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Designing for sense‑making
How to prevent the rush to solutions that undermines good decisions Last week I wrote about how AI is quietly replacing working sessions. Instead of pulling people together to understand a messy problem, someone “puts it into AI” and emails around the output as if the thinking is done. This week, I want to look…
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How AI Is Quietly Replacing Working Sessions
Lately, I keep hearing the same line at work: “I put this into AI and it came up with this model / framework / analysis.” A few years ago, those same problems would have triggered a working session: get the right people together, map what we actually know, and design options. Now the “thinking” arrives…
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Are your workshops too long?
Why workshop length is a design decision “We need a half-day workshop.” Sound familiar? I’ve found workshop length is often treated as a given before the session even gets designed. Workshop length is a design choice But workshop length is not just a scheduling choice. It’s part of workshop design, alongside the goal and the…
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Put the Naysayer in Charge of Critique
The moment you formalize the resistance, it starts improving the work. You’re not dealing with “difficult participants.” You’re dealing with a room that just lost momentum. You’ve seen it happen. Someone starts pushing back on everything. Not building, not adding, just contradicting. The energy shifts fast. You get eye rolls, side glances, people checking out.…
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Why That Workshop Won’t Land
No shared problem, no shared progress. Your client wants a workshop to “fix” another team. You’re in the scoping call, 20 minutes in. They describe the tension: Team A gripes constantly about Team B. Team A wants a session where everyone hashes it out; they need Team B to understand the importance of their work,…
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Generative Play: Using creative moments to shape work
How workshops can turn play into progress A side-quest or a shortcut? You invite teams to build Lego models, create mood boards, or run design jams, and you see participation paired with scepticism. People lean into the activity, but they’re also asking, without saying it out loud: “This is cute, but when do we actually…
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How to Reset a Room Full of Preconceived Ideas
When Assumptions Threaten Real Collaboration I was tasked with turning some 80s office space, mahogany boardroom and all, into a collaborative hub for our project team. Volunteers from across the teams showed up ready to redesign it, assigning spaces to groups based on their own fixed notions of who should work where, no user-centred thinking…
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Set the One Goal That Matters
Find the single goal hidden inside every overloaded brief. Clients love a busy workshop brief. By the time it lands in your inbox, it’s usually stacked with goals: “align on vision, brainstorm new ideas, prioritize the backlog, map the current process.” All in one session. With two hours. Over lunch. Most designers and facilitators treat…
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Workshop for One
How to apply deliberate design to your individual work From Overload to Clear Findings Imagine you return from fieldwork with stacks of raw research, yet no clear path ahead. Your notes glare back from the desk. You gathered everything you need but you just can’t figure out the next step and you’re losing momentum. Unstructured…
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Facilitating When Mental Health Isn’t Top Notch
Leading workshops on off days: strategies for delivery when life piles on. You’re Off. Workshop’s On. You wake up drained, anxiety spiking not just from work stress but the world gone insane. A family crisis blowing up your phone, global affairs unraveling on every feed, life’s chaos piling on top of yesterday’s unfinished to-do list…
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Stop steering, start listening: Questions as your superpower
When discussions wander off track, open questions follow the undercurrent Going sideways Picture this. I am in the middle of a brainstorming workshop, laying out one fictitious future-state scenario as a spark for a team grappling with their program’s next steps. The goal is clear: push beyond day-to-day operations, dream big about what this program…
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Diagnose Why Your Workshops Aren’t Delivering
See if you’re Capable, Developing, or just Curious about real collaboration Workshops Feeling Flat? 72% of meetings are unproductive*. What about your workshops? When a workshop feels flat, most teams don’t stop to ask why. They just pick a new date, a new time, maybe a single activity that looks engaging; and hope this one…
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De-escalate Before the Mutiny: 5 Tactics to Tame Toxic Workshop Dynamics
Turn near-fistfights into breakthroughs by prepping smarter, spotting signs early, and pivoting with empathy (from a facilitator who lived it). Workshops can go off the rails fast. I ran one to help a small team finalize requirements. They had spent months drafting them but were stuck in analysis paralysis, terrified of calling it done in…
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Evolving Skills for Hybrid Collaboration
Workshop design skills are the missing piece in hybrid work. “Back to the office” is a misnomer. Commutes are harder, seats are largely unassigned, and for many of us, interactions remain superficial despite our co-location. Proximity doesn’t auto-spark collaboration. In fact, with geographically-distributed teams, most of us face the continued need for hybrid meetings which…
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How Workshops Build UX Maturity: Teaching Through Doing
Workshops aren’t just alignment tools. They’re your secret weapon for growing UX maturity org-wide. In an era of AI hype, layoffs, and economic uncertainty, organizations risk sliding backwards on UX maturity. They mistake rituals for real user-centered progress. UX maturity means sustained investment in users, products, and services. It drives measurable bottom-line impact through better…
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What If You Designed Your Meetings Like Workshops?
