Happy March!

• I’m on a plane to Boston right now. To my great surprise (to put it politely) I got an email after close-of-business on Friday – after little-to-no communication for a couple of weeks – saying that we’re doing fieldwork this week. Details are still scant (say, the where and when?) but it’s been a scramble over the past few days to get the travel logistics sorted out (hint: it’s not economical to buy a cross-country airfare two days before you need to fly), and an initial draft of a fieldwork plan in place. There’s no longer a window for the team to align on the details of the fieldwork or even the mechanics of doing interviews together. For all my knowledge (and speaking on) best practices it’s a frustrating reality check on the challenges we all face in this work.
• Some recommended reading: Design-driven businesses have outperformed the S&P by 228%; The Empathy Vacuum by Greg Knauss examines our culture of desperate-mob-pile-on-criticism; a profile of Red Associates emphasizes the intellectual/academic trappings of their founders although I was more interested in other aspects of the firm; You Are Being Crushed by Data and Losing the Consumer; a good riff on the problems that designers face in their work, trying to do right; dana boyd’s new book It’s Complicated.
• Ten years gone: From March 2004 – People pick purebred dogs that resemble them, Going through Stanley Kubrick’s stuff, Debunking the myth of prisoner’s final meals.
• What we’re consuming: Girls, Blue Apron, Make Your Maker, Dull Rock ‘n Roll Anecdotes