Katelyn’s Blog

#TRIPPRIDE

It’s Pride Month! This was my Tripadvisor pride shirt from the parade last year. (It’s off brand now, but don’t report me – we didn’t get new ones for this year yet!)

Pride is celebrated during the month of June. It marks the anniversary of the Stonewall Riot. This was not the first time LGBTQIA+ people took a stand, but it was marked as a turning point for the moment. Back in 1969 there wasn’t social media – it was mostly up to newspapers and word of mouth that news traveled – the news of an uprising in New York City.

The LGBTQIA+ community is one of intersections – both across the letters of our acronym and across other identities of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, etc. We must continue to raise our voices and take action to support ourselves, our LGBTQIA+ community, and the communities within and around us.

“Opportunity only knocks once, temptation leans on the doorbell.”

I got this shirt as a gift from my best high-school friend Nate. I can’t remember if it was a Christmas gift or a birthday gift. I’ve always enjoyed this saying.

“Today I am:” Minions Shirt

I don’t remember where I got this shirt (maybe Kohl’s?) or when. But I do remember that I love the minions! I love the idea of indicating and announcing your mood to others so they can prepare. However this shirt announces all of your moods at once – but it’s generally appropriate for my wackiness!

Ancillary Shirt – Minions with Banana

Banana-oooo-banana

“hFIDO – Bentley Graduate Student Organization”

Throughout undergrad I was a member of a lot of different organizations (more on that in the future posts) but in graduate school there were fewer options, so I jumped on the opportunity to join the newly formed hFIDO organization centered around my major. hFIDO (pronounced aitch fai-doe) stood for Human Factors in Information Design Organization and put on various networking events and panels bringing together students and alumni.

Ancillary Shirt – 20 Years of UX at Bentley

This shirt was given out at least year’s annual HFID graduate reception/reunion. Each year a new class of remote students are required to kick-off their program with a week-long on-campus bootcamp. The Wednesday night of that week is reserved for a mixer with current HFID students and alumni allowing everyone to network and hang out with old friends. For the 20th anniversary of the program they gave out these shirts this year.

“Not all who wander are lost – some are just geocaching”

I got this shirt for Christmas a few years ago from my Auntie Beth (and Uncle Mike, Max, and Tessa). This shirt showcases my love of geocaching. Geocaching is a game where you seek treasure hidden by others in the wood, parking lots, and anywhere in between. I have definitely wandered far and wide for geocaches and just before the quarantine I completed my quest to visit and find a geocache in every city and town in Massachusetts (more to come on that in a later blog post!).

Here’s to Day 1 of 73 and hopefully more wandering soon!

Ten years ago while I was working at Staples I had a pretty sweet corner cube. It stuck out a little farther than the other rows, so it had good visibility down the aisle as people were walking to the printer room. I found a small whiteboard on the free table, and hung it outside my cube. I started writing thoughts and quotes on it and soon it became a daily habit. For a while I was documenting the quotes on this blog (QotD), but once I moved a few cubes back, it was harder to maintain the sign with the quotes and it fizzled out.

With all of the craziness that is quarantine I was trying to think of a way to bring back a daily ritual that I could share with folks as I did with my quote board. I decided that I would have a daily t-shirt – posting a story about it each day and wearing it in my zoom calls.

I decided that this would be a great summer project – running from Memorial Day through Labor Day (the unofficial length of summer). I started going through my shirts and quickly realized that I had more shirts than the 73 working days between Memorial Day and Labor Day – so I pared down the set and matched up the ones that didn’t make the cut so you can still get a peek into my full collection wardrobe.

Come along for the ride as I take you through the story of 73 of my t-shirts (and some bonus tees too) during this summer of quarantine.

I’m sorry I’m confused.

I was a $9.99 streaming and 1-DVD member of Netflix for about a year. I enjoyed the DVDs, but it usually takes me a few weeks to watch them, so they sit there unwatched for a while, but I figured for $2 more, why not. In July, Netflix announced that they would be changing their pricing structure so that my plan would now cost me $15.98. Well, bah humbug!

Just a few weeks ago (on Sept 1) the new pricing went into effect. I wasn’t sure if I was going to drop the DVD, I figured I would try it out and see if I can increase my DVD consumption (while simultaneously vowing to watch less TV in general).

Last week, Netflix announced that it was cutting the customer forecast as they were losing a ton of customers over the price hike (DUH!).

Well, this morning I awoke to find that Netflix has apologized and decided to make up for their mistakes by splitting the DVD service and streaming service onto two different websites. UH, WHAT? Is it just me? This doesn’t make sense to me. I like to be able to search all movies and see if one is streaming or DVD and to move things between queues if it becomes streaming. Why split them into two websites? What is the business plan behind it?

According to the Netflix CEO: “So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.”

Now that’s all fine and dandy, you probably should have two different teams working on things to make each one the best it can be, but does that mean you have to push that split onto consumers? Just because your internal team is structured that way doesn’t mean that’s how the customers want to interact with your product.

After checking out the comments on the announcement, I can see that I am not the only one who feels this way! You’re splitting up a single experience (I want to watch a movie, preferably by streaming, but if it’s not available yet, send me the DVD).

This has pushed me over the edge, and I will be canceling my DVD subscription (just as soon as I watch Schindler’s List).

UPDATE 9:45AM: I just came across this blog post by Joshua Porter about how Netflix in Danger of Ruining their User Experience (via @ryaninteractive).

10 years ago I was a sophomore in high school. I don’t have a good idea of what I was doing or exactly how I was told, but I remember sitting in D block Spanish and having someone come on over the speakers and make an announcement about what was happening. We didn’t have TVs in any of the classrooms, but there was a TV in the band/chorus room and I remember throughout the day that my friends who were in band telling us about what they had seen on the TVs. I came home and was glued to the TV watching the news coverage. I couldn’t really comprehend the things that were going on. I had never been to the World Trade Centers, I didn’t know anyone working or living in NYC, but I still knew that this was a big deal.

Last year I had the opportunity to go to the Pentagon Memorial and it was different from any other Memorial I visited in D.C. – I had witnessed the events. I was not alive during the Vietnam War or the Korean War. But on 9/11/01 my life changed, as it did everyone else’s. It was moving to be faced with the reality of the events. I went to the World Trade Center site which to me looked like a large construction site. Having no comparison of what the area had been like before, it was difficult to fathom the difference and the impact off the attacks on the lives of those in NYC on that day. But seeing the Memorial, seeing the parts of the building that was damaged and the number of people who had died at the Pentagon that day to me was very meaningful.

Today I will remember how lucky I am and will think of those directly impacted by the events on 9/11. I hope that I have a chance to return to the World Trade Center site to visit the Memorial and better understand the impact and see how we are rebuilding.

“The covers of this book are too far apart.”

– Ambrose Bierce