Design things I do now that I didn’t do a year ago, Vol. 2

There’s something about a move that forces you to learn. Photo credit: Michal Balog, Unsplash

I have been a UX-er for a long time, but this in no way means that I will stop my own personal learning process. I wrote for the first time last year about things I had learned in the previous year. For me, 2022 was about learning, so I decided to write a second edition of what I learned in the past year.

Believing that my story could help other people

Saturday night I was out with friends and I brought up the fact that wombats are the only animal on the planet that poo in cubes. It made perfect sense, in context, at the time.

I am bringing this up because a lot of times I end up not saying anything in conversations because I assume that everyone knows all the same things that I do. Obviously that is not true, but it is something I do need to remind myself of this on a regular basis.

Now I don’t think that knowing about wombat poo is going to change someone’s life, but it does illustrate that I and you have something to share and, within reason, you should probably share it. Along with trivial facts about animals, I do know some things about user experience, design, color theory, typography, packing for three week trips using one carry-on bag, and all kinds of other useful stuff. I need to act like I know some shit, because I do.

Speaking at a conference

As part of sharing my own stories, in January I took a plunge and spoke at the DC UX Camp 2023 un-conference** about a subject dear to my designer’s heart, Object-oriented UX (also known as OOUX). Was it terrifying for me as a rabid introvert? Absolutely. Learning OOUX techniques has really shaken up how I approach product discovery, so I have a compelling story to tell about it. It has given me a methodical but flexible process to approach the extremely complex products that I work on. If you want to read more, I wrote about my experiences here and here.

** If you are comfortable with in-person events and in the DC area, you should totally go to the UX DC BarCamp, it’s coming up this Saturday. **

Writing about my experiences with layoffs