"Which area within the HCI field are you particularly interested in?" It's already been over 4 months since I started working as a research intern at KIXLAB, and one of the questions I received during the intern interview last August still lingers in my memory.
Interests from childhood
I've loved art since I was young and I think I was pretty good at it. From kindergarten, I participated in art contests and drawing competitions almost every week, and during elementary school, I was nicknamed the "award collecting robot."
I always enjoyed drawing or making something, and by chance I encountered coding through robots, starting to learn C programming for the first time in 3rd grade. The reason programming was fun can be explained with the answer: "It's fun to create something that works the way I want it to."
High school and machine learning
In high school, I watched Andrew Ng's machine learning lectures and wrote a paper titled "Adolescent Depression Analysis Using Linear Regression" with TensorFlow. Since AlphaGo was dominating the news at that time, I began thinking about continuing with machine learning.
As time passed and I was preparing for college admissions, when I tried to write about my career path in my application, I realized through deep reflection that I had only vaguely thought "I want to become a programmer" up until then. Through my experience presenting about the difference between UI & UX in my sophomore year of high school, I came to realize that I was interested in the field of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction).
KAIST and double major
When I entered KAIST and had to choose my major, I chose Computer Science and Industrial Design without a moment's hesitation. These were the two departments I loved most and could excel in, and given the user-centered design orientation characteristic of HCI studies, I felt I could learn a lot from the courses in each major.
Growth and career direction
The reason I brought up my past story is that experiences from childhood have accumulated step by step to make me who I am today, and I'm still moving forward without losing that dream. Due to AlphaGo, the 4th Industrial Revolution, IoT, etc., the popularity of programmers, especially AI-related developers, has exploded.
The question in the interview
The question I mentioned at the beginning might have been quite harsh for an undergraduate student. Initially, I couldn't readily answer and was flustered, but this question allowed me to think more deeply about my career path.
Lab internship and research direction
I started a lab internship to seriously consider graduate school and gain experience before graduating from undergraduate studies, and I was thankfully accepted into the research lab I wanted.
During my internship, I conducted project research related to Human-AI Interaction (HAI). Through literature surveys, I was able to learn how to find papers and understand research trends, and I came to think that it would be good to continue in the direction of researching interactions with users in the AI era within the HCI field.
"I want to research Human AI interaction and become a developer who can understand and design the explosive growth of AI applications from a user-centered perspective"
Going forward
It's hard to be confident that artificial intelligence and deep learning will still be the hottest topics 10 years from now as they are today. However, artificial intelligence will naturally permeate our daily lives like smartphones, and developers who can design ways for people to use it effectively will be important.
I can't be certain what kind of life I'll live in the future, but I try to move forward step by step each day, thinking about what path I truly want to take.