../[ dariusz grabka ]\..

To be perfectly honest, I was admittied into my Masters program with zero funding. In retrospect, starting a two year+ project with no guaranteed income wasn’t the greatest idea, for a variety of reasons.

First, every semester I hope/pray to get a Graduate Teaching Assistant job, which luckily gets easier and easier as I accumulate “seniority points.”

Second, no funding means no specified project, which means freedom to choose any research topic I please, as long as my (very lenient/forgiving) advisor is OK with it. Well, it’s been about eight months since I’ve come back from India all ready to start researching, and only two days ago did I actually settle on a topic.

Eight months is a long time to pay tuition, and follow dead ends with literature reviews. Also, those months are expensive if you waste your time on partying, girls, video games, Union involvement, student government, keggers, new housemates, motorcycles, trips to Mississippi, Vancouver, Ottawa, and so on. Well .. maybe it wasn’t a complete waste, per se :)

Finally, I’ve settled on a topic that I’m truly interested in.

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This is information about design patterns that can be used in the design of user interfaces. The patterns I’m particularly concerned with deal with the look, feel, and behaviour of modern interface elements, such as those found in browsing “the Web.”

Patterns are often employed in object oriented software development and engineering, much more so than user interface design. I believe that by applying patterns at the user interface layout and design level, employing a “top-down” approach, we can avoid some situations where deep-system code decisions impede usability of the resulting user interface.

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