Tell me about yourself. Where are you from, your educational background and any previous experience that you may have.

There's a lot. I don't know where to start! I'm originally born in China but I'm from Toronto, Canada. I went to school in U of T (University of Toronto) and got a degree in arts management.

What did you do after that?

It's been quite a long journey actually. While I was in arts management, I was majoring in studio art, my internships were mostly in the educational realm for arts and not-for-profit organizations such galleries and theaters. I worked at the Young People’s Theatre (Toronto) as the educational coordinator for their summer camp program. . Then later on I did a public relations degree. I worked at my city’s food bank in public relations. I later transitioned myself into digital marketing and worked at different agencies as a freelance writer and advertisement campaigns account manager. While I was doing all that I was also helping my parents build their tutoring business in Toronto. Eventually I quit everything I was doing and helped my parents build the school.

I started a children’s journalism program called Voice K, where I took young kids to different events and locations in the Toronto area.. The children were learning communication skills such as how to interview people and speak with confidence. The students then wrote and published all the articles in magazines and online. We also created a YouTube channel to publish the interview videos. The program helped children learn more about media and how to write better. I worked on that program for five years.

My husband lives in New York so I moved from Canada to the US to be with him. While in NY I went back to digital marketing for a while, but decided that wasn’t what I wanted to pursue. My husband is a software engineer and he was working on some VR (virtual reality) projects and I thought that was very interesting. I really wanted to do something with emerging technology, especially with VR and AR (augmentative reality). I also wanted to stay in the educational field. That's how I ended up at DMDL.

Which program are you enrolled in? When did you enter the program?

DMDL. I started last fall. So it's really quite recent!

It sounds like you have a lot of experience. It must be very helpful to have all that background experience.

Yes, definitely! I think it really builds on what I'm doing right now. Definitely my theater and business owner days gave me some ideas on how to interact with children and parents. It helped with building my communication skills and also understanding the educational realm.

Why did you choose to pursue this degree? How did you hear about it?

Like I said, I really wanted to do something with high-end technology in the educational field. I really just Googled "technology education" and the ECT program jumped out. I read through it and researched the program and thought it was the perfect match for me.

What are your long term objectives? What do you hope to do with the degree?

I don't know yet to be honest! I'm really enjoying working at the museum right now. But I also want to explore different opportunities . To me, if I keep doing what I really love to do, that's what really matters in life. So, I don't have a long term goal. I just want to enjoy my life.

What do you think is unique or special about the DMDL program?

I really think the people are the most special. At least with my year. I see most people coming into the program have a lot of experience already, like me. So I feel that I can learn from what they have learned previously from their experience. It is nice to work with them since they are all very professional and very mature. You are really interacting with so many different people and learning things that are exciting. Some people are even lawyers and psychiatrists! They have all different backgrounds. It's really, really cool!

Have you encountered any challenges while in the program? If you have, please explain what they are and how you overcame them.

I think the first semester was really rough. The second one as well. (laughing) I think the whole course was really rough, especially for someone like me. I haven't been in school for quite some years. Coming back here and writing so many papers and reading so many pages, that I haven't been reading for the past 10 years was really hard. So I think getting used to the course workload and being able to catch up with everything is important. The first semester was really difficult, but I think it's a good challenge . Now I am much further in the research and theory, rather than just practical application. It's a great deal of pressure but it pushes you to a master's degree level.

I heard that you are in the middle of an internship. Can you tell me about that?

Right now I am doing an internship at the American Museum of Natural History. My title keeps changing. I started the internship as a user interface/user experience designer for the Science Visualization Group (SciViz). It's a really interesting position. When I entered the program I said I wanted to do VR and AR. I was very lucky. The SciViz group was doing a VR project at that moment when I started the internship in February. So I got exactly what I wanted to do.

They were working on the T-Rex VR exhibit. I got to work with all the VR equipment and I was also able to do some interaction design for the game. The first couple of months was more about launching the VR. They launched in March and now it's open to the public. It's a multiplayer museum Virtual Reality game. In the first part you build a T-Rex skeleton together with two other players. Then the T-Rex comes to life. It's a really cool concept. I think this is the first multiplayer VR in any museum in America. The challenge in doing this was that nobody has done this before so there were a lot of challenges and everyone had to figure it out together. We are working in partnership with HTC who sponsored the HTC Vive VR headsets. Then we were working with another company to develop the software. We were working with scientists and consultants to make sure there is scientific accuracy of how the T-Rex is represented. So there are a lot of different parts of the project that is very, very interesting.

