2014 Productivity Experiments: March Check-in

I haven’t totally forgotten about my 2014 projects, though they were seriously side-tracked this past month because I started a traveling project. For 2014, I’ve been passively recording more video footage, trying to wrap up some of my 20/20 interviews, and also engaging on these month-long “skill training”/productivity exercises, though to be honest, they haven’t had the effect I’d hoped they would have. To truly spend time learning and developing these skills requires a lot more free time than is afforded with my current lifestyle. In terms of using the Pareto Principle to spend 20% of time to gain 80% of efficiency, this has been somewhat helpful though.

Another level to the difficulty of this is the poor design of this project. I started trying to focus on bringing one skill per month from 0% competence to maybe 50-60% (recognize as much n00b gains across the board as possible), but with the interest in investing so much time comes the desire to continue. Because of this, I’ve started passively doing more photography, music, bouldering, and data analysis even throughout this project. Oops :x

Progress thus far is documented in my previous post:
January: Bouldering
February: Data analysis/Python

March: Interaction Design
Before: Most of my other career moves have been in the intention of learning more about UX and data visualization, but have gone in the direction of strategy and analytics. Going into March, I thought I wanted to pivot and become an interaction designer, as there was potentially a job opportunity in this field. After realizing I knew little about actual “interaction design”, I wanted to train up.

After: The project didn’t pan out and I spent all March in Seattle doing something totally unrelated but very “strategy consulting” – lots of business process flows, business models, change projections, GANTT charts, implementation roadmaps, etc. I had a lightbulb go off when I realized that much of design research/design strategy has parallels to the management consulting model.

I did read some relevant literature:
IDEO’s Human Centered Design toolkit
Jennifer Tidwell’s Designing Interfaces
The UX Crash Course

I also trained up a little by learning how to use Axure. The “baptism by fire” was when I did the Hospitality Hackathon that an internal group at Accenture hosted (final product is janky but it is an MVP), and also kind of cobbled an insurance claims dashboard together for another work-related request.

I got sponsorship from work to join the Interaction Design Foundation, which apparently Fjord uses for internal training, and started taking the beginner UX course. It’s honestly a little repetitive, and by this point I know I probably need to spend more time making things and less time reading about them.

Follow-ups: I need to finish my classes at the Interaction Design Foundation.

I’m trying to clean up my portfolio and write more content about the process used to develop various items. I do have a process, albeit a messy one since I am a one-man band with limited requirements for intermediate-stage deliverables, but I can post more about my thought process.

Less related to interaction design but more so to design thinking/strategy as a whole, I need to go write project briefs about design strategy type work, such as my research project for designing catastrophe insurance vouchers in China.

I’m in the process of lining up some more freelance work after a semi-stagnant period.

April: Music
Before: I’ve played piano for ten years but all my music was learned by rote, and I had next to no real grasp of music theory. When I visited Lawrence in SF, he taught me a little bit about chords, chord patterns in music how to improvise/play, and understand keys a little more. I’m trying to brush up on music theory long forgotten, and this will give me a chance to use my new piano.

After: Tune in next time.

Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.