Filed under Me, me, me!
February 28, 2011 at 9:52 pm
When I was young, as young as 5, I wanted to be a diplomat. I had an uncle who was (and still is) a diplomat and so I had a model of what that really meant. When people asked me what I wished to be when I grew up, that’s what I’d tell them and when they inquired as to why, I learned early to lie and talk about all the travelling and speaking other languages. It was evident at an early age that what I found really interesting about diplomacy — helping people with differences get along to create something together — sounded stuffy and beyond a child’s understanding or grasp.
I regret immensely that I was so good at conforming. I think it’s because of this “skill”, my ease to quickly adapt and fit others’ expectations, that I ultimately did not pursue a career in diplomacy. Interestingly, I think this same characteristic would have produced a really valuable diplomat.
Over the past months I’ve been reflecting on my life and what I’ve done with it so far. It started from a professional standpoint, as I was trying to articulate what my job should be in the year ahead, and it extended to what I have accomplished as a person in this trajectory. It seemed like an inescapable analysis as I have worked over 50% of my life (I am 31 and I have worked continuously since I was 15).
I couldn’t tell you precisely why I became a user experience designer. I think now that it was an accident due to two factors: First, I came across the tools of design and was blown away by what they had to offer me – both intellectually and as practical approaches to do whatever it is I was doing. Second, I let my infatuation with the practice go as far as it would take me, rather than think of what it was that I wanted for myself out of this practice.
When I speak to other practitioners (and I have spoken to many over the last few months) about how they see me and what I have accomplished, I am humbled by kind words and appreciation. Those who worked directly with me tell me about what impact I had on their own work and how impressed they have been with certain abilities, such as making really complicated stuff digestible, managing difficult people and helping them turn around to a productive path, and being very organized (this last one being the most mystifying to me as I do not see myself this way at all).
Those with whom I interacted with in the design community at large tell me they appreciate certain perspectives I bring to discussions (even the define-the-damn-thing kind), specific advice I have given them through coaching or presentations, and have thanked me for my time above all (I’ve spent a significant amount of time over the past 8 years regularly volunteering on organizations and projects that are about advancing the practice of user experience design).
While it is truly nice to receive this feedback (Notice how all of this was affirming feedback. Believe me, the adjusting feedback comes immediately as things happen, with urgency and fervor, but never when you ask for feedback), I find myself incredibly dissatisfied with what I am doing.
I am proud of what I have accomplished so far and I feel confident about my abilities, but as I look back I believe I have forgotten what it is that I wanted to do. So much so I am uncertain if I knew that in the first place. Maybe I just need reminding, but I’m trying to resolve this now and I am finding it difficult. I’ve received really great advice from very smart people I am lucky to know and before I sat down to write this I decided to re-listen to a recording of Harry Max’s IA Summit talk in 2010. He talks about developing strategies and how designers already possess the tools needed for that job. In the last minute of the talk, Harry shares this:
If you know where you’re going, amazing things can happen. AMAZING things can happen.
And so, it’s profoundly useful not just to recognize that you have these cool tools at your disposal, and not that you can do strategy and you can do design and you can do this and you can do that. None of that on some level really matters. What matters is that if you have a sense of where you want to go, and you hold a crystal-clear vision of it (not in that “The Secret” kind of way, but more in that kind of “just get clear about what you’re about” and get clear about what success is for you, and get clear about what successes is for your organization), you have the tools that you need, the gaps are relatively small.
If you can identify what those gaps are, go close them. Learn the tools, read the books, it doesn’t really matter. You’re way ahead of where you think you are right now. Way ahead.
And, what matters is asking good questions, showing up in a non-judgmental way with an open heart and recognizing that you are now a participant in the process of creating the kind of world you want to live in.
I rewound that minute and listened to it 8 times. And another two times so I could transcribe it here (I HIGHLY recommend you listen to this talk. The transcribed part starts at 1:28:41).
I feel like it speaks to my frustration so clearly I could not find better words; I feel as well equipped do get stuff done as I could possibly be and yet, the “just get clear about what you’re about” seems very fuzzy. I feel no joy or enthusiasm in being this “ready to attack”.
So, that’s what I have been working on.
Filed under Comics, Good Experiences
January 31, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Since publishing the UX People Widget Library for Axure (with over 550 downloads to date!) many have requested other formats. Here are all the formats currently in existence. I’ll keep adding to the list make any others:
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.
Filed under Bad Experiences, Good Experiences
October 18, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Things I am good at:
Framing problems of all kinds
Making sense of complex and unstable situations & circumstances
Seeing the potential in other people and helping them succeed
Things I am bad at:
Expressing my emotions and feelings
Distinguishing what I want to do versus what I think should do
Allowing people to be my friends
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:
- Deny it
- Ignore it
- Sublimate it
- 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.
