Category: Process Get PersonalPage 1 of 2
In practicing self-awareness to determine what matters regardless of what tools you use.
So something didn’t work out. Whatever it was, it stopped you in your tracks. Sheer force of will may be enough to get back on the horse, but how do you stay up once you’re back there?
Sometimes in the course of day-to-day work, solutions may lie in something less structured than our regular rhythm. Sometimes you need to step away to get a clearer view of where to go.
Once you’ve got the functionality you need, there’s plenty that can be done to simplify an interface by stripping it down one piece at a time.
I’ve taken college and company-sponsored speaking classes, and while those have been helpful, the most effective techniques for me were the ones I learned from a singing class.
Leaving old experiences alone is simply not a neutral choice. Old UI incurs a cost: it decays over time, and as long as it exists, it will come back to bite you. How do you deal with the zombies in your UI?
We’re all time-constrained at work. In this kind of regiment we each track our own time and goals, and can feel the pressure to keep moving. Sometimes the best thing to do is to pause, and let others take the conversation forward.
Personas are stand-ins for real people – abstractions that can be as specific or general as you need them to be. That kind of abstraction may seem unnecessary, but I’ve have come to realize that they are extremely useful for a particular type of project.
Without a shared understanding of the goals and priorities, you may optimize towards the solutions that are easiest to measure. You may, in effect, game your own system.
Getting feedback can be revealing in more ways than you might expect. Listen for the emotional reactions, the ones that comes from that deep-seated “reptile” part of our brain, for cues that there is more to be understood.
If you do it yourself, how far should you go? If you’re feeling like you should do it yourself, especially if you have some skill or knowledge about it already, weigh the DIY option carefully.