It’s been a rather intense week. My glamorous Great Aunt Barbara passed away on Monday, just five weeks after we laid her husband to rest, my beloved Uncle Davey. They were inseparable in life, and now are together again forevermore. Dave is the youngest of my maternal grandmother’s siblings. Their entire generation is now gone [Keep Reading…]
What UX did or didn’t do
Some usual suspects are engaged in a feverish discussion on what UX “did” to this or that related practice — and now is the time to stop it from further destruction! Let’s be clear: UX cannot do anything to anyone. UX is two letters of the alphabet, representing a philosophy, a process, a practice of [Keep Reading…]
My Year to Live
I am so excited to be one of the bakers over at The Pastry Box Project for 2014. The collection of authors is astounding and I’m very grateful to be among them. I’ll be published on the 10th of every month, so keep your eyes peeled. For my first piece, My Year to Live, I [Keep Reading…]
On Losing a Teacher: Remembering Christy Svanemyr
I was camping in Acadia National Park when I got the news. As we pulled onto the highway, I regained cell service for the first time in two days and my phone buzzed with incoming emails. I had promised myself a week away from email, but scrolled through them quickly just to make sure there [Keep Reading…]
War Stories: Stories of War
[Originally published in the series War Stories on Steve Portigal’s All This Chittah Chattah] I interviewed Holocaust survivors. Four words that still send shivers down my spine. Their stories were meant to shape my research; they ended up shaping me. It was the project of a lifetime. I was asked to conduct user research for [Keep Reading…]
“I Don’t Have Time to Lead”
I considered it a personal failure when I learned that a client team I’ve been coaching for the last several months has recently been working on deliverables without my knowledge. They haven’t asked for feedback and it hasn’t appeared on any project schedules. Where did I go wrong? In a chat with the product manager, [Keep Reading…]
The truth about the presentation process
Having the opportunity to speak to an audience who cares what you have to say and believes they can learn something new from you is a totally surreal experience. Especially when you consider that months of work pours out of you in under an hour. I’ve been speaking at conferences since the fall of 2008. [Keep Reading…]
Empathy is the Antidote to Shame
shame n. A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. v. To make someone feel ashamed. In her TED talk Listening to Shame, vulnerability researcher Brené Brown exposes the truth about shame: we all feel it. Shame gets in our way. It negatively impacts how we treat [Keep Reading…]
Speaking Up
Two days ago, a prominent designer named Sarah Parmenter published a post titled Speaking Up, in which she revealed the horrific harassment she has endured as a public woman in technology. Sarah and I have spoken at the same conferences and share a lot of the same friends, and I have admired her ability to [Keep Reading…]
Hostess treats their customers as badly as they treat their employees
If you haven’t heard, Hostess is filing for bankruptcy. Hostess Brands, known for making iconic snacks such as Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, is closing its plants, letting go of 18,000 workers, and totally liquidating its assets. A massive union strike and tremendous debt brought them here. But underneath it all, the real reason [Keep Reading…]
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