I began my internship at Menlo Innovations on May 11th. Menlo Innovations is a small software design and development company located in the Kerrytown marketplace in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The location couldn’t be more convenient for me, since I’m living just two blocks away from the market. A three minute walk to the market, a two minute stop for coffee at Zingermans or Sweetwaters, and I’m at work in a total of 5 minutes. How nice!

I began the week in a pretty unconventional way. On Monday, I sat in on one of Menlo’s educational classes called Agile Explained. This was an eight hour class focusing on the methodology of their design and development environment. A group of about 30 individuals from Health Media joined me and one other intern in the session with Rich and James. Tuesday was even more unconventional, as I joined Rich and James and Menlo’s art department (Brian and Ryan) on a trip down to Sylvania, OH to visit with the innovative “mind mapping” organization, Root.

Wednesday marked the first full day in the “factory”, as Menlo likes to call it. This work environment breaks all the rules, ignores all the conventions of a typical software development firm. The space is open and collaborative, with no personalized computers, desks, chairs, or spaces. When my chair disappeared after lunch one day, Brian insightfully informed me “to grab one without a butt in it.” Later in the week, he would also say to me that “at Menlo, the only rule is there are no rules.” This is really only partly true. While the environment breeds collaboration and innovation, there is also a strict protocol to follow when working for Menlo. This combination of freedom and structure seems to work very well for me so far. I very much appreciate the transparency throughout the organization and the open and honest attitudes of the management and fellow employees.

Ultimately, I am really excited about the experiences I will have this summer working for Menlo Innovations. The primary project I will be working on is to redesign the Menlo website utilizing the principles of their High-Tech Anthropology practice. The HTA role at Menlo uses user-centered approaches to inform the design of software that is extremely usable for the end user. I will be employing these techniques, which are very similar to those explored in SI 622, Evaluation of Systems and Services, as I redesign the Menlo Website.