Adopt a facilitator mindset and lead meetings people actually want to join. A lot of meetings go off the rails long before anyone walks into the room. The problem usually isn’t the agenda. It’s that we skip a basic design step: matching the type of interaction to the purpose and outcomes we actually need. Instead…
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When the Room Runs Itself: My Go-To Workshop Technique for Maximum Participation
A simple structure that shifts ownership from facilitator to group and delivers more energy, ideas, and engagement If you’re looking for a workshop technique that keeps energy high while ensuring everyone contributes, I often fall back on an activity I call Station Rotation. Small groups move through a series of stations, building on and challenging…
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Workshops in Uncertain Times
How teams can stay cohesive when uncertainty frays connections Why shaky times breed silos The last year has been fraught with layoffs, return‑to‑office mandates, and shifting priorities. When everything feels shaky at work, team members may respond by pulling back and quietly working in isolation. That instinct is understandable, but it creates separation right when…
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Managing Power Dynamics in Workshops
Design workshops that give everyone a voice. Workshops are rarely neutral spaces. They’re living systems where structure, personalities, and power collide. A single executive, an outspoken expert, or a resistant participant can shift the entire dynamic, often without saying much at all. Even with the best design, facilitators inherit the invisible hierarchies people bring with…
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How Tool Selection Makes or Breaks Workshop Participation
Sometimes, simplicity is the key that invites every voice in. In the summer of 2018, I led a series of nine weekly workshops focused on redesigning a national service. Over 60 staff from across the country participated, mostly new to online collaboration and service design. To run these sessions, I chose a simple online tool…
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Designing Workshops That Look Unstructured (But Aren’t)
Stripping things down for true engagement I recently ran a couple of interactive sessions on UX Theatre at the Design Leadership Summit in Toronto. A few weeks out, I learned my accepted roundtable proposal had been slotted into an “interactive session” format instead. Rather than redesigning everything, I kept my plan and treated both as…
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Starting Strong: How Workshop Type Shapes Outcomes
Build focus by defining your workshop’s foundation When planning a workshop, it’s tempting to jump straight into activities like brainstorming, mapping, or voting. But an often-missed step is defining the workshop type. It’s what turns a good idea for a session into a focused, productive experience. How the Workshop Type Shapes Everything Provides a Framework…
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Don’t Wing It: The Power of Workshop Testing
Validate your design, avoid pitfalls, and lead sessions that truly deliver When Was the Last Time You Tested a Workshop, Really? Designing a workshop isn’t just about picking a few activities and hoping for the best. It’s about crafting an experience that’s purposeful and genuinely useful. Yet many facilitators skip one crucial step: testing the…
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Designing the Start: Starting Strong Without Traditional Icebreakers
Consider openings that spark insight, not awkward introductions. Hot take: I don’t like traditional icebreakers or personal introductions to kick off workshops. Don’t Waste the Opening Minutes The opening moments of a workshop are the most valuable real estate you have. They set expectations, model tone, and shape how people engage. I see facilitators waste…
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Navigating Turbulent Times with Team Workshops
Building connection through intentional teamwork Let’s be real: the workplace feels a bit unhinged lately: Economic pressure. AI shaking things up. Layoffs. Design getting sidelined. Sometimes it feels like you need a seatbelt for your office chair. If things feel unstable and you’re seeing more anxiety than action, then this is exactly when robust teamwork…
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Finding Workshop Potential Everywhere
Transform routine interactions into dynamic, insightful workshops Workshop design isn’t just for sticky notes and post-its. Sometimes the best approach is to throw people into something unexpected and see what happens. Dump the Default At a townhall, I was asked to do a “temperature check” for 120 people to gather candid feedback about an initiative…
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The Hidden Risk of Over-designing Workshops
