writing

Is It Just Me, UX?

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Part of the 5 Minutes a Day blog series

I ask you this. Why is it that every time I’m on a project that runs into a road block during the visual design phase… why is it at this point that people start to question and pay attention to my IA work? Is it because my work is flawed (always a potential)? Is it because they “favor” the visual designer (highly unlikely since we are both teammates on the project)? Or is it because client simply cannot grasp that information architecture of a system?

And… can they not grasp the IA of the system because I am not explaining it clearly? Or is it that the idea is too abstract? Is it that IA is simply too complex?

I don’t have any answers to these questions, but today I am in a sea of deep client frustration. I spent months pouring over a concept model and IA that is one of the best I’ve ever produced, and now, at the point of design, it not only comes into question (which is natural), but it is deemed as flawed. Further the client has spent a great amount of time with it, and now wants me to address the flaw that she is convinced is there (as if I spent a few hours with it, and don’t already have answers to each concern and question she has).

So, I ask you all this…. am I the only one that faces these woes? If not, how do you usually handle them to help the client understand your point of view and your work, while also addressing their feedback and concerns.

~ Yours “Sad in NYC”

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!

Noise

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Part of the “5 Minutes a Day” blog series

As I sit here, listening to the usual pounding of the construction next door (which has been going on for about a year now), the thought came to me. Noise (not surprising). Noise, I thought, there seems to be so much of it in the world. In both the IA profession and outside of it.

In the IA and UX world there is the noise of what we should be doing versus what is being done successful. There is the noise of what should we call ourselves and who sees us as what, and the noise of what our profession is becoming. Not all of this discussion is noise, of course, but much of it is a distraction from real progress. This noise can become frustrating, and so loud that our brains stop thinking effectively about the points and questions that really matter.

Outside of our professions we all deal with Noise all the time. How I am defining noise here is not the usual day to day sounds of annoyance (like my good friends next door), but it’s the thinking noise that fills up valuable space in our heads like the worrying about our commute or the anxiety about what our boss will think of our work or even the big anxieties surrounding the meaning of our lives and where they are going.

My goal for today is to start to parse out the different between noise and meaning. As an IA, it is my job to bring meaning, to make the unclear clear, and thus I aim to bring more of this to my own life as well. To filter out the noise, so that more meaning can be exposed, that is the key!

5 Minutes a Day

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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.

A Break from Blogging

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It’s finally here! I’m leaving for Japan this Friday, and I will be over there visiting a very dear friend for two whole weeks. That means that you probably won’t see any new posts for the rest of the summer (things might be a little hectic when I return but I’ll try and hit the ground writing). But have no fears I’ll be back here writing again as soon as I can. I hope to see you all back here when new content picks up. In the meantime be sure to check out some of the Most Popular Posts from 2011 thus far:

Have a great August everyone!
konichiwa

Debunking the Fears of Blogging

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Lately, I’ve been meeting with several friends and colleagues who are interested in starting a blog, and all have been hesitating to make it a reality. In my loose research, I’ve found that the majority of them are all hesitating for the same reasons. In this post I want to highlight those reasons and debunk them in the hopes that more of us will get out there and share our ideas.

Let’s start off with the reasons that I have found that people are not blogging. In no particular order they are:

1. I don’t have anything to say.
2. Someone has already said what I have to say OR I think that someone has probably already said the same thing, and said it better than I can, so why bother?
3. People will think that I’m an amateur, that I’m annoying, an idiot, etc.

Let’s start the debunking of these ideas with a general context setter. The first thing that I would do (and did do) when I wanted to improve my blog and my writing was to create an experience theme. Defining an experience theme for my blog allowed me to not only stay on target with the type of content I was writing, but it also helped me to determine the tone of my writing. So, you might be curious as to what they theme of my blog is. It is simply put “Lis’ experience in the world of User Experience”. Everything I write here is something that I’ve gone through, thought about, experienced, etc within the UX field. This helps me to stay on topic and ensure that I’m creating a holistic experience with my writing. To read more about experience themes and how to go about creating one, be sure to check out Cindy Chastain’s article on Boxes and Arrows: Experience Themes.

