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.

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!

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:

• Omnigraffle (by Jeff Callender)
• Axure RP (*.rplib – See instructions here)
• Power Point Template (*.potx)
• Power Point Presentation (*.pptx)
• Keynote (*.key)
• Lucid Chart

This would not be possible without the lovely Peter Morville and Jeff Callender, who graciously shared these illustrators from their Search Patterns book. Thanks again guys!

Is there another format you’d like to see? Leave a comment and I’ll create new formats depending on demand.

Things I am bad at:

I am not good at expressing my feelings. Oddly, I am good at reading other people’s feelings. It’s hard to reconcile how the two are possible in the same person, but I have years of data (aka experience and stories) to prove this. I have been particularly excellent at applying this professionally and have found the ability to distinguish subtle emotions key to solving problems and helping people.

For a long time I subscribed to the very limiting (and limited) perspective that emotions and feelings made people less adept to do what they needed to do. Almost every situation or problem I have encountered in my life I have tried to reduce to a logical problem. By framing something as a problem, you immediately set yourself up for success because problems have solutions. However, I have come to learn that not all things are solvable. More importantly, not all things require a solution. I only learned this when I came to realize how unsuccessful I had been at solving my own “problems”.

When you learn something significant about yourself you have four choices:

1. Deny it
2. Ignore it
3. Sublimate it
4. Address it.

I am great at doing #2 and quite excellent at #3. I don’t know why that’s how I respond to things but at least I’ve come to accept that is true since learning it. I am able to do #1, but I have a strong desire to learn about the world and myself so it doesn’t happen as frequently. The reality is that only #4 is a healthy viable option.

The past three years have been particularly difficult for me because I decided I wanted to figure out why I am bad at the items I listed above and chose option #4 as the path to understanding what I found. I don’t recall being more frustrated, dissatisfied, helpless and exhausted in my life.

In situations where objective problem-solving was the focus, I always perceived the expression of emotions and feelings as a weakness. It is much easier to solve a “problem” when you can discard what is “fuzzy” and that is precisely what emotions and feelings are. We may even have a shared understanding of what some of them mean, but because these things are by nature felt, the way I see it will never be the same as how you see it.

About two years ago I found myself incredibly frustrated due to my inability to address the things I set out to address. At the time I did not realize it was, for the most part, because they were all feelings and emotions. I also was surprised to find that most of the things that seemed hard in this category were all things about myself. Everything that was about the world and other people seemed incredibly easy in comparison to how hard it was to solve the “problems” in my internal dialogue. When you are bad at expressing feelings and emotions, you lack the right level of appreciation for the types of issues you are trying to solve within yourself.

Language is key. If you can’t express what something is, you can’t truly think about it. I literally had to start from scratch. What is anger? What is contentment? What is frustration? What is joy? I still suck at describing, even though I am better at spotting it. I will be eternally in debt to my wife who has always been incredibly patient with me in my awkward attempts to express my own emotions and figure out how to deal with these sort of things. It’s much easier to fight than to admit fault, to spin in frustration instead of making progress, to struggle and point at the wrong things as the source of issues than it is to get perspective and introspective enough to understand them fully.

Being aware of who you are and what you do is a really hard thing. I think a lot of people take that for granted. I certainly felt that way and in choosing to address it have only found further frustration. But I believe in the long-term benefits I can rip from this. It certainly is a leap of faith.

The point of no return is the point beyond which someone, or some group of people, must continue on their current course of action, either because turning back is physically impossible, or because to do so would be prohibitively expensive or dangerous. It is also used when the distance or effort required to get back would be greater than the remainder of the journey or task as yet undertaken. - Wikipedia

Allowing yourself to just experience a feeling or emotion and let it take it as far as it will take you is hard. That’s what made me think of the expression “point of no return”. If you allow it to just happen, you’ll come out the other side with something. It will never be the same because you can’t get back to where you were before, but you’ve learned and you are better for it.

I decided to write this up today because I’m feeling angry. I’ve come to learn that this is not something that happens very frequently, and when it does I am really bad at realizing that’s the case. In order to experience it I figured writing about it would let me make the feeling last. I was right. I am angry at a bunch of different things. And the urge to respond to this feeling with some “solution” is overpowering. However, there is one important lesson I have learned in these past few years: If you are able to acknowledge the feeling or emotion, sit with it. Feel it. That’s the only way to learn how not to ignore and sublimate it. Also: no judgment. There is no good or bad feeling, there are just feelings. If you make a judgment call you can’t learn from it.

I have about a hundred things I should be doing right now, but I’d lose a lot if I didn’t allow myself to feel the anger I am feeling. It’s a new emotion to my repertoire. Before I can learn what to do with it, I need to learn what it is. Clearly today my lesson is that anger is a constructive feeling because I sat down and allowed myself the introspection.

Jeff was nice enough to send me the source images so I created the widget library for us dynamic prototyping fans. You can still download the original OmniGraffle stencils.

To use it, download the UX People Widget Library for Axure file (3.2 MB), run Axure RP, then, on the Widget pane (located on the left side of the screen) click “Load Library….”. Locate the file you just downloaded (UX People.rplib). The library should load up and look something like this:

Related and of interest:

• People in Pictures: 8 Techniques for Humanizing Diagrams by Dan Brown
• Other Axure Widget Libraries
• If you have no idea what’s with the thing about the banana… #ias10

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

That is all.

I like music as much as the next person; I enjoy a really varied range of genres and styles but I don’t think I am as involved with music as most people I know. Everyone always has their iPod with them and they are always talking about this and that new thing they just downloaded. I tend to listen to the same things I listened to 10 years ago, though my interest is always piqued when someone recommends something to me.

But Concrete Blonde is in a different category for me. I’ve been listening to them since I was 12. There is really no good temporal reason for me to like Concrete Blonde. The band started in the early 80s when I was but a toddler and I did not hear them for the first time until 7th grade. A friend of mine had an album from her older sister, I believe, and while hanging out at her house one day she just happened to put it on. I was hooked immediately.

Johnette Napolitano’s voice is something out of this world. But more so are her lyrics and the emotions she expresses through music. I grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald and opera, heavily influenced by my dad with a non-stop diet of The Beatles and 80′s pop from my mother, but Jonhette revealed a whole different world to me in music.

A year after my Concrete Blonde devotion was instated, I learned that the band dismantled. I was a crushed teenager when I realized that the first band I really ever felt a connection with was no more just as I found them. How sad that I would never get to see them again.

Luckily, they did get back together in 2001, which – believe me – caused me to jump and scream with joy and brought tears to my eyes the day I found out. I managed to see them live several times both back home in Brazil and abroad after I moved to the US, including Johnette’s solo concerts. The excitement is inexplicable.

Another side bonus of this experience was meeting and getting to know other fans from around the world who felt equality fervent about their love of Concrete Blonde and followed them around at every opportunity. It’s a fantastic relationship. Just today I wrote someone I saw last in 2004 during a concert to make sure we were going to meet this June. I didn’t even have to ask if they were coming too, I just asked which cities they were going. Fantastic people who I would not have otherwise met, if not for this common appreciation of Concrete Blonde and Johnette’s art.

So, this June, I am planning to go to as many concerts as I can during the 20th Anniversary of Bloodletting tour. I have never done this before and I have no idea how I’m going to make it happen, but I think it will be a fun experience and (since the band broke up again and is only reuniting for this tour) an opportunity I just can’t pass.

Please donate today and help us make this happen.