Overthinking the design can leave participants lost and results wasted. The Trap of Complexity The greatest danger in workshop design is the temptation to make things far too complicated. Design exists to make a session productive and outcome-focused, because a workshop that isn’t carefully designed is unlikely to achieve its goals. But when you over-engineer…
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How Scenario Notes Power Better Design
Elevate your facilitation by using past insights to inspire new workshops If you know me, you know I never recycle a workshop. Every session is built from scratch because every group, every project, every challenge deserves its own approach. But here’s my best-kept secret: I keep every single scenario note. Not to rerun the same…
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Why I Keep Agendas Hidden in Workshops
Using progressive disclosure to elevate the workshop experience Last week, I ran Workshop Workshop at CanUX, and there was a collective gasp in the room when I said that I don’t provide participants with agendas in my workshops. In collaborative work, the standard practice is often to share detailed agendas to show respect for people’s…
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Workshops as Research: Avoiding the Trap of UX Theatre
When workshops fill in for real user input, the script starts to unravel. User experience design is widely recognized as a critical success factor in product development, yet too many projects still fall victim to UX Theatre. When I first wrote about UX Theatre back in 2018, I defined it as the use of UX…
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When Remote Workshops Go Silent: Turning Quiet into Productive Participation
Practical ways to unlock participation in low-energy remote sessions Your remote workshop feels flat. The energy is low, and no one’s responding. Now what? You’re running a session online and nobody has their camera on. You’re not sure if everyone volunteered or if they just got assigned. Questions are met with silence. Activities are slow…
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Stop Calling Everything a Workshop
When everything’s a workshop, no session truly is. Pop quiz: which of these is a workshop? If you said 4, you’d be right. But from some of the “workshops” I attended this year, it seems there are plenty of people who’d pick one of the other answers. So when is it a workshop and when…
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Permission Culture Traps Teams. Workshops Set Them Free.
How workshops can cut through the permission culture blocking your team’s momentum. Waiting for Permission in a Culture of Restraint Many workplaces run on permission. Teams hold back until standards, policies, or leaders explicitly say “yes.” The result? A culture that rewards caution and stalls change. The “fail fast” mantra gets repeated but rarely acted…
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Harnessing the Pause: A Facilitator’s Guide to Productive Silence
How are you with silence? If quiet moments feel awkward or make you uneasy, you’re not alone. Silence can be a facilitator’s moment of truth, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity to deepen engagement. Instead of viewing silence as a failure or gap, you can use it as a tool by applying adaptive strategies…
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The Art of Guiding Conversations
Leading from the front, guiding from behind. When most people picture a “leader” in a discussion, they think of the loudest voice or the person with all the answers. But the real power in guiding a group doesn’t come from dominating the room; it comes from creating the conditions where everyone contributes and feels energized…
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The Power of Productive Destruction: Why Breaking Things Builds Better Solutions
Why Imperfect Starts Ignite Better Ideas My favourite workshop activities are always the ones that invite participants to find better solutions by first tearing something apart. There’s a certain magic in starting with a “straw dog”: a half-baked idea, a sketch that’s more wrong than right, or even just a messy template. Presenting an imperfect…
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How to Design Workshops That Work for Introverts and Extroverts
Unstructured sessions rarely work out well, unless your goal is to see who can talk the most. Let’s be real: designing workshops that actually work for everyone is tough, mostly because we’re all wired so differently. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we interact with work, with each other, with ideas and…
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Behind the Scenes: The Invisible Effort That Makes Workshops Work
The unseen intentional effort that makes workshops feel effortless Have you ever attended a workshop and thought it felt easy and uncomplicated? Maybe it even felt like anyone could run a workshop? That’s a sign of good workshop design. The seamless, engaging experience you enjoyed didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of invisible, behind-the-scenes…
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Stepping Back to Move Forward: Subtle Facilitation In Action
