Howdy, all….

• The travel is booked. The incentive envelopes are stuffed. The field guide is revised. Now we’re just waiting for the recruiter to fill the slots this weekend and next week. I know it always works out but it’s nerve-wracking having everything but participants.
• While I wait for fieldwork to kick off, I’m doing the usual mix of prepping for upcoming talks and chatting with clients about future engagements.
• I’ll be teaching my workshop Soft Skills Are Hard at two upcoming events: in San Francisco at the end of August for UX Week and in London in October for Interact 15.
• Ten years gone: From July 2005 – Library rhetoric, my rant against the anti-flipchart rant, a visit to Adobe, ABC Stores.
• What we’re consuming: Jurassic World, Boiling Beijing, Rolling Pin Donuts.

A couple of months ago I moderated the “Insight at Scale” track at the Enterprise UX conference, which featured three presentations and discussion. The videos for each presentation (and our discussion) are linked to below as well as links to the slide decks. There’s also sketch notes for the whole session.

Video
Insight Types That Influence Enterprise Decision Makers – Christian Rohrer, Vice President and Chief Design Officer, Intel Security (slides)

Video
Data Science and Design: A Tale of Two Tribes – Chris Chapo, Operations at ENJOY (slides)

Video
Emotion Economy: Ethnography as Corporate Strategy – Kelly Goto, author of Web Redesign 2.0 (slides)

Video
Discussion

Welcome to the week!

• Our big focus is on getting ready for the field. Recruiters are starting or about to start finding participants. We’ve got a homework exercise assembled. I’ve drafted a field guide that I’m going to share today. And logistics: getting cash to stuff incentive envelopes, booking travel, preparing releases, lining up stakeholders to join us in the field. It’s a mix of hurry and wait for the next 10 days as we head into fieldwork.
• I’ll be at UX New Zealand this October leading a workshop (Well, We’ve Done All This Research. Now What?) and giving a talk (Yes, My Tuatara Loves to Cha-Cha: Improv, Creativity and Design).
• Ten years gone: From July 2005 – Cultural reverse engineering, Chewie is stumped, ban failure by banning the word.
• What we’re consuming: Old Bus Tavern, The Spoils Before Dying, The Memory Palace.

A hearty welcome to the week!

• We’re finalizing a few reports this weeks: discussions with client stakeholders, a review of our client’s existing research and secondary reports, and finally our own secondary reserach. In addition to giving us a lot of big questions to chew on, it’s also informing who we want to talk to for this study and we’ve got a screener almost finalized and ready to share with recruiters for fieldwork in DC and Denver next month.
• I’ve been waiting for about 3 months for a contract to make it’s way through the corporate purchasing process; we got one document signed last week and any day now we hope to get the next one signed and then schedule a kickoff meeting. Every week I think that that maybe it’ll happen next week, and then…we wait. Still, we’re all astonished at how long it’s taking!
• We got a new War Story last week from Susan Simon Daniels. Check it out!
• In London this October, I’ll be at Interact 15 to teach a workshop, Soft Skills Are Hard.
• Ten years gone: From July 2005 – Facehugger plushie, the end of free pretzels, squid spam.

Susan Simon Daniels is a Senior Design Insights Analyst at BlackBerry in Waterloo, ON.

In September 2012, I was interviewing people who had recently purchased and set up a smartphone. During the interview, I asked the participants to unbox and set up another, new smartphone to see if any usability problems emerged.

One of the interviews was with a male in his late 40s who worked as a translator for people whose first language was not English (I’ll call him “Rick.”) As he unpacked the box that contained the new smartphone, Rick frowned and sighed. I watched silently and noted that a few moments later Rick sighed again.

At this point, the researcher inside my brain was shouting, “Red alert! There’s a problem! There’s a problem!” After a few more moments, I turned to him and said, “Rick, I noticed you’re frowning a bit and you’ve sighed a couple of times. Can you tell me why?”

I waited, fingers poised to capture the fatal flaw that the participant had discovered in the product set up – something so egregious that it evoked a heavy sigh!

