So rather than pull back and say, “To design this form well, I need more consistency. All the ranking questions should be 1 to 5,” I kept editing the CSS, trying to find a way to make the two styles look the way I wanted. I was so stuck on how to make different ranking scales look nice that I couldn’t step back and see that using the same scale would be much simpler. It took a review from a coworker in marketing to point this out, and when he did, all I could think was, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

I later realized that I was looking at the project as I would a school assignment. I took it for granted that the instructions I’d been given were set in stone and must be followed precisely. But in the office, requirements are always changing, and the person who designs form questions is not necessarily a design expert. When I graduate in a year and transition from college to industry, I’m going to have to make a mental shift from accepting projects as they’re assigned to examining instructions more critically. After all, why would I be given a project if whoever assigned it didn’t think I had some expertise on the subject?

Lesson learned: my boss is not my professor, and I shouldn’t be afraid to negotiate project instructions if I think there is a better way to do it.

Well, sort of. Upon logging on, I found that Tmobile is providing 45 minutes of free wifi, and after that you have to pay their daily pass fees. Oh well. 45 minutes is enough to get a blog post off.

Now, I’d like to share my best tip for long days of travel, airline or otherwise: bring a loaf of bread. On the international terminal around gate A7 in SFO is a store with a rack of Boudin sourdough bread. Whenever I fly from San Francisco to New York, I make sure to buy a half pound round loaf for $2.99. When traveling all day, a loaf of bread is the best insurance against $15 sandwiches.

This tip has saved me more than once. When I was stuck on the train between New York City and my college for two hours with no dinner last year, that loaf kept me from going crazy. The same thing happened when my friends and I were stuck waiting for customs for hours on our train to Montreal. They had teased me about the bag of mini bagels I’d been shlepping around, but they sure were thankful for it later.

The Wave interface is not as intuitive as what I had hoped for in a Google product. When I’m conversing in a wave, I’m never sure where I’m supposed to click or what I’m supposed to select. Judging by popularity, I don’t think I was the only one who thought so.

It’s not that Wave doesn’t have great features. Real-time playback of conversations looks cool.  Google pushed Wave’s spellcheck that checks based on context in addition to spelling. Once you get over the learning curve, Wave is pretty cool. But for some reason, not enough people found Wave useful enough to warrant continuing support for it.

There’s a simple thing I think Google could have done to increase adoption rates for Wave, and that is to have chosen a better name.

One of Google’s product strategies, it seems to me, is to pick a service you can describe in one word and do it really really well. A well-named, simple, straightforward product minimizes the learning curve, so people know right away what they can expect to use the product for. Search, Gmail, Calendar, and Maps all exemplify this strategy. You know Latitude will deal with location. Even Picasa suggests it has something to do with pictures. Wave, on the other hand, tries to do a lot without priming the user with what to expect by using a good name. (Buzz is another example of a Google product that tries to do a lot with a vague name.)

I can hear the disagreement now: “But if Google comes out with a new, innovative service, it can’t help but pick a new name for it.” Yes, that’s true. It’s not that I think Google should stick to improving existing services and forget innovation. My point is that with an innovative product with a steep learning curve, a descriptive name will go the furthest to help customers figure out how they are expected to use it.

There are two websites in particular that I think do this really well (though they take the strategy to the extreme). The first is a to-do list tool at NowDoThis.com. The page is incredibly simple. All you see is a command, a button labeled ‘done,’ and a link to edit the list of commands. When you click the ‘done’ button, it shows you the next item on the list. There isn’t even a title on the page; the title is implied in the url. The site does exactly one thing very well, with no fuss and no frills.

The other site is DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com. Like NowDoThis, it features a plain white screen with one simple tool, in this case one that checks if a given site is down. This is simplicity to an extreme, without even a button to submit the form (instead, “or just me?” is a link to submit the form). I love the way they incorporate the tool and instructions to use it into one sentence.

One of the benefits to designing products this way is that once you have a simple tool, you can incorporate it into other services. I can put a small Google Maps widget on my business site to highlight my location. I can open NowDoThis in the bookmarks sidebar in Firefox for an in-browser to-do list. To Google’s credit, it is possible to embed a Wave in another site; I just haven’t seen it done more than once or twice.

I predict that Google will integrate Wave’s best features into Talk in the near future. Unlike Wave, Talk is simple and well-named; even before you open it, you know what you can do with it. I think Talk will benefit from Wave features like context-sensitive spellcheck and easy media sharing.

The ironic part is that I’ve used Wave this summer more than I did all of last year. My friends and I found it was a great way to share data in our Skyped Dungeons and Dragons campaign. We used it to share initiative rolls, HP and pictures of the monsters we faced. We could have also incorporated dice-rolling widgets. However, we could have done the same with a shared Google Doc, which is probably what we will have to do when Wave support is lost for good.

