user experience writing

Guest Bloggers Wanted

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Have ideas and thoughts about IA or UX that you want to write about but you:

A. Don’t want to set up a blog
B. Don’t have time to keep a blog
C. Just have one or a few ideas that are ready to “write about”. Not enough for your own blog.
D. Just want to test the waters and see if you can do it, or
E. Want to publish it to a new audience?

Well then… perhaps we can come to an arrangement. I personally love writing for my blog. It keeps me sane because it allows me to voice my ideas and opinions, while hearing your thoughts about those ideas and opinions. It takes me away from the day to day and launches me into conversations that I may never have had.

Unfortunately, for the next month or two, I’ll be too booked up to write as much as I’d like. (no worries though, I’ll be jotting ideas to pen once I return). And, although interns Chris and Kofi have been doing a great job contributing content, I thought I would give others the chance to contribute as well.

So I’m looking for guest bloggers for the Keeping It Real About UX blog. Here are the requirements I’m looking for:

The requirements

  • You have an idea or opinion about IA or UX that you are passionate about (could be anything).
  • You are in the field or you interact with/think about the field.
  • You are a newbie, an expert or somewhere inbetween.
  • You have the ability to keep it real :-).

    • Interested? Drop me an email and let’s get to it!

    Inspiration

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    Inspiration. All to often I find myself to be, what I think is, uninspired. It’s true. Currently I’m working on a project where my job is to help facilitate the MVP for a skunk works division of a major media & publishing mogul. The project lead asked me yesterday, “Are you excited about the project? Isn’t this project exciting?”. I looked him dead in the eye and say “Not yet. I’ll be excited when I know the answer”.

    Perhaps this is one of my fatal flaws. That is, my absolute need to have a great answer before I can get excited about what I’m working on. You see figuring out the answer doesn’t excite me. In fact, it stresses me out! However, with each project I work on I go through this same process, and at the end of the stress, I always end up excited at the answer, because I know it’s the best answer we, the team, could have come up with.

    Which brings me to my original thought. Am I just an uninspired person? What is inspiration really? Think about that for a second. What does inspiration feel like and think like? We’ve heard that inspiration comes in many forms, but what IS it… really?

    I don’t think I have an answer to this question… but do you?

    The Start

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    Part of the “5 Minutes a Day” series

    It’s Monday, the start of the work week. It occurred to me today how often I take that for granted. The beginning of anything is usually a critical part of getting it right. The start sets the tone for how the rest is going to work out, and so it should be with the work week.

    What made me think of this? People often times ask me “Are you nervous before you go on stage to speak? How do you get through it?”. My answer is always “Yes, I’m terrified. BUT I try to have a really solid opening, a really great start to the presentation. This launches me into the rest of the session, sets my foundation, helps me engage the audience from the beginning and makes me feel comfortable even with many eyes looking at me”.

    What I realized is that this metaphor could apply to anything in life. That having a really solid foundation allows one to build, layer on, make better, and that is what I aim to do with each aspect of my life. I think you should want to try that as well… you’ll be surprised how many good things just start to “happen to you” once you set this aim.

    So, this Monday (and hopefully many after) I’m going to take a few minutes to visualize the rest of my week and how it will play out. I’m going to visualize the successes, the hurdles, the goods and the bads (mostly the goods), and see if that helps me to take a new and different approach to my week, a better approach that extends me beyond my normal possibilities. Let’s see what happens!

    5 Minutes a Day

    Published on
    Part of the 5 Minutes a Day blog series

    Recently, I’ve started trying to focus more on my business strategy as well as my personal growth “strategy”. As part of this, I’ve committed to myself to write for at least 5 minutes a day. I’m trying to write in the morning time, when my ideas are still fresh, and I’m trying to write without rhyme or reason, meaning I don’t have any specific topic in mind. Each day I am to sit down, start the timer, then see what happens.

    Initially, my aim was not to share these writings. I thought of them more as diary postings or notes in my journal, if you will. But, what I realized this morning was that all too often we hide our thoughts from the world. Obviously, broadcasting your inner most thoughts and secrets is probably not comfortable for you (it’s not for me!), but we tend to close off way more than just our inner most thoughts.

    We hold back our thoughts, for fear that we are not smart enough, that we will be judged, and that those judgements define who we are. I believe that that is a mistake. I, personally, have been holding back too long, and I see many others, within my profession, and outside of it, doing the same thing.

    We need to open up. Opening up means writing down or speaking random ideas that your sub conscious, or your conscious has been trying to tell you. Opening up means removing the veil and letting light into your brain. By opening up, sharing your ideas, putting them out in the world for everyone to see; you are making room for more ideas to come in, or for existing ideas to grow.

    And so today starts my attempt at opening up. I had no plan for this piece, nor do I have a plan for future pieces. This is simply me opening up, leaking information out of my brain, hoping you’ll read it and provide more ideas on it so that it can either grow, or I can let go of it for all time.

    Oops! There’s my timer.