How quiet facilitation boosts engagement and workshop results without dominating the room When you walk out of a truly effective workshop, it’s often the ideas and collaboration you remember most. While a skilled facilitator shapes the experience, their real success is creating space for participants to lead the work and for the group’s collective thinking…
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The Critical Role of Psychological Safety in Workshops
Workshops aren’t just about moving stickies and checking boxes, they’re about real conversations, fresh thinking, and outcomes you actually care about. But here’s the thing: if people don’t feel safe to speak up, all you get are polite silences and vague nods. Psychological safety is the difference between a workshop that delivers something new and…
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Designing Teamwork: Applying Workshop Principles to Internal Collaboration
As UX professionals, we dedicate significant effort to understanding and empathising with our external users. We apply user-centred design principles to create seamless experiences. But to truly champion user-centred experiences, we must first embody those principles in our interactions with our own teams and clients. Our teammates are, in effect, our “internal users,” and our…
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Empathy Mapping in Workshop Design
Empathy mapping is one of those deceptively simple tools that, when used with intention, can completely change the way you design and facilitate workshops. The point isn’t just to fill out a template; it’s to get inside the heads of your audience or stakeholders and understand what actually matters to them, so you can anticipate…
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Consensus Is Overrated
Why consensus isn’t the goal Collaborative workshops shouldn’t aim for universal agreement. Consensus workshops rarely achieve actual consensus; participants are probably withholding their input, silently compromising their own opinions (or worse: values!) to go along with what appears to be the general opinion (or loudest opinion?) in the room. Design collaboration by structuring your workshop…
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Why Imperfect Ideas Are Your Secret Weapon for Collaborative Workshops
We noticed a formatting error which affected readability for some readers. Here’s a corrected version! ___ In a truly collaborative workshop, nothing is sacred. No design is an untouchable masterpiece; the point of coming together is to poke at it, tear it apart, and build it back up, together. No work presented in a workshop…
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Ditch the Reaction Shots for Validation Workshops That Actually Work
If you’ve ever left a validation workshop feeling like you just watched a bunch of people nod politely at your slides without providing meaningful feedback, you’re not alone. Too often, these sessions become glorified reaction shots where participants silently view the outputs of your hard work and are asked to “comment” while feeling like the…
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There Is No Template: Why Every Workshop Needs to Be Custom-Built
Let’s get one thing straight: there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all workshop. Sure, templates are tempting; they’re neat, tidy, and convenient. But if you want a workshop that actually works (and doesn’t just fill a calendar slot), you need to ditch the template and start fresh. Every workshop has a unique purpose, a…
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Workshops Aren’t the Answer to Everything
The project exec showed me the workplan: 16 weeks of workshops. I asked: “Cool, and when does the research start?” The response: “What do you mean – that IS the research?!” 🙃 Workshops are fantastic for bringing people together, sparking ideas, and getting everyone aligned. But here’s the thing: workshops are not research. Too often,…
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From Sticky Notes to Real Results: Measuring Workshop Success
So, you ran a workshop. Now what? How do you know if it actually worked? Spoiler: it’s not just about those “Loved the snacks!” comments on your feedback forms. The only way to know if your workshop was a hit is to look at the outcomes. Did you actually achieve what you set out to…
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Introducing Workshop Alchemy
I’m excited to announce the launch of Workshop Alchemy, a newsletter dedicated to the art and science of workshop design. If you’re passionate about creating sessions that inspire collaboration, engage participants, and deliver meaningful outcomes, this newsletter is for you. What’s Wrong With Most Workshops? Ever walked out of a workshop and thought, “Well, that…
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Making the Case for Small Wins
As UXers, here are just a few of the challenges we are facing today: In addition to these, we are facing all sorts of economic and social challenges. Sometimes it feels like the world is moving backwards instead of progressing. So, let’s talk about hope. Redefining productivity in challenging times This is not about how…
