Cap Watkins: Treat Your Life Like a User Experience Problem

Too often, the product design, product management, and engineering teams are thought of as three separate entities. This divide, according to Cap Watkins, the VP of Design at Buzzfeed, can lead designers to feel undervalued or even defensive when the product managers or engineers attempt to make suggestions to their work. Having realized this battle at Buzzfeed, Watkins proposed the question: “How do we create a culture of empowerment for design?”

In this 99u talk, Watkins provides a step-by-step process to blur the lines between the different product building teams in an effort to get feedback on not only the work being done, but also the process on how that work gets done. Change is complicated and creating the internal partnerships will adjust the way people work, ultimately for the better. “We have to realize that working together doesn’t mean we’re trying to take each others job,” says Watkins. “We’re just trying to be better collaborators.”

The Accidental Power of Design

Graphic designer Michael Rock, writing for The New York Times: 

The basic motivation for design is the very human desire for coherence. With so much designed in the world, we begin to take its results for granted. Often, what we have conjured assumes the sheen of inevitability, as if its results were inalienable facts in the world rather than the product of someone’s ideas and actions. In other words, design solidifies, and naturalizes, things that start off as opinions, stories and traditions, supplying form to the fictions by which we live. We rarely stop to consider the faith-based proposition represented by our paper money or the imagined national narratives engendered by borders. Unlike words, the meaning of which can be debated, the objective materiality of designed objects exudes a unique power. Once established, it’s difficult to think outside the systems and structures these objects represent.

How to Work Alone

Paul Jun for 99u, introduces the idea of mastering skills for working alone:

Working alone is about creating the space where intense concentration becomes easily accessible. When finally alone, it’s easy to allow a wave of self-doubt and insecurities to begin to flood your mind. Sitting in solitude for even five minutes makes you get up to grab a snack. Or to check Twitter. And perhaps the most challenging of all, you don’t know when to call it a day; the constant polish and re-polishing when your energy is low masquerades as productivity — or so it goes if you’re not prepared.

If you begin to work alone with only the toolset you have from working in an office, you may run into some trouble. Thus, working alone requires mastering a few key skills...

Jason Fried: Make “Creative Destruction” a Regular Part of Your Routine

While a common sentiment is to protect our creative routines, Basecamp CEO Jason Fried urges us to fall madly out of love with the ones we truly care about. “The easiest thing to do is become comfortable and complacent,” says Fried. And the more comfortable you become with a way of doing things, the more willing you are to protect it, even if it no longer is the most effective way to create something. 

In this 99u talk, Fried provides a blueprint to change our work habits. “When there’s a forced change in the way you work on a regular basis, you create moments to look at something fresh,” he says. “If you begin to do that, you will see it a little bit differently and you have a chance at making a change.”

Endless September (10 quick rules)

Seth Godin: 

Here are ten things to remember, feel free to share with those that are less experienced. Happy September:

Don't hit 'reply all' to an email unless you have a really good reason. And don't write, "take me off this list" to a listserv, because everyone on the list will probably get your note. That's been true for thirty years and it's still true. 

You may think you can recall a sent email, but you probably can't. Best to breathe three times before you hit send.

Don't type in all caps.

Don't buy anything on the phone (or by email) from a stranger, especially anything having to do with your small business, your computer, your Google listing or a charity. Just hang up.

Everything you click on or surf on or do online is being recorded somewhere. Act accordingly.

Backup your data, get tenant's insurance and turn on 'Find my iPhone' on your Mac.

When in doubt, restart your computer. If that doesn't work, visit duckduckgo and type in your question. You'll be amazed at how many people have had the problem you're having.

To become an expert in something, you're going to need to read more than the first link that comes up in a search. And before you forward something you're not an expert in, check Snopes.

Offer help on something you're good at to the community at least three times before you ask that community for help. Someone is always coming up behind you.

Don't believe everything you read online. In fact, don't believe most of it.

Bonus #11: Be kind. Thanks.