Personal Statement on IDST

What are interdisciplinary studies and what are the benefits of it? This is a question which many monodisciplinary people wonder. Interdisciplinary studies are about learning how to combine two or more single disciplines together and using the tools, theories and concepts found in these disciplines in a complimentary way in an attempt to solve very difficult and complex issues. These issues can range from a small personal issue of planning a wedding, to a world wide complex phenomenon such as global warming and war.

While an issue such as planning a wedding might seem like a small or even insignificant to global warming, there are many different views which must be taken into account. Typically a single discipline would not be sufficient enough cover all of these views successfully. When planning the wedding, you may need to know the cultural background of the families, an understanding of the weather and season of the location the wedding is taking place at and even the economical cost of the wedding. In that situation, Economics, Geology/Meteorology, and possibly two or more cultural background will be needed to solve this problem. There must also be a deep understanding of each of these disciplines to be able to combine them together in a way that is coherent and reasonable manner. Without a deep understanding, issues might be missed, generalized, or even ignored.

I will give a more detailed example of why interdisciplinary studies are useful with my own personal experience as an interdisciplinarian and my fields of concentration. The concentrations which I chose to specialize in are Business and Computer Science. In our growing world today, technology has become a part of our everyday lives and even plays a big role in many businesses. As technology continues to help businesses grow such as e-businesses and global business, companies must continue to use more advance technology to keep up with their competitors. Because of this, the gap between many businesses and their understanding of technology continuously grows larger at a faster pace that it is hard for them to catch up.

Because of this gap between business and technology, many businesses do not fully understand the capability of technology, and how it can help them. My father for example owns a small Chinese carryout and delivery restaurant. When we closed down our full sit down restaurant and switched to a small carryout and delivery, I talked my dad into looking into a computerize system for taking orders. While my dad is an excellent businessman, he does not know a lot about technology. Because of understanding of business and computer science, I was able to convince him that the sunk cost of buying the system would pay out over time. I also explained to him about how making everything computerize would make it easier to do the accounting work when trying to figure out the Gross Net Profit of the company. I am currently talking to him about other opportunities which he can take advantage of such as sending coupons via e-mail. This would lower the cost of having to print out menus and allow him to send them out less frequently. Because of my knowledge of both discipline and my ability to apply segment of each discipline towards the problem, I was able to help and continue to help my fathers business grow.

The problem of the growing gap between businesses and technology is not only on the business side. It can also be found on the technology side. After taking many courses in computer science I had noticed a trend of many of my classmates. They did the work which they were assigned in their own way which they believed to be the most efficient or just easiest to complete the given task. They did not care if it was understandable or easy to learn. They expected everyone to understand it, and if you did not they would say you were stupid and did not deserve to use their work. Technology continues to grow more complex and in the field of Computer Science, people want faster, more efficient programs. Businesses also want faster and more efficient technology, but the two different disciplines have its own interpretation of the word “efficient”. In the business world, it is how well the given task is completed and how much of the task it can perform before it requires maintenance. In the Computer Science, efficiency is based on how much memory is used to run a given task or which algorithm gives the best constant results. Because of these different views, something which may be more efficient in the world of Computer Science may not be considered efficient in the business world.

Because of these different views, it is sometimes difficult for programmers to create a program which satisfies their customers. A personal example I experience was in my Human Computer Interaction class I took during the Spring Semester of 2008. My group members and I created a program to search a database of files, but when we had people test the program many people were not able to understand how to use it properly. We had designed the interface in a way which we though was intuitive, but instead it turned out to be more complicated to our test user and forced us to redesign our interface. Vice versa, people with not much technological background who are hired to market a technological project would not be able to market it to its full potential. The marketers might even misinterpret the programmer’s description of the product and create false marketing based on the misinterpretation.

As business continues to grow, the gap between it and technology will continue to grow as well. Through interdisciplinary studies, I hope to be able to bridge that gap through my understanding of my two concentrations. With the knowledge I have gained by doing interdisciplinary studies, I will help the future company I work for continue to grow with the future changes in technology.