Three wins for this week:

1. Never mind my thoughts about NPS, which I have not written up here but should (edit: See "The trouble with NPS"). Our company Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is five. Five is not terrible as it's above zero, but it's not something to crow about either. That of my team is eighty. If you're curious about eNPS, Qualtrics has an okay writeup. Our engagement scores reflect a similar difference, albeit a bit less grand.
2. Workouts this week, while at the same weights and only slightly higher volume than last week, were unexpectedly much harder. I did 'em anyhow. This might have something to do with the third win; while I've been losing weight slowly, I've also been losing energy slowly.
3. I started with a nutrition coach. I'm in the "write everything down and don't change anything" phase, prior to recommendations. I'm not jazzed about taking progress photos, but I am excited about having a knowledgeable person help me steer my habits toward my goal of being above average.

Have a good weekend.

Past Belkin colleague Ryan Peterson recently began posting his "weekly wins" on LinkedIn. My impression is that he did this in part to steel his resolve during is (successful!) job search, and in part to begin a practice of positive self-talk. As he put it,

I find it easy to be encouraging and optimistic when talking about others. In the past, however, I have struggled to talk to myself in the same positive way.

Ryan Peterson, Weekly Wins #1

But recognizing my own wins doesn’t come easily. We use 15Five at work, and each week are asked "what went well last week?" This is the hardest part of my 15Five check in to fill in. Ryan points out,

What I've been struggling to overcome when identifying wins is to allow myself to accept a small win, such as getting lunch with my mom. Also just the practice of taking time to write them down is "forcing" me to be reflective. I'm optimistic that as I continue on this path it will become easier to identify my own wins, and I'll be able to model this for my family at home, and in the workplace.

Ryan Peterson, Weekly Wins #7

Accepting a small win may also be a piece of my challenge.

I have already begin thanking others at work as a weekly practice, one I hope comes across as authentic; with this new practice I hope to foster an accurate feeling of regular accomplishment.

So! Three four wins for this week:

1. I witnessed people on my team enthusiastically collaborating and demonstrating gratitude for each other, suggesting that my effort forming a cohesive team is working.
2. I helped an embattled product time seize the crisis-opportunity created by the diversion of their engineering staff with a solid research plan and a method to capture what they will learn as they prepare for a new take on their product.
3. I had a lovely meeting with someone in People Operations where I got a sneak peek into our culture survey results, lending credence to insights gained by looking at exit interview data.
4. I used Local to transform my slow-as-something-really-slow blog into a speedy static site. I'm not shilling for Local, here; it just seemed like a quick way to make this change.

Same time next week?

A recent correspondent asked how to move his team from "thoughts and fears about plans" to action, and I suggestion making their next intervention a pilot. That way an intervention is an experiment, and can be evaluated, then continued, tweaked, or ended.

I counseled him to consider coaching folks to articulate

• the problem we see
• the result we want
• what we'll try, for how long
• how we will know if it is working or not
• how we will know if we should stop the pilot early

At the end of the pilot you can evaluate the results and decide to

• continue as-is
• continue with tweaks
• try something else
• stop altogether

with the same five points above for any change or new intervention.

Mathilda asks:

Can you all share how you distinguish product designers from user experience designers? I’ve been trying to determine the differentiation with other UX friends, but it still seems a bit foggy. Some have explained it to me as user experience designers focus on users and usability, and product designers focus on “everything”, i.e. the product and the business. Many of the user experience books and resources I read (Lean UX, Build Better Products, UX Strategy, NNgroup) though seem to frequently connect business outcomes with UX. I’ve also heard the difference explained as product designers having greater visual design specialization, but I’ve seen that in UX designer roles as well. Also, why not hire a visual designer in that situation?

Mathilda in Where are The Black Designers? Slack

It IS foggy, and as usual, I think the term "product designer" was coined to clarify but failed to do so (and introduced conflict with industrial designers among others). I think it mainly comes from poor mutual understanding of the term "UX" and what all a UX designer does or might do in different settings. This varies WIDELY by organization; in general, the larger the org the narrower the role of an individual contributor UX designer and the more the job(s) of working on a specific experience are distributed over multiple people. This narrowing of the role of a UX designer in large organizations has led to folks who do more than "Edward wifreframe-makin'-hands" to adopt the "Product Designer" term.

Here's what I see as a rough breakdown:

• Graphic: the visual design of things, especially print pieces, marketing collateral, informational websites
• UI: the visual and microinteractive design of web applications, mobile applications, and desktop applications
• UX: the interaction design of web applications, mobile applications, desktop applications, and occasionally embedded or physical interfaces, with an emphasis on arranging the larger requirements and workflows to meet business goals and user needs together, and the research required to do a good job of this (sometimes some of this UX role is split off into a separate Researcher role)
• Product: UX + UI

But companies don't necessarily follow this, and these terms mean different things to different people, and so it's always useful to

• when looking for a job
  • be open to multiple titles in your job search
  • look for clues in the job descriptions you are considering
  • explain your capabilities and aptitudes rather than trying to choose a title – use plain English
  • ask questions of your prospective employers about what they mean when they say they want a {whatever} designer and compare their answers to what you want to do (always a good idea anyhow)
• when hiring
  • be thoughtful and consistent with the language you use in your organization
  • explain what you're really looking for when you write a job description rather than relying on the title
  • eliminate needless qualifications and job requirements from the job description
  • write a job ad that describes daily and regular activities and how these contribute to org success
  • remember that a job description is not a job ad
• when talking within your org
  • be thoughtful and consistent with the language you use in your organization
  • coach managers and leaders to be consistent in this same way, which will require explaining why
  • plan needed capacity and capabilities before settling on roles and titles

How do I get experience doing a thing without a job doing the thing? By doing the thing anyway.

For design or coding there are two good places to start, and you probably should pursue both:

1. How can adding a bit of design or coding enhance your current job? Are there repetitive tasks that might be automated, information that could be brought together into a dashboard, metrics or research that might inform your work or the work of your team, places where quality might be improved through greater understanding or thoughtfulness? You can offer to do things, or just start to do them. You can learn a lot by applying new skills to something you already know about.
2. What parts of coding or design can you try with what you already have, on your own time? I got started in design because I found desktop publishing tools fun to play with in college, and used them to make greeting cards, tee shirts, and to enhance my classwork. Playing with the tools in ways that scratched my own itches taught me skills that I could later apply to my work.

In re point 2 above, my daughter mentioned to me that she might be interested in filmmaking. I told her, "you have a phone, start making some films!" Getting started can be that easy. Your work might not be won't be very good at first. That's fine. Keep going unless you find you don't like the process. Competence will come later.

Starting in management is a little different, but again I see two straightforward paths and it might be worthwhile to pursue both:

1. Offer to help/take ownership of small moments in your job where coordination is needed, process change is needed, or a problem needs to be sorted out. This will give you experience talking to others to learn about a situation, proposing possible approaches, marshaling the effort of others, and delivering a result. This is managing! Managing in small ways leads to success managing in small ways, which leads to larger opportunities. The reward for good work is more work.
2. Volunteer with charitable or vocational organizations and offer to help in ways that are more like 1 above over time.