featuring technology tips and music recommendations with a personal touch

This week is going to be a silent one at Alaeddin’s Blog as the countdown begins for my long-awaited Certified Usability Analyst exam. If you guys remember, the whole point of my trip to India in July was to take a bunch of courses to prepare me for this exam.

I’ve already been through the courses’ material twice. I read countless articles and white papers, and I’ve been through couple of fantastic books about the subject. It only seems fair to believe that I’m well-prepared for taking on and passing the exam.

However, no matter what I do I can’t seem to shake off the feeling of anxiety and anticipation. It seems that no matter what you do, exams usually have their dreadful sensation which you can’t get rid of. For me, this is mainly caused by the fear of failing. Although I do have the option of retaking the exam after 3 days in case of failure, failing this exam does a couple of things to me:

1. It shakes my confidence in the career path I’ve decided upon and chose to begin with this certification.
2. It sends a bad message to my friends and coworkers, possibly lowering the credibility I’m trying to establish in the field of usability.

Not to sound pessimistic, I do however believe in my knowledge and ability to pass the exam with flying colors. I’m just skeptic, that’s all. A healthy dose of skepticism is important to ground our egos in reality and level-off our expectations, don’t you think?

I’m back from India!

I’ve been on a 2-week trip to India attending a 10-day course series offered by the renowned usability consulting firm called Human Factors International (HFI) (read more in my original post).

So I’m now in Dubai airport with 8 hours of waiting time till my connecting flight back home. That’s plenty of time to reflect on the whole trip and that’s what I’m going to try and do here.

Overall, I’m really glad to say that objective of the trip was achieved in excess of what I’ve expected. I got out of the courses with such solid foundation of the material that it feels like money well spent. But what’s more important is that it reaffirmed my passion for this field since it was my first official exposure to the principles and methodologies followed in the world of usability and human-computer interaction design. I can safely say now that I’ve truly found my career passion!

For the rest of this post, I’m going to make a quick run through some of my observations and experiences during the trip in general. The outline will be as follows:

• Training courses
• First impressions
• Hotel
• Food
• City (Bangalore)
• People
• Funniest moments

Click here to continue reading →

It’s official: I’m taking my first step towards building my career in human-computer interaction (HCI) by attending a 4-part 10-day course series offered by the internationally renowned usability consulting firm called Human Factors International (HFI).

The courses will take place in Bangalore, India and will span 10 days from July 16-26. Taking these courses will prepare me for my ultimate objective which is to obtain their highly regarded Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) certification, which I figured is a great kick-start for me in this path. The certification exam will be done online on September 13 this year, so I’ll have plenty of time to prepare and read more resources.

I had the option of doing this training in Washington, DC but the total cost of travel and training was more than double what I’m paying now, so I chose to go with Bangalore. Besides, it’s the same certificate from the same institute here and there.

Truth be told, the hardest part about this endeavor is having to explain to people and friends what software usability is and why it’s a relevant skill to have and an awesome field of science. Without formal training though, it’s really hard form me to concisely present a case-in-point for of how sofware usability is very important consideration for software vendors. However, if I had to quote a line that best says it all, it would be this:

Software usability today is what hardware was for the 80s and software was for the 90s.

There is a lot more to be said here but this is not the subject of this post. The bottom line is that I’m very excited and looking forward to attending this training series. The arrangements for the travel are almost final and I even ordered a relevant book to read on the plane.

Wish me luck :)

Well I’m back. For those who didn’t know, I’ve been on a brief business trip to Jordan, Amman from 16/11 - 19/11 2006, the objective of which is to set up my company’s development team which will take care of outsourcing our software development requirements here in Jeddah.

Overall, it was a pretty easy trip. Aside from flying out really early in the morning (thanks for the ride Basheer!) and landing really late at night (thanks for the ride taxi man), the rest of the trip went pretty smoothly and we achieved our objectives.

The major highlights of the trip include seeing my aunt family in Amman. It was really refreshing to get to see them all once again. We had so much fun. I don’t know what has changed since my last visit, but we all seemed to click and have fun and laugh ourselves out. It was really fun!

Another dear ones I got see were my best friends Reem and Yasmeen from back in university. As you could see in the photo album below, we too had some really good times. We went out first to a restaurant, UrbalGrill, which Reem claimed to serve the best hamburger in Amman, and it DID! To the point where I made special arrangements to take my aunt family on the last day again to it to try it out, and they too fell in love with it!

We were supposed to go see a movie but it was getting late so we just stopped by a crowded mall and had some dessert. It wasn’t the most pleasant setting you could find but the company of my friends were far more important. Overall, we had a really good time and a night to remember!

Jordan itself, on the other hand, was the least impressive thing in the whole trip. A LOT has not changed since my last trip and I seem to think the country is going from bad to worse in virtually every aspect. I care not to go into details with everything that’s wrong with the country, but I would say that if this place was to pick up pace with the rest of the world, it’s gonna need some serious makeover. For me, Jordan is a place I stop by to see my loved ones and then move on, nothing more, and nothing less!

Will I do it again if I had the chance to? Absolutely! Seeing everybody, well not everybody coz I sadly didn’t get the chance to see some other good friends of mine, is so much worth it. I do hope I get sent out on another trip sometime in the near future.

Jordan Trip 2006