Archive for Good Experiences
Filed under Good Experiences, Management
January 21, 2012 at 4:03 pm
I am looking for the right person join my team as Director of User Experience Design.
I am in the process of creating one integrated multi-disciplinary experience design practice (the organization used to have several separate compartmentalized/specialized departments). To become one team, I’ve consolidated the existing groups (40 people) and identified four main areas of oversight for our service so we can divide and conquer. For each of these areas, a director of UX design will oversee a team that will focus on a core aspect of our offering, developing subject matter expertise over time and establishing a long-term design vision.
This role has two core responsibilities: 1. To support and grow a team of talented UX people 2. To define and steward an experience vision for the aspect of the service they focus on.
In a year’s time this person will have taken a group of folks with information architecture, interaction design, content strategy, graphic design and other core skills and expertise, and successfully turned them into a team that acts as a unit.
They’ll have contributed to creating a work environment that fosters productive design practices, including training and practicing critiquing, presenting, storytelling, sketching and facilitation. The team will be capable of designing solutions that adequately translate into device-agnostic experiences employing a foundation of modular, responsive design.
Individuals on the team will have a clear picture of what their role responsibilities entail and what opportunities for growth, improvement and career advancement are available to them. They will be confident in the UX design director’s leadership and management skills, knowing they can be counted on to act in the best interest of the team and its members.
Executive leadership will trust the UXD director’s long-term design vision and have an understanding of how it aligns to the overall department and company-wide strategies and pursuits. That vision will be easily articulated by any member of the Experience Design team and used as a reference point to direct long-term design decisions.
The organization will have become accustomed to modeling approaches of varying fidelity as a method to explore design solutions and feedback cycles with users as a foundation for incremental improvements. This will signal a particular focus of the UX Design team on delivery over deliverables, solutions over documents.
Moreover, the quality of users’ experiences will be markedly improved by a concerted effort to establish a cohesive design system that unifies the service offering, addressing the core issues users experience. Given the breadth and depth of our offering, this will have been made possible through the establishment of a strong foundation of design standards and guidelines combined with a robust design practice and a team of individuals empowered and prepared to make decisions.
Are you that person? If so, please apply today.
Filed under Good Experiences, Management, Me, me, me!
June 16, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Next week I’ll be giving a talk and participating in a panel at the Design Management Institute’s Design/Management Thinking “Make It Happen” conference in Seattle. I’m excited about this event because they’ve framed it as:
We know quite well the value of Design to business, and Design Thinking to problem solving. But what remains a bit fuzzy for many organizations is the distance between thinking and doing—the proverbial gap between strategic intent and execution. Or, how to make it happen. This year’s design thinking conference will focus on closing the gap—and moving from design thinking to design doing.
What one actually does. I enjoy the conversations about design thinking but they tend to lead to a lot of hand waving and I have found many designers and specially young managers struggling to grasp just what it is they need to do (not just talk about) to produce the positive outcomes discussed in this context.
My talk, which could not have been more appropriately timed, will be a journey through my work at Comcast between 2004 and 2011. I’m going to talk about how the UXD practice was established, how it grew, changed and evolved over the years, and what impact it’s had in the company culture and products.
What aspects of this journey would YOU be interested in hearing about? DMI is recording the video for this session so you’ll have the opportunity to see it later in case you can’t make it to Seattle. Please let me know what points in this story you’d find most useful learning about or any questions you may have.
I’ll post a summary after I’m back. Thank you!
Filed under Good Experiences
April 26, 2011 at 1:10 pm
I fucked up. Web App Masters Tour was in Philadelphia last month and I failed to go. It was a dumb move. Here’s why:
Update: Reason 0: It was the only opportunity to see Kevin Hoffman speak on this tour. Boooo!
Reason 1. Luke Wroblewski: I want to quit my job and be Luke’s apprentice for a year. That’s how much I value this guy’s expertise. A few years ago when he came out with a book on form design I was all “WHA??? FORM design? B-O-R-I-N-G!”. But think about it: If he can get a whole community of practitioners to see past the inane nature of form UI and into how impactful small design decisions like that have in the bigger scheme of things, he’s a person to pay attention to. And so I have. I have paid lots of attention since. And he’s delivered gold over and over and over and over again. And I missed him at WAMT in my city. Ugh!
Reason 2. Josh Clark: When his book Tapworthy came out early in 2010 I had never heard of Josh, but due to serendipity (I cannot recall how), I ended up with a copy of it, sent by him, with probably the nicest note I’ve ever received, which ended with “if you were an app, you’d totally be on my home screen”. I had not designed a mobile application before reading the book, and I finished it feeling confident about doing so (and so I did). Josh & mobile design were meant for each other: he is really good at providing concrete guidance on how to design for its unique contexts of use, while being careful about categoric approaches given how nascent this whole thing is and how quickly it is evolving. Fortunately, I was able to take a whole-day workshop with him at the IA Summit last month, which cemented my impression and expectations. Now you can get some Josh action yourself.
Reason 3. Stephen Anderson: I’ve known Stephen for a long time now and was able to see him present numerous times (if you haven’t, this is your chance, don’t blow it). At first it was his brilliant visual design skills that caught my eye (you will not find more beautiful presentations anywhere. I dare you), but also, he brings a really interesting perspective to UX; a blend of education theory and psychology that I have not seen anyone else pursue and offer to our community. Every single time I hear Stephen speak, I come out having learned something I did not know before and, more importantly, a dozen questions on things I had not thought of before and an enthusiasm to pursue them. To me, that’s one of the most valuable things you can take away from a professional event.
Reason 4. Steve Portigal: I can count in one hand the number of people in the world I really look up to in the area of design research. One of them is Steve Portigal. I’ve been reading his blog since before smartphones existed. Yes, we are old. I’m not formally trained in research methods and mostly picked up skills as I progressed in my career. Everything Steve has shared with our community I have voraciously consumed. He talks about the stuff that makes a difference when you are actually doing research. Stuff that other people who don’t do research think is boring, like how to ask good/right questions in an interview and how to do analysis once you are done with the fun data gathering part. In short, he leaves the general hand waving about design research to others and gives you all the juicy bits. On a platter. So don’t screw up and miss the opportunity to ask him questions in person, like I did. #facepalm
In conclusion
I could really keep going and tell you in excruciating detail all the reasons why it was stupid of me to miss the Web App Masters Tour (there are 7 more: Bill Scott, Kate Brigham, Mike Lee, Aviva Rosenstein, Noah Iliinsky, Julie Zhuo and some guy named Jared Spool), but you get the picture. Even if you can only see a few of them speak and have to run back to work (maybe share with a colleague?), it is definitely worth going. I’ll go beat myself up about it offline now. Luckily, you don’t have to make the same mistake: They will be in Seattle (May 23-24) and Minneapolis (June 27-28), so go get some. Tell them I sent you. My name + $5 gets you a free coffee.
UPDATE:
I just found these:
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