Giant Corporations like Big Ships

Giant corporations are often compared to giant ships, difficult to steer & even harder to change course quickly.

For instance, old telephony & new telephony are competing. The first needs to prove the worth of their old technology (wired lines), while the new can jump ahead and offer many new digital features without having the costs of infrastructure to deal with.

As far as the audience/customer is concerned, they just need their service to work. They don't care why things don't work, or about the layers of difficulty you have to deal with to fix it.

UX of Being a Manager

There are ways to handle the manager-employee relationship.

One important concept is delegation.  As well as the inverse, micro-managing.

One allows you to give the employee freedom to make themselves strong.  The other requires extra attention to detail and worry from both you and the employee.  You both have to make sure you are super clear about everything, deliverables and expectations and make sure not to switch things midstream.

The UX of working with people is a constantly shifting set of interpersonal relationships, as well as suitability for the role and work itself.

The most important thing is to leave room for honesty.  And the ability to back out of a bad corner.  Leave everyone enough room to breathe & to laugh and you can find yourself in a very good working relationship.

Facebook Locator Fail

Facebook prompted me to check for my polling place and could not find it based on what I had entered.

Is a comma really enough to throw off the search?

Halloween Costumes for the Parade

It's best to wear layers for the cold.

And not to wear anything too big that could get caught on someone else in the crowd. 

And plan to be there early. And carry very little in terms of valuables or weight.

And over-organize with your friends.

Craziness will ensue!

A New Coworker presenting at UXPA

I had wanted to encourage everyone at work to attend.

But Manhattan is too far of a commute, whether you do it everyday or not. Everyday is too much, and to go that far on a day during the week (a Tuesday) is just beyond imagining.

And so the day came and went, as if it were a parallel event in another career.

But I'd like to think it would have been fun to watch.

The Best Commute Ever

I love the idea of flexibility of locations in my working life. Being forced to travel is one thing, and having the autonomy to express freedom is another.

Boston and New York (or NJ) for me in my current UX Researcher role.  Going back & forth, the variety is the thing I'm after.

Taking the ferry from NJ to Wall St to Brooklyn.

The distance I travel going to and from exposes me to the electricity of the city. And to remember who I am now.

As a job experience, it is HUGE. 

The UX of all the things around your job, and you you see yourself as.

The skyline of Brooklyn & Queens is changing.

In my commute in the suburbs of Boston,  I know all the streets. All too well. And there is not this variety.

UX of Opportunity

Combined with the ideas of Inherent Fallacies, opportunity seems to be the greatest moment for UX.

What is the easiest moment of any transaction to actually act on a decision.  This is after the choice.  When a person, customer, user wants to do something, and then see feedback from the system to know that are doing what they intend.  Confirmation, and knowing where they are in the process.

Microinteractions.
-Feedback (clear communication of what you are doing, relationship of the computer)
-Modes (what stage are you in? where are you?)
-Triggers (Clear call to actions)
-Rules (Things should not be a surprise, there are rules in this world)

And everything you design, you should remember the person who wants to break it.  True for life and true for programming.  You are focusing on getting things to work, but the world wants you to be sophisticated.