The year was 2010 and I was riding the train, unintentionally eavesdropping on a group of people who were loudly expressing how frustrated they were with Facebook’s latest UI update.
It was too much all at once.
Most people knew how to use the old UI, but this new one? It was different. The navigation changed, the colors shifted around, and some items were completely hidden… or so it seemed.
This blog was started as a way to document my journey along what I thought would be the final leg of my self-created lesson plan to learn the skills I needed to be successful in both the business and design space.
I was wrong, and there was a lot more to learn than I could have ever imagined.
This post. It’s a little interesting that it comes after my previous one.
My previous one was a heart/gut wrenching experience as I was struggling to transition from the traditional UX role to a new way of working. It’s part leadership-by-learning (from a thousand mistakes). It’s part ‘letting go’ of the things that I don’t need to control. A new way to just be. To allow for others to participate in the creation of the User Experience.
I’ve been on this journey for about 8 months and it’s been an interesting one.
My family’s life in a pod and my car, then a jump to the other side of the country. My professional self, going from working within strategy teams and overseeing full-scale projects, to shifting into an integrated role within a mid-sized agile environment, being part of a small UX team, assigned at the core to 2 agile ‘squads’. The mental shift has been rough. I’ve been overwhelmed, disoriented, and trying very-very hard to maintain perspective while still being able to focus. Oh yes – and to retain patience.
Read on to hear a tiny bit about me struggling with Lean UX practices, Agile and Collaborative design.
It is very easy to ‘get caught up in the noise’. That is — sometimes, the details overshadow the core- or- the root of why you are doing something in the first place. When you can get to the root of a problem, magic happens.