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Boosting Mental Health in Design: How to Create a Supportive Workplace
No matter where you work or what level you hold, it’s a hard time to be in tech, let alone design. We’re dealing with so many changes and pressures: The anxiety of returning to the office (RTO) and commuting. Uncertainties in our industry with layoffs, shifting values, and worries about AI taking jobs. Even the…
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AI-Generated UX Theatre: How AI can mimic user-centered design
Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to revolutionize how we work. And as with all new technologies, there are two sides to the story. Applying AI to user experience design presents the risk of UX Theatre. What is UX Theatre? I originally wrote about UX Theatre in 2018, where I defined it as: ‘the application of any…
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Designing the team experience: Building an open and supportive team culture through design
Source Back in 2018, I wrote a talk called “Designing the team experience: Building culture through onboarding“. The focus was using onboarding to build and foster a strong team culture. One of the key tenets I hold about design leadership — or really any leadership — is: “Your team is an element of your project…
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It’s ok to set boundaries at work
Source It’s possible to be high performing and set clear boundaries about your role and accountability in the workplace. Anyone who has worked as a unicorn or generalist at some point in their career might be used to doing it all, working on all the problems, and applying their skills to a wide range of…
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My most successful UX project (that no one knows about)
Let me tell you about my favourite project. A decade ago, I was part of a small group of women who made something happen that was small and huge at the same time. We were incredibly successful and nearly no one knows the story. It’s a lovely little secret that we all share. I led…
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spydergrrl talks UX Theatre on Good Morning UX
I had the pleasure of talking about (what else?) UX Theatre with some new friends over at Design Team as part of their Good Morning UX podcast series. Good Morning UX is about “the universe of design inserted in practical contexts about working in teams, companies, what is expected, what is delivered, what is done, management, composition,…
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Designing human-centered performance reviews
Why do I care so much about performance reviews? My worst performance review caused me to leave my job within weeks. I went from years of surpassing expectations to being told I was not meeting them. Had my performance actually changed? No. The Big Consulting firm I was working for deliberately chose not to bid…
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Tackling UX theatre: What designers can do
Illustration by Claire Murray via Flickr UX Theatre is the application of any sort of design methodology without including a single user in the process, or including users but merely for show. You’ve heard about it. In fact, you’re living it. And you wonder: what can I do about it? Let’s start with the two…
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UX design has a dirty secret (My Fast Company CO.Design article)
Source Photos: cosmin4000/iStock, u.u./iStock I am excited to announce that I have written an article for Fast Company Co.Design which digs into UX Theatre. In it, I cover: What is UX Theatre? How two fundamental issues in the user experience design industry have caused UX Theatre to emerge What we can do to prevent it,…
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Finding joy in the work of design (even when projects don’t launch)
After being a user experience (UX) designer for almost 25 years, I’ve worked on a lot of projects and designs that have never launched or that changed significantly prior to launch. I truly believe that what has kept me sane and happy is focusing on designing, not launching. When I get frustrated that things I…
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UX Theatre on UX Podcast (Episode #267)
UX Theatre has been getting some press in the first half of 2021. Just this Spring: Jesse James Garrett wrote about it in Fast Company (see I helped pioneer UX design. What I see today disturbs me) Tricia Wang also wrote about it in Fast Company (see The most popular design thinking strategy is BS) Scott Berkun…
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Short talk: The Unstuck Meeting
A brief overview of The Unstuck Meeting, a tool my team uses to collaborate when one of us is stuck on a project. Related article: The Unstuck Meeting: A safe failure space Interested in this talk? Reach me on Twitter @spydergrrl or by email.
