering team used to sit back there. I do really like working in the back lounge when I can. It's probably the comfiest place in the office.
Do you take Gender HCI into consideration when you work on Meetup?
We do a lot of testing with our organizers, members, and people new to the site here at Meetup HQ. I've watched dozens of testers interact with meetup.com, and personality and computer literacy have a far greater impact on how people use our website.
As far as generalized human-computer interaction goes, I think HCI across languages and cultures are a bigger problem than gender differences. While you can do research and make broad generalizations about how you think various cross-sections of people might be using your website -- it's far more valuable to listen to the people that use it every day. This is something that we are pretty big on at Meetup HQ, and I hope it shows.
With my roommate often busy with school, I've basically become her cat's caregiver. I heard you share a similar experience taking care of your roommate's dog. What kind of feelings do you have for this creature? Should we start a Meetup?
Well, I really do like the dog and animals in general (I also live with two cats). So taking care of her really isn't a problem for me, and it isn't something that I do every day. It sounds like maybe you aren't having such a positive experience... So maybe you should start a Meetup? I'm sure there are plenty of folks in New York City you could share your frustrations with. I'd be happy to come share my positive experiences with your group of disaffected pet-watchers.
The popularity of unicorn-inspired imaginary has skyrocketed along with the diffusion of the internet as an expected commodity of the western world. What do you think links the web and the unicorns? Is there any other mythical animal you're a fan of?
I think it's obvious that the internet is just bringing together those isolated unicorns lovers all over the world. Plus, everyone loves animated GIFs of Unicorns.
Cerberus is pretty cool too, I guess. I'm a pretty big Styx fan.