As I said, I got really lucky. I got to work on what I wanted to work on and my time was really valued there. I have a VR headset at home and I already had experience with hardware and software so I was able to help immediately. After that, we immediately launched into AR development where you can scan your phone in your living room and load the T-Rex on your phone. It blends the current environment that you have with the virtual object. That's kind of the next project I worked on. For that semester I took an AR class from the IDM (Integrated Digital Media) program. So it worked really well together because I was able to use what I learned in class and then combine it with what they were trying to do. The project was very different so I had to learn a lot of new skills. My supervisor taught me a lot of new skills and I was able to be an important part of the delivery team of the AR project. I am really proud of it! It's also live now if you download the museum official app it will be part of the app.

So many things have happened! It has been a really rewarding experience because timing worked out, my skills matched, and a lot of things happened at the same time which never happened before at an intern position.Sometimes you just need a little bit of luck in this kind of thing too to get the experience you want.

Are you continuing this internship throughout the year?

The internship was supposed to end in mid-May since it was only a three month internship. Because of the busy schedule for delivering of the AR project, they extended my contract. After that, we are now going back to VR to the T-Rex VR. We are doing a home version instead of the museum version which we are developing for people who have a VR headset at home to play in their home. It will be for a single player, not multiplayer and there will be some changes. Because we are delivering that and since I had been on the project since the beginning, that is why they are keeping me until the end of the summer when they finish delivering. So that's really, really exciting because we actually submitted the museum version to Siggraph - a big computer science conference in L.A. We submitted our project to a science festival and then it got admitted and we are exhibiting there.I will be likely to go to the conference with my coworkers to present the museum multi-player T-Rex experience.

They are keeping me on until the end of August for now. We'll see what happens from there. With not-for-profit organizations you need to know that a lot of the times it's budget issues. If they don't get the budget they can't really do anything about it no matter how much you want a person to stay. So I guess we'll see what happens. Even if the internship and experience ends in August, I am still really grateful. I feel like I learned so much from this experience and I wouldn't mind to go on and try something new.

How were you able to balance your work and school schedules? It sounds like both keep you busy.

It is a little insane. I was only working two days a week when school was in. I know some internships require three days a week. Usually people do [internships] in the third semester because you have one class to take [aside from thesis]. That would work probably much better. I had three classes and the internship. It was really insane! I also have another part time job and I have a jewelry business.. It's been a little bit crazy. I was doing so many things at the same time. That's where my body kind of couldn't catch up. In April I kind of had a breakdown and I had to take off [from] school for two weeks and I had to take off [from] work for two weeks. I couldn't catch up with everything I was doing. I would definitely not recommend doing so many things at the same time!

Are you taking classes in the summer?

No. I am not. But even as I say that, I did not plan to have the internship keep going. I didn't plan the boost in my jewelry business. There's a lot of things you never expect. I thought I’d have a relaxing summer. But no.

Can you tell me something you wish you knew before starting the program that you can tell students who are about to begin? Something that would have been helpful to know at the beginning.

They do tell you that the workload will be insane but you can't imagine it until you are there. I think it's really [learning] how to manage your time better. Like I said, most people in this program are adults. They know mostly how to manage their time. Don't do things last minute. I think that's the most important plan. Another thing I recommend [is to] try to take classes outside the program so that you can learn [in] different cultures. It’s interesting to see how people outside of you program think.

What would you say the program culture is at DMDL?

[In] DMDL it's really the people that put it together. Everyone is really nice. They are really cooperative if you have a question you can always feel that you can reach out to your classmates and ask about it. You feel that everyone is open and sharing. I feel that is a very important aspect of a program that you want to be in.

Do you have any other thoughts you would like to share?

I think I really already shared a lot. I think I would really recommend people do an internship. A formal internship is very different. I had already done a lot of internships in my life because I was in arts management and public relations. Each career you need to do a lot of internships to get proficient. I feel like definitely all internship experiences that I had really built to who I am today. The little things you learn at each of the internships really help you especially if you have an official mentor on the team to help you go through things. Some jobs may be great but it's very different when you are working at an internship and formal mentorship. You have a team of people to reach out to. So I would definitely tell people to try more internships so you can decide what you want to be or what you want your thesis to be focused on.

Don't be afraid to network. Don't be afraid to talk to people. Especially those projects that you do with real clients. Those are real assets. All the clients you work with are going to be your future bosses or your future clients or your personal project. So there are a lot of things I guess. Always maintain a good relationship, always reach out and tell them what you are capable of and show all the skills you have. That is really important.