By Pavlis Honors College
Humane Interface Design Enterprise (HIDE) focuses on software development and usability research. HIDE provides students a collaborative environment where they can gain real-world work experience and get a headstart in their careers. For students, joining Enterprise is more than just taking a class, it’s an all-encompassing opportunity to prepare for their future career, and find the industry they want to one day work in. Students elect to discover opportunities through many different projects that can be industry-sponsored. HIDE is dedicated to doing just that. In this guest blog, current HIDE team members share about their enterprise experiences, team projects, and how students and sponsors can get involved.
“I joined HIDE because I wanted to get practical, real-world software development experience. As president, I like to know what type of work people are interested in. Instead of asking what they’re good at, I ask what they want to work on because our projects prepare students for their future careers,” said Vidro. “While students can work on substantial projects within their courses, such as the Team Software Project course, HIDE offers opportunities to work on a project for several semesters with students who are from different majors and have various skill sets and experiences.”
Vidro continues by sharing HIDE project processes and highlights successful projects, “Within HIDE, there is a culture of helping others out and making a difference. Our projects are used by people, so when we develop a web app, we keep the user in mind throughout the entire process. We accomplish this by creating a simple but powerful user interface that meets the users’ needs. Whether it’s helping a user through the crisis of not having access to food, such as in our Health Resource Hub team, or making people’s jobs easier and safer, such as in the Chem Store project,” said Vidro.
Interested in getting involved in Enterprise as a corporate partner? Contact Chris Morgan to learn about partnership benefits and opportunities.
“HIDE has worked on several exciting projects. Early projects were the touch screen display studies and developed a HVAC controls mobile app. HIDE has also developed a citizen science app, CoCoTemp, for a scientist in Arizona. A web app for voting on music preferences during Winter Carnival was very popular. Recently, I think that the HuskyHunt website replacing the old Bark Board website will be very popular. I am optimistic that the app Little Brothers supporting drivers transporting community elders will be very successful and helpful. HIDE gives students the opportunity to work with a variety of clients to design and implement enterprise applications.” Robert Pastel, HIDE Faculty Advisor
HIDE Members Share Their Stories
“The project I’m currently working on, Health Resource Hub, will make a difference in the UP. It will allow UP residents to locate any resources they may need – food, legal, education, health, etc. This project, co-sponsored by Superior Health Foundation and the Western UP Health Department, is aimed at improving web access to all health related support and services in our local community.” Abby Myer, Vice President
“CCLC queue is a project that had the most impact on my school life as a computer science student, as it changed the way students can ask questions in the learning centers on campus. It anonymizes questions and makes the coaches more accessible, which makes it easier and less stressful to ask questions when I need help.” Jason Hoffman, Chemstore Team Lead
“HuskyHunt is a project developed by HIDE that offers students a platform to create listings for products that they would like to sell to other MTU students. It also offers ridesharing planning to help students in getting home and back during school breaks.” Joe Wood, GVSC Team Lead
“A project from HIDE that I think is really good is the Little Brothers project. I think it has a good purpose and if it works it will really make their mission easier to achieve.” Tyler Zetty, CCLC Queue Team Lead