Here’s the scoop for us this week

• Last week’s kickoff was most setting the stage for the project launch. Today we meet the entire team for a work session meant to build consensus, uncover existing hypotheses, and focus our investigation. It was a crucial if surprising moment in last Friday’s meeting when after a couple of months of scope and contract negotiations it became clear that our key project owners don’t have an exact specific focus for the user research and are looking to us to help focus that.
• Beyond that, we’ll be diving into writing a screener, interviewing remote stakeholders, and setting up conversations with experts and thought leaders who will inform the project.
• Last week produced three War Stories (from Elaine, Dennis and Debbie). We’d love yours, too!
• I’ve got a handful of lunch and coffee meetings this week to catch up with different folks, both local and visiting.
• Ten years gone: From October 2002 – a suspicion around DeLorean vs. Miata psychographics
• What we’re consuming: Neil Young Journeys, Looper, KONG Classic, Mitchell’s Caramel Praline ice cream.

And the scoopage for this week is as follows:

• We’re off to Dallas for a couple of days for an in-depth immersion with our new client and their extended, distributed team. What is their business? What are their products? Who are the users? What changes to the product do they plan to make? What do we need to learn? Etc. Plus, there will be barbecue!
• I’ll be finishing my final column for interactions; due to the editors imminently but not coming out in print until November!
• I hope we’ll get some more War Stories this week. Do you have one for us?
• I’m planning out speaking gigs – and potential speaking gigs – through the end of the year and into next year, even. Some fun ones coming up!
• Ten years gone: In July 2002, we blogged about classic logos, an early Core77 article being published, a nice place to stay in Monterey.
• What we’re consuming: pizza and ice cream, People Like Us, Diary of a Fire Lookout.

People often ask us “Just what the heck are you people up to these days?” (Sometimes they just say “Wassup?” but we just figure they are stuck in another decade). We’ve been enjoying posts like the Weekending updates from our new friend Julian Bleecker and we’ve always wanted people to know that real people work here (not just ridiculously brilliant innovator-bots) so while this might be a bit of a departure for All This Chittah Chattah, let us welcome you to the first in what we intend to be a regular series of updates about what’s going on with our team!

• We tore into the New Year with an off-site planning meeting to talk about where we want to head with our little team over this next year. While a change in venue meant we didn’t get to sample American Grilled Cheese Kitchen, we did enjoy a little Freedom From Choice cocktail to unwind from an intense day of future-envisioning
• We’re kicking off a new project with a very tech-forward organization. We’ve been working this team in a training capacity to help them transform their marketing practice into a more user-centered approach, but now they’ve asked us to work with them to bring their professional and consumer customers more deeply into their culture
• Two of the projects we wrapped up at the end of December come back to life briefly as we meet with more stakeholders to share results and discuss the business implications
• We’ll be joining our office-mates at Bayley.Co for a Welcome Back soiree at Pacifica’s newly-reopened Moonraker

Good times!