This document is a guide for writing and putting together SOCHI newsletters.

We alternate editions of SOCHI News.

Week A has just upcoming events,

Week B has two articles.

Both editions have an intro, a game, and the feedback section.

Writing articles for the newsletter… (Common FAQs)

“Gee, I don’t know what to write about.”

• You write about something that YOU are passionate about. I’ve written about sports betting, an opinion piece about grayscale, and a faculty spotlight piece about UMSI Prof Toyama’s research on smartphone usage in Tasmania, but it should be connected back to a UX concept or HCI in general.

Also, if you want to use ChatGPT, I would remind you that this newsletter represents SOCHI to the greater Umich community, so at the very least check it with GPTZero for at least “moderately confident that this is human”. I personally don’t like using ChatGPT to write newsletter articles, but I understand that life gets busy.

“What game should I put in?”

• I take a lot of inspiration from Morning Brew games. But feel free to prompt ChatGPT for game ideas. I try to keep the games low-interaction (prefer trivia style questions), and I put a feedback section between the question and answer. The answer includes some more facts about the question or expands on it. We’ve tried a few that were fun.
  • Trivia: a multiple choice about UX facts
  • Where am I?: take a picture in one of the SI buildings (or any building), and the reader guesses where you are (multiple choice). Pair it with a funny scenario (ex. Steven got lost on the way to the e-board meeting, he needs help finding where he is)
  • Guess the software: guessing a popular website or software product based on a screenshot or their color palette.

“Images keep disappearing”

• I notice this problem especially when images are embedded using an URL. To avoid this, download the image to your computer and upload it. Don’t embed the image using an URL.

Formatting newsletters

We use Gmail Email Templates, which is downloaded from the Chrome Web Store. It’s a little clunky, but it's free! (the most important part lol)

1. Download Chrome, and log into your Gmail account on it.
2. Create an account on Gmail Templates.
3. Create a blank template to generate a folder in your personal Google Drive. You can delete this later.
4. Create a shortcut of your Gmail Template folder in the Newsletters in the SOCHI Drive 2024-2025.
5. Change the name of the shortcut to be “[your initials] Gmail Template”. Do NOT change the name of the original Gmail Templates folder.