Rick turned to me and instead shared a personal story. Both he and his spouse had recently lost their parents. These major life events, complicated by delays in traveling to another continent for funerals and family arrangements, left a lingering sadness that crept up on Rick during quiet moments.

His sigh was just a sigh – not a signal of a defect or usability issue to solve, but a personal moment I happened to witness. We talked for a few minutes about his loss and how he was feeling and then Rick returned to the task at hand and continued to unbox and set up the phone.

We had passed through an awkward moment. I felt I had rudely probed into an open wound. But I had to ask the question. I couldn’t assume the frown and sighs were caused by the product or process. My job was to get to the why. At the same time, by taking a few minutes to let the person share how he was feeling, I was able to give Rick the time he needed to gather himself together and continue with the task at hand.

In the end, Rick contributed by uncovering a couple of areas of improvement for the product. And I found that taking a moment to pause, to just be human beings who shared a bit of sympathy, allowed us to resume the interview with dignity and purpose.

I’m reminded of a verse from the song “As Time Goes By” (music and lyrics by Herman Hupfeld) from the classic war-romance movie Casablanca.

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

And the fundamental things do apply: never assume and always ask “why?”

Ugh. The Monday after a long weekend is dislocating. The fact that I stayed up until 2:00 am restoring an errant PC is probably not helping.

• I’m moving forward with a large project, working through the articles we’ve gathered to try and establish an initial hypothesis as well as parameters for screening the most helpful participants. And while it’s fun to dwell in problem-framing, project schedules require we move forward, so I’m starting to plan the screening for upcoming fieldwork in Denver and in DC in August.
• I’m serving as player-coach for an in-house UX research team and they are moving forward, with my input, on establishing the parameters of the study and reaching out to more stakeholders as they commit to the details of what they are going to learn – and importantly – what they aren’t going to be answering, yet.
• In London this October, I’ll be at Interact 15 to teach a workshop, Soft Skills Are Hard.
• Ten years gone: From July 2005 – Real Women, Real Beauty, Fake Ethnography, The Sign of The Organization With Extra Words in the Title, feminist cultural issues in Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, Attack of the $1 DVDs.
• What we’re consuming: Sushi Plus, Land Ho, Death Metal/You’re The One That I Want, Robert Frank, Resurrection After Exoneration, Paris Baguette.

I was in Las Vegas last week to kick off a new project. Here’s some of my pictures from my time there.

It’s officially summer!

• This week I’m digging into the two projects I kicked off last week. There’s a lot of notes from meetings with teams and stakeholders to be sorted through, typed up, organized, action items determined, and so on. We’ve received a trove of secondary research and reports from past studies so that’s something to dive in. It feels like there’s a ton to do and part of this week will be settling into the groove a bit with the projects.
• In London this October, I’ll be at Interact 15 to teach a workshop, Soft Skills Are Hard.
• Ten years gone: From June 2005 – Valet screening, Potted Meat Museum, Taiwanese researchers make colorful rice.
• What we’re consuming: Local Kitchen, Boogaloos, Granville Moore’s, Balmy Alley, Reptilia, Zachary’s Chicago Pizza, Downtown Container Park.

Monday, Monday, Monday.

• I’m heading to the airport soon for a multi-city week of meetings. Tomorrow I’m in Las Vegas (107°) to kick off a new project, then I fly to Washington DC (90° and stormy) to kick off another project. It’ll be a week of travel, meeting teams, establishing collaboration practices, learning about what they already know, managing milestones and talking to stakeholders!
• I’ll be speaking at UX New Zealand in Wellington, October 28-30.
• A couple of weeks ago I published What I Learned From 100 Doodles in 100 Days. If you haven’t already, you should check it out.
• In London this October, I’ll be presenting The Designer is Present as the closing keynote for Interact 15 and teaching a workshop, Soft Skills Are Hard.
• Ten years gone: From June 2005 – bizarre misdirected internet request 1, bizarre misdirected internet request 2.
• What we’re consuming: Smokestack BBQ, SF City Hall Centennial, Orange is the New Black.

Steve will be presenting The Designer is Present as a keynote and teaching Soft Skills Are Hard as a workshop at Interact 15 on October 19-21 in London.