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Swimming in the UX data lake: Using machine learning to give new life to government UX research data
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay Back in 2009, the now-defunct User Experience Working Group was a foundling in the Government of Canada (GC). We were a bunch of practitioners who self-organized into a team that worked on making user experience design a common practice in the GC. We met to work on UX projects, learn methods,…
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A Quick Guide to Designing Collaboration
Image source: nugroho dwi hartawan on Pixabay First of all, let’s agree on one principle: Collaboration doesn’t just happen. You can’t just schedule a meeting and expect that the people who will be in attendance will collaborate. Collaboration is “the action of working with someone to produce or create something.” (Oxford) Collaboration is not getting…
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Short talk: Service Design in a Rush
This video presents a short case study demonstrating the application of service design methodology in an accelerated fashion to evaluate the design of a government program. Topics covered include: rapid initiation (getting started right away), examining all facets of the service for blueprinting, participatory design with the people who deliver the service, remote service design…
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How to: Connect with the Government UX Community
Every week or so, I get a connection request on LinkedIn, a cold intro (BTW those are so uncool), or an email from someone asking some form of the following: I would love to have a coffee chat and find out more about doing UX in government. Can you answer my/their questions about getting…
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Short talk: Designing a culture of design
This video presents a short case study demonstrating how applying design methods and tools to internal design work helped to instill a culture of design across a national government program. Topics covered include: adopting co-design as the main method of work with remote program teams, designing co-working sessions instead of planning meetings, a 1-hour workshop…
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How to: Get Started in UX in Government
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Every month, I get requests from people in my network and complete strangers to “explain over coffee” any of the following: The state of UX in government How to build UX into a government organization/ How to structure a UX team How to create a user-centered or design-driven culture…
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“Why don’t you just”: Why gov doesn’t need tech saviourism (but we do need you)
In a conversation about civic tech, I commented: “Truth is, we don’t need a tech panacea; government needs more service design. Honest-to-goodness end-to-end omni-channel ‘big D’ Design, aimed at serving citizens.” After 15 years working inside government (plus another 7 working in the private sector), one of the things that brings me no end of…
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Designing for Team Spirit in a Remote World
It’s been an adjustment, working from home. Since the pandemic started, my staff has experienced isolation, ill family members, death of loved ones, demands of homeschooling, health scares, spousal job loss, and whole host of other concerns which would be difficult to handle under normal circumstances. But compounded by the fear and uncertainty of the…
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It’s a Great Time To Be A UX Designer – Algonquin HCD Program 2020 Keynote
Source My friend, Sage, and I were invited to give a keynote address at Algonquin College’s Human-Centred Design post-grad certificate program for graduation yesterday. We were asked to speak about the importance of the UX community and any other topics that would be helpful for these newly minted UXers launching off into their careers. Below…
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UX Theatre: The Poster
In January 2018, I wrote a Twitter thread about how some user experience projects tend to pay lip service to user-centered design rather than being actual user-centered design. I used the term “UX Theatre” to describe the phenomenon. Based on the reaction online, it seems that this is a common occurrence across the industry. People responded…
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UX Theatre talk pitch
An overview of my talk on UX Theatre, which can be delivered as a full talk or a poster presentation. UX Theatre is a term I coined to describe those projects that pay lip service to user-centered design. In my talk, I explore the theme of UX Theatre: its causes, its symptoms and what we…
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The Unstuck Meeting: A safe failure space
GIF of a teammate turning the water bottle of another teammate so they can drink out of the right endvia GIPHY I tweeted about my team’s Unstuck Meetings earlier this year: On my team, we have “unstuck” meetings. When anyone gets stuck on a task, rather than fester they book the rest of us for…
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CLUE Symposium: 2018 Canadian State of UX Report
A detailed presentation of the findings from the CanUX 2018 State of UX Report, focusing on 4 areas: demographics, maturity, tools and salaries. This presentation was delivered to Carleton University Collaborative Learning of Usability Experiences (CLUE) Symposium, in May 2019. This report was originally delivered at CanUX 2018.
