December, 2007

New year plan

  • Sunday, 30 December, 2007
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Well its that time of year again for new years resolutions. …Only for them to be broken a few weeks into the new year. Resolving to do something different is always going to be hard if it is not associated with a goal or a desired outcome – something to strive for. So instead if mumbling a bunch of new years resolutions on Tuesday (“I will get fit”), turn them into personal goals that will be measurable and (at a stretch) achievable.

And then frame them in the story your future self will tell one year from now; “In the last year I started running round the block every night. In January it took me 23 minutes, now I can do one lap in 15 minutes and two laps in 33 minutes”.

Success this way is more likely than “this year I am going to get fit”.

Christmas eve

  • Monday, 24 December, 2007
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There once was a time that on Christmas eve that I’d be crawling round the pubs getting the worse for wear.  Older and a maybe a little wiser; I’ve just committed a major fraud – I’ve downed the sherry, nibbled at the carrot and filled my daughters stockings with presents – Santa exists.  Honest.

And now I can’t help myself.  I check my mail and scan the blogs I subscribe to and I read something that makes me nod my head in agreement – Robert Hoekman laying into user centred design.  He is so right – most projects don’t have the time for the luxury of doing user-centred design properly.  That is not to say that it can’t be done.  Thirty days to develop personas?  How about thirty minutes?  You can be agile and do user-centred design, at ThoughtWorks we do it all the time.  I’m looking forward to his follow up posts.