Who are you, and what do you do?
I'm Connie, a junior at Carnegie Mellon University studying Computer Science and Art, with a secondary major in human-computer interaction. I am an artist, designer, and programmer. I love creating playful tools for others and researching new possibilities in technology. I'm currently a research assistant at two labs on campus: the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, where I am making demos of emerging technology and assisting with computational arts tasks, and the OH!Lab at CMU, where I research chatbots and online community moderation. Last summer, I was a UX Engineering intern on Google's Material Research team, where I worked with Google Fonts and Material Design to prototype new web tools for variable fonts.
What hardware do you use?
I use a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2019) that runs Catalina. I also have an iPad 6th generation (software 13.3.1) with a first-generation Apple [Pencil]. I also have an LG monitor that I bought secondhand from another college student, so I'm not sure what model or year it is, but it gets the job done. I used to use a Wacom tablet to make art with Photoshop, but with Sidecar, I can use my iPad instead (and I lost my cable for my Wacom tablet). Occasionally I use a very old HP mouse for 3D modeling, but I'm more of a trackpad person otherwise.
I also use an iPhone X that I film project documentation on, but I have an iPhone XS on lend from the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry so that I can work on a Arkit3 project for them.
And what software?
On my Mac, I use the Adobe Suite for all kinds of work, from image to video editing. For programming, I use VSCode (although I don't feel strongly about any text editor, anything is fine). I also use iTerm2 and Jupyter Notebook. For app dev, I've used Android Studio and XCode. I use Procreate on my iPad to make art and Notability to take notes and do homework.
What would be your dream setup?
I'm not sure yet! I'd like to get an eGPU for sure for graphics and machine learning, and maybe when I graduate I'd like to set up a personal server to play around with web stuff, data scraping and more. I'm not too picky otherwise, but it also might be fun to get some digital fabrication tools when they become less expensive.