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Design Twitter, Negativity, and Hurting the Cause
If you want to have fun, just log on to Twitter and ask, “Ok, what are we fighting over today, Design Twitter?” It could be anything from whether designers need to learn to code, to whether UX/UI is a single job, to the ethics of design, to does UX have/need a seat at the table,…
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CanUX 2018: State of UX Report
A detailed presentation of the findings from the CanUX 2018 State of UX Report, focusing on 4 areas: demographics, maturity, tools and salaries. Read the full report. Related talks: CLUE Symposium: 2018 Canadian State of UX Report (May 2019)
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Designing the team experience: Building culture through onboarding (Slides)
Below are the key points and a link to the presentation slides for my presentation on team culture, Designing the team experience: Building culture through onboarding. Title slide from presentation. Click to view slides My presentation is a case study of an enterprise project where onboarding was not a priority and the project was a…
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UX Theatre: Are You Just Acting Like You’re Doing User-Centered Design?
Back in January 2018, I wrote a Twitter thread about projects that pay lip service to user-centered design (UCD) and what we can do about it as designers. Here’s an expanded write-up of the topic, for those of you who requested some additional context. (The original tweets are in italics.) In 2020, I also created…
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Fostering Team Culture Through Better Onboarding: Lessons From My Failed Projects
I’ve been lucky to work on dozens of projects throughout my career and there is one thing I’ve learned which has affected every single one of those projects: In most cases, not enough attention is paid to onboarding team members. Now I’m not talking about solution rollout or customer adoption of the project. No, I…
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Rethinking Digital Government: What It Really Means to Put Users First
Keep Calm and Hack the Government At its most fundamental, government does two things: governs (policies, rules, laws) and delivers services (passports, employment insurance, etc). Which is why, in this blogger’s opinion, digital government should consist of two things, and two things only: Digital data and information, and Digital service delivery. C’est tout. Point final.…
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Stop Waiting for Permission and Start Failing
One of the most overused and misunderstood phrases circulating around my organization right now is: fail fast. Everyone says it but no one can define it. Oh but they might try: “It’s, you know, skunkworks, pilots, hackathons. It means we have to be agile.” Pardon me while I roll my eyes audibly over here. If…
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Hacking My Perspective Helped Me Find Work Satisfaction
I was chatting with a close friend recently about our our work lives and she mentioned difficulty finding satisfaction with her work given her lack of control in her work situation. I had come to some realizations about my own sphere of influence and happiness within it, and put together a thread on Twitter. Here’s…
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Tackling the Dirty Jobs of Data and IM with Artificial Intelligence
This is the second in what will inevitably be a series of AI-related posts. See my first post, Artificial Intelligence, UX and the Future of Findability. Source: Pixabay Every organization has dirty jobs that it should be doing, but that no one wants to do. Work that is so big and daunting and tedious, that it…
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Designing for Outcomes: Building Better Hackathons, Design Jams & Workshops
Credit: spydergrrl Here’s a conversation I’ve had on multiple occasions: Them: “We’re going to run a hackathon.” Me: “Why?” Them: “What do you mean, why?” Me: “What are your goals? Who are you inviting? What kind of experience would you like them to have? What outcomes are you looking for? When you award a prize,…
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Artificial Intelligence, UX & The Future of Findability
Credit: Martin Grandjean [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons I’m completely obsessed with the idea of using artificial intelligence, search patterns and information architecture to improve the findability of content. OBSESSED. It seems like we’re on the cusp of doing amazing things with chatbots and data mining, which can augment manual information architecture work and…
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How to Be a Bad Business Analyst
Image by Intersection Consulting, CCBY2.0 I am a Business Analyst. I know, I know. We suck. Business Analysis is all about useless documentation and templates, right? BAs are sticklers for detail and overloading process onto projects. And did I mention all. the. documents? I mean, who has time to read those? Projects could be so much more…
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Dear Extrovert: Tips for Chitchat With an Introvert
