The method Well no, see, that’s the tricky part. I always try to come up with things that when they find out the method, the method is as interesting as the effect itself. — David Blaine Richard Saul Wurman, Understanding Understanding magic
Ancient magicians as innovation consultants An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org The Codex Justinianus (534 AD), being the book of law for ancient Rome at that time, banned magicians and, in doing so, itemised the types: A haruspex is one who prognosticates from sacrificed animals and their internal organs; a mathematicus, one who reads the course of the stars; a hariolus, a soothsayer, inhaling vapors, as at Delphi; augurs, who read the future by the flight and sound of birds; a vates, an inspired person - prophet; chaldeans and magus are general names for magicians; maleficus means an enchanter or poisoner. I happen to have spent my career in a number of fields that promise to have some kind of claim to supernatural powers: design, innovation, startups… It’s not hard to run through a few archetypes of the people in those worlds, and map them onto types of ancient magician. Those like Steve Jobs (with his famous Reality Distortion Field) who can convincingly tell a story of the future, and by doing so, bring it about by getting others to follow them – prophets. Inhaling the vapours and pronouncing gnomic truths? You’ll find all the thought leaders you want in Delphi, sorry, on LinkedIn. Those with a good intuition about the future who bring it to life with theatre, and putting people in a state of great excitement so they respond – ad planners. Haruspex. Those who have the golden mane of charisma: enchanters. Startup founders. People with a great aptitude for systems and numbers, who can tell by intuition what will happen, from systems that stump the rest of us. We call them analysts now. MBAs. Perhaps the same aptitude drew them to read the stars before? Mathematicus. Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview magicinnovation
Problems With Agile UX A Podcast by Laura Klein & Kate Rutter www.usersknow.com So that you can get feedback on it and make it betterI'm sorry, I love engineers
So that you can get feedback on it and make it better Fascinatingly, one of the other big complaints people had about agile is no iteration. I don't understand how being in an agile environment makes people less iterative, but somehow that seems to be the case. And I think it's because people misunderstand and think that agile is just about putting features out faster, and not about the important part, which is getting something in front of users faster so that you can get feedback on it and make it better. The most rewarding iterationsTo anticipate all the uses and abuses agileiteration
I'm sorry, I love engineers People are afraid to let design have time to actually figure out the right thing to make, because "whatever will the engineers do?" – fuck you, there's plenty for the engineers to do. Go fix some technical debt. Go fix those 700 bugs that you de-prioritized or marked as won't fix because you're an asshole. I'm sorry, I love engineers. I don't know why I'm yelling at them. But you know, there's plenty for the engineers to do. There's all sorts of cleanup. They can work on dev-ops stuff! They can work on their build process! Make it faster! I'm not worried about keeping the engineers busy. If you think that the only thing that engineers can do is build yet another stupid feature that nobody is going to use, then you're a garbage designer and you should quit. ...Happy 2020 everybody! engineeringuxfeaturesrepair