Waking up from the dream of UX An Article by Peter Merholz www.petermerholz.com In no objective sense were things better for UX [in 2010]. Most companies didn’t know it existed. Most who did, drastically underinvested in it. Those who were willing to invest in it were savvy enough to listen to thought leaders, but that was a paltry percentage of the real work to be done. What’s happened by 2021 is that UX is not interesting in and of itself anymore. UX is a given. As Joe Lamantia said in a mailing list I’m on, “it’s furniture.” And the challenges and frustrations people are expressing are largely due to this maturation. We’re moving from “the dream of UX” to “the reality of UX.” Why I'm losing faith in UXUndoing the Toxic Dogmatism of Digital Design ux
Design Leadership Truisms An Article by Peter Merholz www.petermerholz.com PEOPLE ARE NOT THEIR JOB TITLES. TEAM MEMBERS ARE NOT “RESOURCES”. PEOPLE WORK BEST WHEN THEY CAN BE THEIR FULL SELVES. YOU CANNOT CALCULATE AN ROI FOR DESIGN. FRAMING THE PROBLEM IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SOLVING THE PROBLEM. (DESIGN) LEADERSHIP IS MORE TALKING THAN DOING. YOU’LL DO A BETTER JOB IF YOU LIGHTEN UP IF YOU HAVEN’T PISSED SOMEONE OFF, YOU’RE NOT DOING YOUR JOB RIGHT. NO ONE OUTSIDE YOUR TEAM UNDERSTANDS WHAT IT TAKES TO DO GOOD WORK. THE OUTCOMES ARE BETTER WHEN EVERYONE IS A DESIGNER. AGILE TRANSFORMATIONS ARE HOSTILE TO GOOD DESIGN. WHAT A DESIGN TEAM NEEDS MOST IS A CLEAR SENSE OF PURPOSE. YOU ARE ON THE FRONT LINE OF A GLOBAL WAR FOR TALENT. EVERYONE APPLYING FOR A ROLE HAS AN INFLATED TITLE. INTERVIEWS ARE A POOR WAY OF ASSESSING CANDIDATES. DESIGN EXERCISES ARE A BAD INTERVIEWING PRACTICE. YOU WILL NEVER HAVE ENOUGH DESIGNERS. YOU WILL NEVER HAVE ENOUGH TIME. THE SKILLS THAT GOT YOU HERE ARE NOT THE SKILLS THAT WILL CARRY YOU FORWARD. Truisms designleadershipteamwork
The Evolution and Fate of Botanical Field Books An Essay from Field Notes on Science and Nature by James L. Reveal To serve as a reminderSterile creaturesFurther and further away
To serve as a reminder Looking back at my notebooks now, the information seems fairly sketchy, often abbreviated, and fairly uninformative. The purpose was merely to serve as a reminder for when, that evening, I would write up my notes in a proper field book. Mental infrastructure memory
Sterile creatures Now that we are in the era of personal computers, traditional field books are being replaced by computer files. By default such “field books” are sterile creatures—all the words are spelled properly, the location data are exact to a matter of a few feet, and everything is properly formatted. In the spring of 1998, I penciled my last entry into my signature field book with the bright orange cover. Thereafter I have maintained a computer-based field book. Oh, all the right stuff is there, clear, crisp and, well, dull… I tend to be overly particular about it—the format has to be right, everything properly spelled, the descriptive sequence in the proper order, and even the observations drafted with the final publication in mind (rather than what I happen to see at the moment). The emotions of finding something new, once mentioned in my handwritten field books, are now missing, as if my mental editor says “no, that is not proper for a scientific journal.” notetaking
Further and further away In looking over my own forty-five years of keeping a record of plant specimens, I find that I am personally moving further and further away from the words I generate, becoming more aloof and separate from the experience of the actual event of collecting, concentrating instead on the precision of where and when. It is merely record keeping for the sole purpose of giving the facts. With the decline of letter writing and the sterilization of field books, what we are losing is the individual. Field books are like letters that are replaced by often ephemeral emails. I fear that as we move further into the computer age we will similarly lose the detailed historical record that field books once provided. Sadly, the personalities of botanists will also be lost, for such musings as might be found in a field book are often telling to those wishing to know more of the past.