Words. Ideas. Actions.

23 February 2023

Today, let’s talk a little bit about mental health. Hooray! Specifically, the many ways brains process information. I know it’s maybe not what you’re expecting in these, but I think it’s an important component of what we think about when we’re making design decisions, and I don’t want it to go left unsaid as the content design-related posts pile up around here.

It should be obvious, but I’ll start with this anyway: I’m not a doctor. So, any of the suggestions I have here are based on my work and life experience only. Your mileage (and mind) may vary. But even as I type that half-joke caveat, I think we’ve already unearthed the gem at the center of why I think this post is important. Everyone consumes and creates knowledge and ideas differently. Those could be slight differences, like thinking you’re talking about either a flipper or a turner or a scraper when someone mentions the word “spatula”. Or, there could be large gaps in understanding for people who are better at processing audio information versus written.

These are just a couple of examples, but they both speak to why we need to build our experiences for a spectrum of understanding. This includes making good decisions around taxonomies and metadata, but it also means that we need to make all of our components accessible at launch, not an afterthought to add into the v2 iteration. Additionally, we should be attracting and retaining team members who either have these considerations top-of-mind, or are at least willing to learn why they are so important. 

Let’s dig a little deeper on those last two points, though, starting with accessibility. I hope everyone knows about the curb cut example, but I can summarize it quickly, if not: Initially thought to help people using wheelchairs to navigate their environments by removing barriers to crossing intersections, installing  curb cuts was also helpful for people pushing strollers, delivery people hauling large loads on hand trucks, and even for people with mobility issues where stepping up or down was difficult or dangerous for them. So when we build accessibility into our products and services, we don’t know how widely those benefits will reach. 

When Kat Holmes spoke to our team at Twitter, she shared a concept which has stuck with me to this day. What I took away from part of the talk was that we’re all potentially temporarily abled. We don’t know what each day can bring, but we should build for the broadest possible accessibility rather than limiting our ideas to what we consider the “norm” (I’ll talk about that naming more in a bit). Think of it this way: You may have full mobility and strength in both your arms and hands. One day, though, you might need to navigate a mobile site from your phone while holding a bag of groceries, or a child, or with one arm in a cast. We need to account for these temporary scenarios when creating items like navigation menus and thinking about button placement, as just two examples.

Now, let’s talk about our teams, and how we’re defining them and our own users. First, I want us, as an industry, to move away from the idea of a “normal” user. What even is that? Have you met anyone normal recently? I know that, at the very least, the last two-plus years have made that term basically meaningless for me. Instead, let’s talk about our users’ needs, and then frame those using a more mathematically based term, median. What do the most number of our users need? And then, how far to each side of that cluster are we building? Defining these edges becomes important because we are actively deciding not just who we are including, but also who we are willing to exclude. To quote Eric Myer, who was paraphrasing Evan Henſleigh, “When you call something an edge case, you’re really just defining the limits of what you care about.” Defining our target audience is also a de facto exercise in letting people know who we’re not building for. This is where building strongly opinionated teams comes in.

I am purposefully avoiding saying “diverse” teams. Diverse teams can still fall into a group-think mindset. And I don’t think that building teams based on physical characteristics alone is the way to go either; the definition of diversity doesn‘t start and end in the mirror. Yes, those physical factors are important, but what’s more important to me is what lived experiences these people can bring to your discussions. No doubt that how people present and how they are perceived have shaped those experiences, so they are a major factor in the perspective they can contribute. But we also need to keep in mind that no one person from a marginalized group, for instance, should be placed in a situation where they are having to explain and educate the rest of the team on what it’s like to be part of that group. That burden of education is not for them. It’s for you, and your entire team. Do the research! It’s not like all intersections show up as visual cues, either. Looking at me, for instance, you’d have no idea about the alphabet soup of acronyms and abbreviations that my brain has been saddled with. But am I supposed to be the spokesperson for everyone with an OCD diagnosis, for instance? Hell no! But I can say, “Hey, have we considered how this decision will affect people living with XYZ?” Whether you have that condition or not, we need to build teams that are fluent enough with the diverse needs of our users to ask these questions, whether or not we have team members who identify with them. 

Let me be clear, though: Building more diverse teams will let you build better products. Period. The more accessible your products are, the more people who can use them. Isn’t that the point? To get as many people as possible through your onboarding flow and into the thing you’ve spent so much time, energy, and resources creating? Ideally to solve one of their problems? Every time you push to make something more accessible and as open as possible, you’re increasing the number of customers potentially available to you. And you can do that by prioritizing their needs, understanding how to expand the definition of your target audience, and putting together teams who know what questions to ask and how to advocate for everyone, everywhere. This can be as simple as having your team ask things like, “How will this work for low-vision users?” or “Is our language as inclusive as it could be?” or “Will this feature work as well for people in low-bandwidth situations?” or even “Who are we potentially harming if we launch this?” The broader the perspectives are on the teams asking and answering these questions, the better your products will be.