Oh well. I’m not crushed.

Textbooks and chocolate are essential.

Obviously, before you start buying anything, consult with your roommate(s) and school website. Don’t bring anything that the school provides in the rooms already.

General tips:

• I go to school on the opposite coast from where I live, so I had special concerns in terms of getting all my stuff there. Whenever I purchased something the summer before freshman year, I tried to buy it online and have it shipped directly to the school. I saved a lot on shipping costs that way. Consider whether shipping an item you already own will cost more than buying it near campus. It was cheaper to buy my fan on campus than to buy one at home at ship it there, even though the fan I bought was more expensive than one I would have bought at home.
• Avoid colored bed linens. You can’t bleach them.
• Avoid splitting costs of appliances with roommates. You’ll just have trouble deciding who will keep it.
• Keep your cardboard boxes for when you have to pack your things for summer. At the end of the year, there was a mad rush for boxes at the campus bookstore. I just stuck mine under my bed all year.
• Look for a dollar store near campus. My roommates and I bought all our dishware and cleaning supplies there.
• Buy your textbooks early so you can get them cheaper online and have them ready for class. But first, email your professors and ask whether the “required” textbooks are really required, or just recommended. The most frustrating thing about college is buying a “required” textbook for $200 and never using it.
• If you’re not sure you’ll use something you buy, keep the receipt. I bought an iron at Bed Bath and Beyond, never used it, kept it in its packaging, and returned it the next summer.

Must have:

• Refrigerator. It can be tiny, but you’ll want one. My school has a fridge rental program, which my freshmen roommates and I tried. It wasn’t worth it; for the $225 we spent renting a fridge/microwave combo for one year, we could have bought a fridge that would have lasted longer. Even though my dorm has a public fridge, I wouldn’t trust food I put there to stay there.
• Mattress pad. When I did my shopping, I assumed that since I didn’t need an extra mattress pad at home, I wouldn’t need one at school. Unfortunately, dorm mattresses suck. I got through one semester and decided enough was enough. My best Christmas present that year was my 4-inch memory foam mattress pad. Worth it.
• Plain old water pitcher. The bathrooms in my school’s dorms are down the hall and we don’t have sinks in our rooms. When you want a glass of water at 3am, you’ll be grateful for that pitcher of water. I got mine at the dollar store.
• Electric kettle. I borrowed my roommate’s so often to boil water for ramen that I ended up just getting one for myself. Essential for ramen, tea, and instant coffee. It need not be expensive; I got mine for $20 at a drugstore.
• Painter’s tape. When the freshmen arrive on campus and find they can only hang their posters with painter’s tape, there’s a mad rush on the bookstore for the stuff. Buy it early.
• Cold medicine. When everyone gets sick at the same time, the bookstore will run out of Nyquil, and you won’t want to leave your room anyway.

Don’t buy until you get to campus, and then only if you find you need it:

• Printer. My school, like many, has a campus-wide printing system. I bought a printer, but found I didn’t print enough to justify the cost of having my own. I ended up selling it.
• Bed risers. For all you know, you’ll have a bunk bed that you can’t raise. But if you have a single bed, bed risers are a must for more storage space.
• Water purifier. Don’t bother unless your dorm’s tap water is undrinkable.
• Furniture and fans. Your dorm should provide essentials like desks and chairs and waste bins. It’s better to wait until you get to your room and see how much space you have before you buy extra furniture. That said, a folding bookshelf and extra chair are really nice to have. Make sure any furniture you buy can be made smaller for transport. (Do NOT buy these; they fall apart if you put books on them.)
• School supplies. Buy paper and pens to be ready, but wait until you go through your first session of each class before really stocking up on school supplies. You never know when a professor will have a special requirement, supply-wise.

Another question I hear often is whether to get a Mac or a PC for college. For the most part, it doesn’t matter. Make the decision based on what kind of repair facilities you’ll have access to, whether you’ll need to run any special software for your major, and what you can afford.

One last hint: Amazon now offers a service called Amazon Student. Sign up with your .edu email address, and they’ll give you Amazon Prime for a year. That means free two-day shipping on most items. As far as I can tell from the terms and conditions, it doesn’t look like they’ll automatically renew the subscription at the end of the year, too.

I’d love to hear about other students’ lists of essentials. Leave a comment, or email me at mystitat@gmail.com. Good luck shopping!

• Flip flops. Without them, shower at your own risk.

But moreover, my internship is great because I don’t have signs like these on my door anymore. As much as I’m excited to go back this fall, I’m so glad classes are out for summer!

Admittedly, you don’t need this app to resize windows such that you can see more than one at once, but it makes the process much more zippy, accurate, and convenient.

(ShiftIt works with Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6.)

