General Info Articles

General Info | 4 min read

Work-Life Balance Isn’t the Goal

Work-Life Balance is a great start. But, I think we can do better… I don’t think we were ever meant to attempt to compartmentalize work and life in some sort of balancing act. Work bleeds into life. Life bleeds into work. A hard season at home shows up at your desk. A stressful stretch at […]

Example screenshot of a factorio blueprint
Artificial Intelligence | 6 min read

Learning AI Optimization w/ Factorio 2: Modelling

What is this project? If you have not yet read the introduction, you can find it here. The abridged version is is: My goal is to create a system for determining the “best” possible Factorio factories based on footprint and cost to build. Modelling? So, one of the key things for making a maze solver, […]

Factorio logo
Artificial Intelligence | 8 min read

Learning AI Optimization w/ Factorio 1/x

Who am I? My name is Keith Hanson, I graduated from Rose-Hulman with a degree in Software Engineering in 2021. In my time since graduation I worked extensively with infrastructure as code and on backend systems. Notably what you won’t find in my project background is anything to do with AI. I took 1 course […]

General Info | 8 min read

Why We Critique: How to Make Peace with Your Fear of Design Critique

Designers, no matter their practice, have gone through some form of design critique in the past. Someone had to critically point out how the work needed to improve during the educational years. University programs are specifically structured with formal critiques in their curriculum; these help students get critical feedback to expand their thinking and learn […]

Close up shot of a ladybug on a leaf
General Info | 3 min read

Bug vs Feature Request? Your Users Don’t Actually Care 🤷

Your shiny new software just launched. The team expertly planned and executed the deployment. Your new product integrates seamlessly with your other systems. New users find the product intuitive and user-friendly. But, as with any new software, a few problems crop up. The Bug vs Feature Request argument begins. Is it a bug? A bug means […]

close up of a medical test monitor with a patient wearing a brain cap in the background
Embedded & IoT | 6 min read

How Medical Innovation is Already Changing the Future of Healthcare

I attended the Digital Health Innovation Summit this summer in San Francisco, which brought together leading innovators in healthcare and medical technology. They shared fascinating, cutting-edge medical innovation research being done by clinicians, scientists, technologists, and biomedical engineers that will fundamentally change the way we approach the diagnosis, treatment, and management of patients in the […]

Person writing content with wireframes
General Info | 3 min read

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Good UX Writing in Product Design

As a Senior User Experience (UX) Designer, I’m often biased toward products that look good and function seamlessly. But the words that appear within those beautiful and functional designs are just as important in helping users navigate and interact with a product. This important component of my job is known as UX writing. Full disclosure: […]

Culture | 8 min read

Celebrate National Intern Day with our 2023 SEP Internship Experience Wrap-up

July 27th, 2023 marks this year’s National Intern Day! Today, we want to recognize these 8 students who took part in SEP’s internship experience! In the last few months, the interns have had the opportunity to work on all different types of projects with real-world experience. Each day of the summer has been different, bringing its […]

DALL-E 2 generated image: Transformer robots playing guitar and drums in a rock band onstage, band poster
Artificial Intelligence | 9 min read

Helpful Tools to Make Your First Voice Clone Dataset Easy to Build

Helpful Tools to Make Your First Voice Clone Dataset Easy to Build Voice clones are really, really good now. And there are a bunch of companies that sell them. Do yourself a favor and spend five minutes playing with a voice clone from any of these services. ElevenLabs is not listed in that article but […]

person with painted nails tapping smartphone screen on the table
General Info | 5 min read

3 Reasons to Use Storybook for Your React Native Project

I adopted a dog several months ago. A roly-poly Shar Pei mix. The decision to take him home was easy. Navigating the adoption process was not. The UX of adopting a dog online is haphazard. You find the dog on your pet adoption app, and you send a message to the shelter in the app […]

SEP hex pattern overlay of person working on laptop
General Info | 5 min read

System Testing Multiple Deployment Environments in Cypress 10

Brief intro to Cypress In their own words, “Cypress is a next generation front end testing tool built for the modern web.” If you are not familiar with Cypress, check out their Getting Started docs and then Write Your First E2E Test. If you’ve arrived here from a Selenium-based tool, you might appreciate this comparison article from Cypress. I found this Cypress […]

General Info | 5 min read

2022 SEP Internship Experience Wrap-Up

The summer is wrapping up for the 13 students who took part in SEP’s internship experience! Within the last few months, the interns have learned a ton of new things, met a ton of new people, and made a ton of new memories. At SEP, interns work on real projects and are valued members of […]