Meet the 2023-2024 Leadership Team: Irene Miller, Treasurer

September 19, 2023 /

“I have found that studying people from
around the world to better understand their cultures
ties quite nicely into user experience research
into how users interact with information in their world.”

Irene Miller
Irene Miller headshot

Hello all! I am Irene Miller, the Treasurer for the UX Student Group at the SJSU iSchool this year. I will be graduating in May so I am excited I have the opportunity to work with this group before my time at the iSchool is done.

I have an undergraduate degree in Anthropology so I have been trained to take the human-based approach in my studies.

I have found that studying people from around the world to better understand their cultures ties quite nicely into user experience research into how users interact with information in their world.

I always appreciated that studying anthropology challenged my views of the world and I continue to find that challenge in creating curriculums, education modules, and demo apps in my courses in this program.

“Join a club – come to events – volunteer for a position –
learn a new skill – discover a new passion – teach us something new.
UX is learning about technology and design and people.
You’ve got at least one of those three mastered right now.”

My favorite experiences at the iSchool (so far) have involved projects and activities that required creating a product. I enjoyed applying instructional design principles by working with an academic library to create a learning module in Moodle (oh, Canvas, you look so good now!). A website redesign was the highlight of the information architecture class and had me wanting more.

I battled it out with HTML and CSS in the tech tools class making a website and came away with a better understanding of how good design improves accessibility. My creations in Hubs and Spoke have shown me I can do more than I think but the key to success is planning and testing.

If you’ve made it this far into this blog post, first of all KUDOS, but second, you should definitely come join us! Come as you are! One of my big takeaways from six semesters here is that creating community in an online environment can be difficult.

Join a club – come to events – volunteer for a position – learn a new skill – discover a new passion – teach us something new. UX is learning about technology and design and people. You’ve got at least one of those three mastered right now.

And I will end with a list of books that I have read while working on my MLIS – some were recommended by instructors, some were not. But all of them have helped me think in different ways about people and information. 

  • The Design of Everyday Things (Norman, Donald A)
  • Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (O’Neil, Cathy)
  • You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters (Murphy, Kate)
  • The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (Parker, Priya)
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