27 Memory Ln. > Writing

I have only recently started writing about HCI, but I tried to make it up for the lost time.

My 2002’s Master’s Thesis about designing the intranet for students was my first publication having Human-Computer Interaction written all over it.

I have launched a series of articles introducing the concept of website usability, all printed in popular Polish computer magazine Enter in 2003. The article on trends in HCI I co-authored with Marcin Sikorski, based on our experiences from CHI 2004, was published in

Computerworld in 2004.

And speaking about the CHI conference – my paper about teaching HCI at my university was accepted for CHI 2004 Development Consortium. A year later, the paper about Vista project I co-authored was presented at CHI 2005 Design Expo.

I also regularely publish assorted HCI articles on the Internet,mainly at Usability.pl and GUIdebook websites, both in Polish and in English.

2002-present

I have both written and typeset this article on history of icons in GUIs

While I published before, it was the computer games magazine called Gambler that helped me earn my stripes. My first humorous article appeared there in 1994, I joined the staff in 1995, and stayed until magazine’s demise five years later.

In addition to funny pieces, I wrote two big cover storiesand several reviews of games (many of those loved by the readers). Also, for five years I had my own column dedicated to game hacking and computer science basics.

What I was probably most proud of, however, was when editor-in-chief mentioned once publicly that “even though Marcin lives 500 kilometers from the rest of the magazine staff, it doesn’t stop him from being the most reliable and punctual of our authors.”

1995-2000

The magazine with my cover story on arcade games

The title page of my article on 25-year anniversary of spreadsheets

For me, the best part about writing about computing history is how much you can learn while researching the topic. That’s why I find it an extremely enjoyable thing to do, and I wish I had time to repeat it more often.

So far I have written five big pieces on:

25 years of computer spreadsheets(2004),
Macintosh’s 20th anniversary (2004),
history of Graphical User Interfaces (2003),
history of coin-operated arcade video games(1997),
history of pinballs (1996).

All of these articles were published in the biggest computer magazines in Poland (Chip, PC World and Gambler), and oftentimes received commendations or internal awards. And I definitely want to write more!

While I am more familiar with Polish (my native language), I have also written essays and articles in English. Some of them can be found at GUIdebook, while others will have to wait for the computer history weblog I’m planning to launch in 2005.

1996-present