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.”

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...

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.

How an Archive of the Internet Could Change History

Jenna Wortham in The New York Times:

The internet is pushing us ­— in good ways and in bad — to realize that the official version of events shouldn’t always be trusted or accepted without question. And historians are constantly updating the record by looking for primary sources that were overlooked in earlier eras, often from marginalized figures. These days, such omissions will still happen, but we can catch them faster. Oversights that would have taken decades to correct are now resolved in weeks, even hours. We now get a kaleidoscopic view of events as they unfold, often in real time, on our screens and devices. History is not neutral or synonymous with truth, but the internet affords us a newfound vantage on the totality of passing time — the profound implications of which we are just now beginning to grasp.

There's a joke I often quote, I'm not sure where I heard it first, history is not written by the winners, history is written by the writers. The internet allows us all to contribute to the writing of history. 

Kristy Tillman: Inviting Yourself to the Table

Have you ever had an idea that you wanted to execute or be involved in, but it never quite happened for you? For Kristy Tillman, this was not only true for her, but at times it felt like the defining sentiment of her career. While we live in a world of interconnection, it's still so easy to feel like we're not making the impact that we'd like or taking advantage of all of our opportunities. However, instead of asking for permission or waiting for life to happen to us, Kristy urges us to invite ourselves to the table. 

In this 99u talk, Kristy challenges us to "restate the problem: How might [you] begin to make [your] own opportunities? By inviting yourself to the table."