So, you’re an extrovert. Congratulations. Go tell someone else all about it. Because I’m exhausted just thinking about it. All the people-ing. And worse, I’m afraid that you’re about to tell me all about how great extroversion is, and how you get all of your energy by interacting with people and isn’t that amazing and I want…
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Designing Inclusive Interactions with Remote Workers
Credit: Vanessa Miemis on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) I work with a bunch of tech-savvy nerds who can work from anywhere. And yet we suck at working remotely. Actually, we suck at working with people who are working remotely. When people go off-site, our team immediately stops communicating with them. Off-site workers either fall out…
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“How are you getting away with that?!” Building UX into Everyday Work
I’m on what I call a ‘luxurious” project. We are a budget initiative which means we have the funds we need to get our work done. We are a bunch of nerds in a policy shop which means no one tells us how to work because they don’t really understand what we do or how…
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Ignoring The Grind: The Stories We Tell About Each Other’s Work
Low Hanging Fruit by Luis Fernando Franco Jiménez on Flickr I walked into the meeting room and sat down at the conference table. I was invited as an attendee. There were 15 other people in the room. At the beginning of the session, the person who called the meeting handed me a couple of Sharpies…
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Epic Fails and Small Wins: What I’ve Learned So Far From My Career in Tech
By Publication of the original photo attributed to Levy & fils per [2] [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons In tech, the concept of agile development is a bit of a no brainer. Venture capitalists and start-up gurus encourage start-ups to “Fail fast.” It’s supposed to be a mantra that encourages innovation, learning…
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Workshop Design: 3 Tips to Turn Facilitation Into Enablement
It’s gonna get messy!(Credit: spydergrrl) As a business analyst, a good portion of my work is to facilitate working sessions with groups of people. They might be a team (even my team) or they might be a disjointed random group of subject matter experts from a whole bunch of different organizations. And my job is…
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Storytelling: Building Compelling Stories for Any Audience (Presentation Materials)
Source: Despicable Me Nothing irks me more than hearing someone say that they “have to build a deck” or “write a report” before they even mention the actual, you know, content of said deliverable. Especially since it’s pretty easy to craft messages that people can relate to, rather than putting together another boring PowerPoint slide.…
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Thing I Want: Better (Any?) Voice Commands on All My Apps
Podcast Addict app (Credit: spydergrrl) Yesterday, I went out for my first trail run of the season. As I ran, I listened to a CBC Spark podcast which, as usual, was full of random and interesting stories about how tech impacts culture and our everyday lives. There were a few items that I really wanted…
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Cyber Security and the Opportunity for User-Centered Design
Credit: Perspecsys on Flickr I am curious. I like to play: with toys, with ideas, with tech. And I used to be very scared of hardware until the cloud came along and I started using all of my tech as dumb-smart devices that simply access stuff stored elsewhere. Now, I’ll happily play around with my…
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Innovation: IDTIMWYTIM
By LPS.1 (own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons I’m going to join a new sports team: The Stanley Cups. Our mission will be to Stanley Cup. We’ll have a Stanley Cup hub, we’ll hire the best Stanley Cup leaders and the best Stanley Cuppers. We’re going focus on Stanley Cupping, using Stanley Cupping tools and…
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Conversations With Normals: When No One Understands Your Job
(Credit: Leovalente on PixaBay) Have you ever had a moment when your absolute immersion in something is presented to you on a silver platter as entirely not the norm? When you are suddenly the absolute nerdiest person in a room full of “normal people” who work in entirely non-technical industries? Yeah, that. Exhibit A: My…
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Introvert Thoughts: My Love-Hate Relationship with Social Media
By Doesn’t say [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons Confession: Sometimes I question why I’m on social media. This usually happens when I’m having particularly introverted moments. Which of late, seem to be pretty often. And in those moments I silently debate with myself: Should I stop tweeting? Is blogging worth it? Who’s even reading this stuff?…
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Download This: IA Summit Visual Notes (PDF)
A few weeks ago, I made the trek to Minneapolis for the IA Summit. It was my first time and I was pretty excited to have been able to make the trip. The speaker lineup was fantastic, the planned and unplanned events were chaotic, and overall it was a great experience. Basically, it was a…
