Category: Uncategorized

In spite of the organization’s urges to snap back to old ways (ways that got us to where we are, so are not sufficient on their own to change our results):

• My people are not overreacting to the politics…
• …assisted by their work in making us more customer-centric being shouted-out in public forums by the CEO…
• …who is also publicly mentioning themes that have been part of my mission at the company since I was hired.

This all is setting me up perfectly to talk about quality and how the product needs to change (i.e. what we need to organize ourselves to produce) at the offsite after Thanksgiving.

Also,

• I’m in the interview panel for the new product leader for a key product.

Interesting times!

I forgot that this week ended with Veterans Day. It’s awesome to have an unexpected day off, which is really a day to get a handful of other things done. And I did – I closed the to-do list for the day and most of tomorrow, had a lovely lunch with family, and the weekend is just beginning.

Meanwhile the confusion and “should”ing at work continues, but we have a leadership offsite coming and this situation has made my agenda clear for that meeting: “what do we mean by quality” and “what am I here to do.” Smaller topics can be set aside for now.

Things are a bit of a mess at work – a couple of key people have resigned, the 4th quarter roadmap is in turmoil, revenue is going up but there’s still plenty of ground to make up, and a recent launch and post-mortem has raised a lot of feelings and inspired a lot of shoulding among the leadership. (Folks should know not to should on themselves or others.) Even so,

• That fraught project and launch, the one that has caused a lot of teeth to be gnashed, is getting good feedback and excitement form actual customers, and so far few bugs have been reported.
• The roadmap, departures, and should situation present an opportunity (that I am happy to seize) to push us into more user-centricity and and agreement on quality, if only we can dispel some of the persistent misconceptions about the project triggering some of this swirl. There’s a leadership offsite coming up that I’m all too happy to throw a couple of thought-bombs into.
• My team is being surprisingly even-keeled about the whole thing. I’m so grateful!

The first time I rode a motorcycle I was on the back, clinging to my college roommate. He happened to have a second helmet, it fit well enough, and I was eager to get to the other side of campus.

He gave me two instructions:

• “Keep your feet on the pegs.”
• “I am not a steering wheel.”

Can you guess which instruction he complained about at the end of the ride?

Here’s a hint – it’s easier for a not-already-knowledgeable person to follow a positively-worded instruction (do this) than a negatively-worded instruction (don’t do that). It’s even harder to follow an instruction when it relies on a metaphor, as it’s less clear, less obvious, less instructive. The combination of negatively-worded and unclear is worse yet.

I should have asked clarifying questions, like “what would it feel like if I was treating you as a steering wheel?” but I didn’t think to at the time.

At work we just did a retro on a somewhat fraught and over-large project, and much of the raw conclusions are negatively-worded. Some are metaphorical. The people involved are knowledgeable but from different disciplines, so the level of shared understanding is probably lower than people guess. So a lot of “don’t do X, don’t do Y” will probably not get the results we seek. I’ll be helping to bend these into positively-worded instructions today. I suspect our success will depend on it.

I’m trying to coach some designers along the path of feeling comfortable adjusting and evolving approaches that have been learned in school (vs believing that there is a single “right” way and that design quality is aligned to how closely they execute against that “textbook” approach). I’d like to be able to share something with them that demonstrates that the higher one’s design maturity, the more comfortable/ confident one is with adjusting approaches and trying new things based on context and experience… and that this is a good thing.

I don’t have a framework or model to point to, but the thing that strikes me as interesting about this question is

design quality is aligned to how closely they execute against that “textbook” approach

It might be worth pointing out that this is an inward-looking, appeal-to-authority view of quality, measured in the wrong place. Design quality is actually measured by the attainment of user ease and satisfaction coupled with business results, and these do not depend on method adherence. The methods exist to help you get the information you need to achieve these results but they do not deliver these results themselves.

A decidedly ☯️ week, with each ⬇️ paired with an ⬆️:

• During a tough retro on a key project the team
  • ⬇️ expressed a lot of frustration with new process tweaks, an unfamiliar level of design involvement, conflicting wishes from the team, unhappiness with the overall shape of the project (though this was known from the beginning), but
  • ⬆️ was careful not to throw blame to any function or person, and acknowledged the negative effects persistent stakeholder misconceptions had on how the project progressed. THIS we can work with!
• Regarding some of those stakeholders
  • ⬇️ third- and fifth-hand feedback, amplified by loose talk and seniority, was brought to me as potentially damning, but
  • ⬆️ in general these stakeholders were open to feedback and clarification themselves and learned from our interaction. THIS we can work with!

A grab bag:

• An end-to-end demo of a hard-fought project went pretty well. We’re functionally close, but far from where we need to be in terms of a professional-looking and -acting feature.
• The Huskies won. As a Dawg in duckburg I’m torn – should I buy an away jersey (white) to wear around town or a home jersey (purple)?
• New mentees continue to appear. Some of them aren’t actually mentees but doing a little market or product research, but I don’t mind as long as their questions are relevant to my interests. It’s a tough time for entry-level UX people, but I hope I am helpful to them with my seemingly slightly-offbeat advice. Remember, it’s the designer’s job to do the right thing with the feedback they receive.

The month of October signals the end of the third quarter in our funny misaligned fiscal year. That’s useful, in part because I promised some things by the end of the quarter, and a little push is a good thing. So,

• That little push helped me make progress with revamping a set of moribund customer profiles, and the latest increment of that work is now out for review. Thanks, October!
• I got out and plugged in and noodled on my keyboard (nothing fancy, just an M-Audio KeyStation plugged into Garage Band), filling in little obligatoes to the usual evening Spotify soundtrack. Good fun, and long overdue.
• Fancy pictures (MRI) of my knee reveal what seems a relatively simple explanation for the oddball problems I’ve been having and have been slowly worsening over years. (Can I afford the remedy? TBD.)

I got to the end of the week feeling like I worked hard but didn’t accomplish much. Lots of managing, a lot less doing, and the things I said I would do by the end of the quarter are now hanging over my head a bit. But

• I have a solid plan for the number one item on that list, and the one thing that can truly block me from enacting that plan produces its own plan.
• New mentees are finding me and so far I’ve been able to help each one. It’s a mix of folks! Researchers, new designers, more senior folks, etc. Some of my advice has started to converge (apparently I’m consistent in what I think!), but I believe I’m giving an appropriate level of individual attention to each person and not spouting platitudes. I recognize that that’s an available danger and promise to be vigilant.
• I once joked that my superhero identity was “explains-a-concept guy.” It has been especially true this week.