Who is she?
Eliza is an early natural language processing program born in the mid-1960s at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Joseph Weizenbaum. 

What does she do?
Using “‘pattern matching” and substitution methodology Eliza outputs canned responses that made early users feel they were talking to someone who understood their input. 

Why is she iconic to me?

One of the most innovative versions of Eliza was called DOCTOR– programmed to mimic a  Rogerian psychotherapist. Used to help patients communicate their feelings by repeating their input as a question.

I know Eliza and I will do a project together one day 👩🏻‍⚕️👩🏻‍💻

_

BTS

Test it for yourself: https://jsfiddle.net/val_p/8dyg24fb/124/

Source: https://web.njit.edu/~ronkowit/eliza.html

Code: https://www.nltk.org/_modules/nltk/chat/eliza.html 

🎹 After 3 days of on and off typing before bed, I’ve finally coded my first interactive game on the internet. 

🎈The cherry on top is that it’s a basic AI function! I really enjoyed the nature of trial and error in coding. I would love to lean into this mindset more as a designer. It was fun to switch from front-end to backend thinking.  Logic > Style > Layout 

Project below: https://jsfiddle.net/val_p/tjo9mpnc/293/ 

Shoutout to Chris Kim for answering all my questions and OCAD for sponsoring this adventure! 

Text is fundamentally how knowledge spreads across the great wide web. 

It’s easy to overlook this significant communication tool online. Admittedly, typography is my weakness as a designer but lucky me I can always read more about it and improve! Today I’ve stumbled upon the design of bionic reading by typography designer Renato Casutt.

Reading into this design opened my eyes, literally. They widened and felt brand new haha! 

At the end of the day, design is in the subtle details. Thanks for the inspo internet. 

Love ya,

Val

Design is 80% communication and understanding, 20% solution building (personal opinion).

Recently, I started my new role in Product Design. Of course, I had to explain to my grandma on the phone what is it that I’m doing at my new job!

🏔 Challenge:

① I need to explain technology, product design and user experience in chinese; everything I’ve learned about design was taught in English.

② My grandma treats Facetime like an audio phone call and does not look at the screen actively, plus her screen is not big enough for legibility.

③ She’s an 86 year old lady who’s just not that interested in understanding how technology is designed, she only cares to learn how to use it for everyday tasks. 

📥 Outcome:

① She learned that I am capable of designing her experiences online, on her phone; mostly on screen and when it comes to e-commerce.

② She offered to proofread my ‘About Me’ section because it’s poorly translated in Chinese and needs a better flow.

③ She requested for a digital Lunar Chinese New Year card with 2 different versions for 2 groups of contacts; one for close friends and relatives; one for her volunteer club members! 

🌅 ROI:

① She’s delighted to have sent out 56 e-cards on time through text while safely celebrating this Chinese New Year at home. 

② I get a free review from a well-educated and wise lady to improve the quality of my written portfolio content in chinese (when she has time, she said 😆).

③ Praises from receivers thinking she designed the card herself since it had her name incorporated into the graphics. 

Conclusion:

I think she understands 20% of what I’m doing now, I’ve got 80% to go…One call at a time! 

Turns out, Serif fonts are great for helping readers read a large body of text, hence newspaper used them a lot!

How?

If you take a closer look at serif fonts, the small extra stroke found at the end of the main vertical and horizontal strokes of the letters helps our eyes line up and connect from words to word, line to line.

- Designer, Malika Soin