On Day 1
Thank you very much for signing up for my newsletter! I am very excited to share with you the very first drop 🚀
Below you will find some recurring and one-off sections. I intend to tinker with the sections and content on every post, keeping only two sections standard. (Reads and Thoughts)
Getting things to a state where I am happy to share took me much longer than I expected, and I hope it lands close to your expectations. Happy reading!
Reads
Reads is a recurring section where I will be sharing material that resonates with my understanding of good experience design. This is not meant to be a trending topics section, so you'll find a mix of older but good reads (books and links) mixed with recent items.
Wanna make a UX researcher? (LinkedIn post): Ruby Pryor posted a fun and thoughtful list about skills researchers should have. I loved the "Morning show host" detail.
12 Ways to Utilize Other Departments in User Research: Taylor Palmer shared a very useful list of little things researchers/people-who-do-research can do to include other departments in learning from users, and to maximize the impact of research internally. Many of these tips apply in a B2B context as well.
The Problem With Research Democratization That People Aren’t Talking About: I am a big proponent of "democratizing" research (and design, and product management...) Kyle Soucy points out a very important question that needs to be asked before you start pulling in other colleagues into your project as active researchers: Do they actually want it?
Design Strategy for Design Portfolios: Dan Saffer offers excellent advice about portfolios. His tips apply equally to design and research portfolios. I have been working on a quick guide for portfolios for a while and his article resonates strongly with what I have been seeing in the market. Caution: If you think of your portfolio as the sacred codex for your magnum opuses, this will not be an easy read for you.
Thoughts: Eggs and UX Processes 🍳
Thoughts is a recurring section where I share my opinions, experiences, and suggestions for designing better experiences. I treat "experiences" in this section in the widest sense that I can convey in my ability. That means you'll mostly see digital experience design topics, but you will also find service design, product management, ethics, psychology, and even architecture.
A few weeks ago, we had friends visiting us over the weekend. As someone who grew up in the Turkish culture, there was no way we could have had a light breakfast on Sunday. This is what the table looked like:
I served börek, sucuk and scrambled eggs as we nibbled on the basics. One of our guests really liked the scrambled eggs and asked, "What did you put in this?"
There was no secret ingredient in the eggs I made that morning. Just eggs with a splash of milk, whisked together, kaşar cheese, then scrambled. The end product was pretty good but it wasn't because of the ingredients; it was because I used a carefully researched technique to cook the eggs.
I learned this special technique from Cooks Illustrated - a fantastic publication that brings food science into everyday cooking. Basically, you start with eggs on high heat, and once they are half-firm, you turn the heat down, add some fat + emulsifier, and cook gently. Salt and all toppings at the very end. Nothing fancy.
Our guest wanted to learn how to make those eggs for her family, but she focused only on the ingredients. What lead to tasty eggs wasn't the ingredients, it was the process.
This small exchange reminded me of how design and research teams sometimes ask the wrong questions for improving their work. We focus on small parts that are easy to talk about, and do not put in the effort to understand more intricate, foundational aspects that could help us. For example:
"What tools do you use for task management?"
...or design versioning, prototyping, design systems, hand-off etc.