Now to the debunking…
Reason 1 – I don’t have anything to say. This, is just not true. If you do any work in any field, you develop thoughts and experiences that are worth sharing. Just because what you have to say might not redefine your field, or change the Earth’s angle of rotation, doesn’t mean that you have nothing to say. What you mean is “I have nothing earth shattering to say”. And guess what… neither do alot of successful bloggers, including myself. What I say here doesn’t change the world, it’s simply what I think, experience, feel, or observe. What makes it interesting (hopefully) is that the audience can relate to it, reflect on it, develop an opinion on it, and move forward with that knowledge, reflection or opinion. So, you have a lot to say, it may not be earth shattering, but it’s there… trust me.

Reason 2 – Someone has already said what I have to say OR I think that someone has probably already said the same thing, and said it better than I can, so why bother? Let me ask this: Who cares if someone has already said it? People have written a million posts on Agile and UX, but that doesn’t stop me from writing about it, because I want to voice my opinion… even if that opinion has already been voiced. Writing a blog is about my take on things, not about surfacing completely new information all the time. If new information is all people wrote about then there would be a lot less blog posts in my Google Reader every day. I read posts with similar content to posts I’ve already read to get someone else’s point of view. So, if you aren’t blogging because someone else has already said what you have to say, then you are lying to yourself. Because there is only one you, and that means that nobody could have said your point of view for you. Be brave and let it out!

Reason 3 – People will think that I’m an amateur, that I’m annoying, an idiot, etc. Please tell me, who are these prestigious people that you get to read your blog? These people that you believe are all knowing and that would, for some reason, look down on what you are writing. Tell me, because I would love to get their readership here. I rarely get negative comments about what I write, and I don’t think that people look at what I write, disagree with it, then think negatively of me as a practitioner. Even if someone disagrees with my opinion, they still respect that I had the guts to post it in the first place. Also, who do you think is so important that is reading your stuff? What makes them know so much more than you? I know that when you first start posting, you feel almost naked. You hit that publish button and think “oh my gosh, what if people don’t like this?”. Well, if your blog is so popular, even though you haven’t been writing that much, that you have people instantly going to your site to read a post as soon as Publish is clicked, can you please email me and let me know how you got the traffic that you did. Because honestly, especially when you start off, the only people that are reading our friends, colleagues, and family anyway. Those people already respect and appreciate you, so they won’t think you are an annoying or idiotic at all. And if people do, even after your readership has expanded, then who cares? It’s your opinion right? For every person out there that is negative I bet there are 10 people out there that admire your courage.

So, I know this has been a long post, but hopefully I’ve gotten my point across. That is, there is no reason not to blog if you have the desire to do so. Yes, it is scary, but that fear is not based on any reasonable fact. Today, we have debunked the majority of those fears and have shown that they are ludicrous. You do have something to say, it doesn’t matter if others have said it because they are not you and you have your own opinion, and people will not think you are annoying or idiotic because most don’t have the courage to write themselves and admire that you do.

Knowing what we know now, we can go out and share our ideas with confidence. After all, how else will these ideas get out there, and how else will we be able to share them with each other? I love other people’s ideas… share them now so that I can take them in and love/argue them… please! Now, go forth and write.

I’m writing for Women in Technology!

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I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be appearing on the Women in Technology blog from time to time as one of their guest bloggers. WIT is a site that is committed to keeping women informed and knowledgeable about technology in order to fulfill their site goal, which is to increase the number of women in the IT field. My focus for guest blogging will be to inform women about the profession of User Experience and share my experiences being a women in the UX field. Hopefully, knowing more about UX and how it fits into the IT world will help more women feel enabled to build their careers in technology. I’d love to hear ideas for posts from all of you, so if you have them please leave them in the comments.

If this is a topic that you are interested in, be sure to check out the Women in Technology blog as well as follow @womenintech on twitter. Currently, Women in Technology is focused in the UK, but I’m sure that having their site up and running will influence women across the globe.

A big thank you to Michele Marut for surfacing this opportunity to me! Wish me luck on this new writing venture, I can’t wait to get typing :-).

Writing and UXD

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Back in April, I put out a piece that described my initial feelings about The Importance of Being a Better Writer. Coincidentally, around the same time, Liz Danzico was being interviewed on the popular podcast, The Pipeline, where she also talked more about writing (it really was a coincidence! I had no idea that this podcast came out until a couple of weeks later when I finally found the time to listen). Be sure to check out the podcast here. As you may or may not know, Liz is a woman with an array of different talents. One of which is her ability to write not only interesting and enjoyable pieces, but also pieces that are very clear and concise. At one point during the podcast, I couldn’t help but notice that what Liz was saying about writing not only helped to support my previous post, but has also allowed me to expand my thinking around the topic.

