A Close Encounter With Someone from The Mothership

HCI (Human Computer Interaction) is a field that has fascinated me from the day I learned of its existence, or perhaps more accurately, from the day I felt it's importance, that is, when I saw the elegance in Apple's user interfaces.

Apple surely did not invent this field, but you would be hard-pressed to disagree that it is in this field that Apple draws its strength (besides Steve Jobs' RDF) and the magic that powers its computer products, software applications, iPods and soon, the iPhone.

What would excite the HCI geek in me more than anything else is to meet (lest hear speak) an Apple User Interface designer: someone from the mothership. And yesterday, i had the chance to listen first hand to this someone.

It all started with Angel's email inviting me (and nikki) to a lecture on HCI. A hurried and excited scan of the email lead me to the person who will be giving the lecture: Mr. Jose Arcellana - a senior manager of user experience at Oracle Corp who has also worked for 11 years in Apple (faints...). And as if the name doesn't give it away enough, Mr Arcellana is Filipino who was an AB English cum laude from UP Diliman (circa 70s if i remember it right) and who holds a Master's degree in Communication from Stanford University. When he was at Apple, he worked on Rhapsody which would later become what we now know as the Mac OS X, created the Apple Assistant (their "better" version of the Microsoft Wizard) and argued with Steve jobs (more on this later)

His credentials actually made me think: Did he really want to be a "user interface designer" when he made the academic decisions that he did, and in corollary, if one (looks around) wants to do what he's exactly doing now but is in the IT business, what is the pathway to enlightenment? (i wanted to ask this during the Q&A part but shyness got the better part of me)

Moving on, he did an excellent presentation on HCI, its principles, the processes involved in doing UI research and design, and a lot of other cool stuff (will be sharing those stuff with the team here in OCS). His Silicon valley anecdotes were my favorites though. He recalled arguing with Steve Jobs over the dock because he didn't think that it was a good idea. Of course Steve Jobs won, being the one with the "expert opinion". He said that during their argument he almost forgot that the one he's arguing with is his company's CEO.

It really sucked that we were not able get a video or photos for the event (angel left her camera in Tiwi), but it was one hell of a Lecture. The most enjoyable one I've ever been to, and the closest I would probably get to someone from the Mothership. :)