Weekly Roundup - March 7-13, 2020
This week was a good blend of work and play. I readily took advantage of the Indonesian holidays on Thursday and Friday to do some deep work and indulge in some self care. I got stuck in traffic, went to a bookstore, had some good conversations with friends and realized I should indulge myself with more walkabouts. There’s a lot to be grateful for even in these dire times.
1:1's
I’ve always felt unsure of how to respond to a ‘How are you?’ in the beginning of the 1:1 call. I usually say ‘fine’ even though I may not be just because it ‘feels’ wrong to respond otherwise. When I started becoming a manager, I observed that I was repeating the same mistake. So I’m glad to have this list of alternatives to try out.
Leadership
Reading this reminded me of this quote by ‘Lean In’ co-founder and CEO Rachel Thomas:
Try and be conscious of this bias the next time you are on an interview panel.
Thanks to Scott Berkun, I could get a sneak peek into the content of the ‘Leading Design’ conference. I am looking forward to listening to Michael Yap’s talk: Mostly Clear, Partly Sunny: Creating the Conditions for Design to Flourish.
Team building
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While I couldn’t take part in the ‘Leading Design’ conference this year, I decided to look at the older videos. I picked this one thinking it would help me get clarity on measuring design but the talk turned out to be about measuring ‘Designer experience’. The one takeaway from this talk I had is to try and attempt replicating the ‘Design Love letter’ from a user to the designer to help them understand the impact of the work they are doing.
Design rants
I would like to end this issue with these three rants on the state of user interface design by engineers.