So what is it that she touched on that I wanted to share with you? Dan Benjamin (the podcast host) asked Liz how important being a good writer was in the space of blogging. She went on to talk about several points. One of which was the idea of being very clear and having a clear narrative throughout your blog. Essentially she was promoting and explaining clarity in writing. She touched on this in relation to being able to make points (by using very clear language).

Now I realize that this question was in the context of blogging. But it was apparent to me that this also had a huge tie to being a user experience designer. Being able to clearly make a point, to clearly get your point of view across is essential to our work. Of course, this is essential to our user interfaces. We need to design experiences and frameworks and content that clearly explains to our user what is happening. A great experience will bring users through a narrative, almost like a story, that has a setup, middle and ending, which in turn helps to provide an intuitive and enjoyable experience.

However, the ability to clearly express your point of view is also helpful with our business partners, technology partners and other design colleagues. It goes without saying that clearly being able to state your point of view is one of the most important things when talking process, design, scope, etc. Working to become a better writer is one way to help you find clarity in writing, speaking and designing, which then helps you to become better at influencing decisions and process from a UX perspective.

The last thing that stood out to me, was when Liz talked about the ability to have one clear message that your blog or blog post wants to get across to the audience. She mentioned that being able to do so, would help you to make your point in a clear and concise way, and practicing creating these points in short twitter like stints will help to improve your writings skills. So, I created a message (in 140 characters) that I wanted to get across in the post. It is simply: Being a clear communicator is vital to being a better UXD. Writing is 1 form of communication. Thus, being a clear writer leads to great UXD.

Would love to hear your thoughts/comments on this one guys!

The importance of being a better writer

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For those of you that are return readers (thanks for coming back!) it’s no secret to you that I’m not the greatest technical writer in the world. I have no formal writing or English background, and, I’m afraid, it shows. That doesn’t mean I think I’m a horrible writer, but it does mean that I think I could do a lot better.

I’ve been reflecting on writing skills and the importance that they have for people in our community. As an independent consultant, I’m seeing more and more the need to improve my writing ability in order to evolve. Here are some reasons why. 1. I use this blog to share my ideas and in turn promote myself as a professional user experience designer. This means that the people that are looking to pay me money to help their business are coming here and I better be showing myself in the best light. 2. Other sites such as New York Entrepreneur Week and Vator.tv have asked me to start contributing to their posts. This means that other audiences outside of our tribe (thanks Whitney Hess for the terminology!) are starting to read my thoughts on user experience. These are people that have little idea what UX is so I better be crystal clear in getting my ideas across. 3. As I try to break into the space of writing longer articles and eventually presentations, I need to learn to be more concise and clear in order to better reach my audiences.

Ok you’re getting the point. Being a better writer is becoming essential to my career as an independent. But what I didn’t realize, is that it should be a priority in all of our careers. Todd Toler, Director of User Experience at John Wiley & Sons, gave me great insight into why. (As an aside, Todd wrote a fantastic post regarding Anti-pattern: Periphrasis on his site Solid State UX that I highly recommend. In it, he focuses on storytelling and the art of editing through our work.) Basically Todd pointed out that the same skills that one uses to create clear, concise writing are the same used to create clear, concise designs. Think about it, if we can’t use words to get our meaning across clearly, then how are we communicating our designs clearly to our stakeholders and users? Yes, I realize that designs are not all just words, but designs do include words and, in fact, rely on them in order to function properly (labels, micro-copy, etc). More importantly you need words, whether written or spoken, in order to communicate the rational and functionality in your designs/wireframes clearly to your colleagues. Without doing so, your designs may never get budgeted, developed or prioritized in a work queue… in short they would never see the light of day!

Thus, one can see the advantage that being a better writer has in our profession. It allows us to get our ideas out of our head and into others. I for one am going to make it a priority to improve my writing skills and I’m confident that as I do so I will see more success both as a consultant but more importantly in communicating the meaning that lies in my work. I’d love to hear thoughts on how to start my better writer journey!