Well, for the most part.

On my first day, my supervisor invited me to lunch with him. There was good food, but afterwards I didn’t get my cash in quick enough, and he footed the bill. I thought that maybe lunch on the intern’s first day was a company thing, and he would seek reimbursement. No big deal. But yesterday as I was eating lunch at my desk, he came back from a fast food place, said cheerily, “I brought you back something,” and put a cookie on my desk.

To be frank, it made me uncomfortable. Something didn’t feel right about my superior buying food for me. The question I wanted to ask, but obviously couldn’t, was “Would you have bought this for me if I were a guy?”

It probably wouldn’t have bothered me so much if a similar situation hadn’t occurred at my last internship. My supervisor at that time noticed that I preferred not to accompany him and our coworkers to the coffee shop, so one day he said, “Here, you should come with us more often,” and handed me a gift card for the coffee shop. I accepted it, assuming it contained a token amount. I was shocked when after my first purchase after work, the cashier told me I had $47.29 remaining on the card. I wish now that I had gone back to my supervisor, given him back the card, and told him I couldn’t accept it. Instead, I was embarrassed, so I didn’t say anything and kept using the gift card.

I know my supervisors were trying to do me a favor, but their actions felt patronizing. I like cookies as much as the next person, but accepting gifts from my coworkers makes me feel belittled. They’re saying with their actions, “Even though you’re a competent person we’re glad to have on our team, we’d like to help you out with food, and that’s okay because you’re a girl.”

So in response to my supervisor’s generosity yesterday, I grimaced and said, “Oh, I’d prefer if you didn’t buy food for me.” He said, “Oh, okay,” and the day went on. I’m glad I spoke up for myself, and I’m sure it won’t be a problem with him going forward, but I can’t help but wonder if I handled the situation appropriately. I would love to hear what other people have to say on the matter. Does this kind of thing happen to other female interns?

I try to avoid the cursed Office product as much as possible. Sadly, a few of my professors actually require Powerpoint decks for class presentations. Having pity on my classmates, I try to make my presentations as interesting as possible. I have a rule of thumb, and it goes like this: when I consider what I need to include in each slide, I ask myself, if I were making this presentation without the aid of a projector, which visuals would I print out in hard copy because they’re that necessary to understanding the topic? These images, along with a caption or two, are the only things I’ll allow in my slide decks. If it’s not worth spending money to print out, it’s not worth wasting my audience’s time on. If there is something important to say, I think the best thing to do is just say it, and reserve the projector for images that aid understanding.

I think most people do not understand that their slide decks do not have to stand on their own. Instead, they copy half their speech into their slide deck, as though hearing it and reading it at the same time will increase the audience’s attention. This not only takes up more of the audience’s time, but the speaker also wastes more time making the presentation, as the officers quoted in the NYT article did. I think we’d save a lot of time in meetings if people would learn to just say what they wanted to say, instead of writing a storyboard about it.

This sentence irks me for a couple reasons. The first is that it is blatantly not true. I’ve met folks who have never touched anything more complicated than a solar-powered calculator. Compared to them, my friends — who use their computers constantly for schoolwork and practically live on Facebook — have considerable technical experience. It is disheartening to hear how little they value their knowledge.

Moreover, the context in which I typically hear friends say, “I don’t know anything about computers,” is as an excuse when their computer does something unexpected, they don’t know what to do, and they would rather back off and let someone else fix it than try to solve the problem on their own. My friends are afraid of their own machines. I think this sentiment is a symptom of ongoing trends in the industry towards a closed-box style of consumer computer design.

Cory Doctorow explains it better than I can in his iPad rant on BoingBoing:

The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.

[...] Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

While Apple’s closed-box style contributes to the ease of use which is the hallmark of Apple’s products, I’m afraid that it is changing consumer attitudes in a negative way. Apple wants to keep the inner workings of their products a secret to the point that they want to make it illegal for consumers to alter the software running on their own property. Preventing users from controlling the software on their own devices is dangerous for several reasons, but it scares me most because it discourages users from learning about their devices. In effect, Apple is profiting from its customers’ ignorance, and the consequence is that more of my friends profess, “I don’t know anything about computers.”

Apple’s products are a timely example, but other manufacturers are guilty too, and I think it’s the generation just now learning about technology that will suffer most for it. Curious kids will never be able to tinker with the insides of their iPads as they could with the Apple][+. I think we as technophiles have a responsibility to kids to pick up the slack. Get your kids a garage sale computer to take apart together. Find out if your teenager’s high school offers programming classes. Donate to or volunteer with groups such as TechBridge, which offers after-school programs in technology and engineering for underprivileged girls in Oakland, CA. But most importantly, make sure kids are not afraid of tinkering with technology. How else can they hope to make it better?