See you tomorrow?

31 January 2023

I was listening to This Woman’s Work today, a great collection of essays on music, and about halfway through, a transcribed  interview between Kim Gordon and Yoshimi Yokota called “Music on the Internet Has No Context” popped up. I feel like their conversation is a continuation of some of the ideas I was trying to articulate after the SunnO))) shows earlier this month. So, I want to flush out a couple of ideas from earlier and build on some of the musical analogies I have already stretched — probably — too far.

In the interview, Yoshimi talks about the different ways she contributed to the bands she was part of, most notably Bordems. Although she discovered at a very early age that she had perfect pitch, Yoshimi basically rejected the formal musical training of her youth, preferring to feed off of the energy of the audience and her bandmates on any given night to come up with both what she played and how she played it. For some shows, she was even borrowing another drummer’s equipment, and admitted she wouldn’t even change the heights or positions of the kit. Instead, Yoshimi would use the creative restraints in front of her to work in her favor. It’s a version of an idea I’ve mentioned before about coming up with these posts, but I recently came across this Michale Cain interview which puts it even better: 

“Use the difficulty.”

Now, I understand this may be a leap, but all of this talk of adaptation seems not only to be timely for me, but also a reminder of how much I’ve learned since the first time I tried managing a team. Hoo, boy, was I a terrible manager that first time out. And I’m admitting it to you now for a couple of reasons:

1. Please, learn from my mistakes.

2. If your current manager is mirroring the errors of my ways, find a better manager.

I started running the production team at WFSU–FM after being a producer there for years. This was back in the days when we thought that proficiency in your role meant you could manage a team of people doing that same job. So, I took that mindset and ran with it, trying to get the rest of the team to work like me, make the choices I would make, and hold themselves to the same standards I held myself to. There was no room, in my mind, for doing things differently because I had been so successful doing them my way. Why on Earth would anyone want to do them differently? Seriously, looking back, I was a terrible manager. I feel like I still owe apologies to Ken, Danny, and Aimee (and maybe even that asshole, John) every day since. 

But let’s focus, shall we? Another management tactic I thought was important was to treat everyone the same. That way, there would be no question of favoritism or bias. Everyone got the same kind of direction, attention, and support. Consistency, the path to success! Do I have to tell you I lasted less than a year in that new role? Again, I was a terrible manager.

Thankfully, I have had great managers since then. Managers who I can not just emulate, but could learn from. It’s been a while since I’ve led a team, but I love thinking about doing it again, taking my experience on both good and bad teams, and crafting one where people are encouraged to explore their strengths and passions, while they’re coached and guided in the areas where they want or need some help. If I think about each team member as a part of a band featuring Yoshimi on drums, then we can all take the temperature of the room, assess our own strengths and talents, and put them all together to give the best damn show each and every day. 

As I look at my unwritten future, both musically and professionally, I can’t tell which I miss more, building a team to solve important user problems, or putting a band together to create something entirely new and unexpected. And if I mentioned either of those ideas to the high school junior in the Alf t-shirt playing guitar on the left in the image at the start of this post, he'd probably be a bit shocked. One thing’s for sure, though, I want to do more of both in 2023. If you want to help, please drop me a line.

See you tomorrow?

24 January 2023

Tonight’s post started as an idea before I went to see SunnO))) at the Great American Music Hall on Monday night. And, truth be told, I’m composing these words just before I dash out to see night 2 of their San Francisco shows (my intent is to have a draft done before the second night’s set and, hopefully, post the finished version after the show but before midnight, if I time this right). 

Anywho, the show last night was an almost ritualistic, devotional experience, if you’re devoted to both volume and distortion. For those of you not familiar with SunnO))) (which, I must admit, is probably most of you — they are definitely an acquired taste), most of their music is based on loud, tuned-down, heavily distorted guitars, working in tandem to create monolithic slabs of noise so intense, with so many harmonics and undertones, it’s almost hypnotic. What makes their shows such a spectacle, and such a draw to me, is how the duo has to not only play their guitars, but simultaneously use their amplifiers (there were 16 cranked to 11 at Monday’s show) and the feedback those wide-open stacks of speakers create in whichever venue they’re in, manipulating those rumbles and peals and growls to recreate the songs they want to perform on the night. 

And that cacophony leads to the nugget of an idea I had before I saw Monday’s show. See, I’ve been thinking about how to build teams. And after my recent, unexpected layoff, I have been thinking about which new opportunities in my inbox I want to start pursuing. Some of those involve leading existing teams, some are to bring a seasoned perspective to emerging teams, and some are to build a team from scratch. It’s that last option which is most intriguing to me. 

I liken the idea to being in bands. I’ve auditioned for some, been added to one, and built a few of my own. And those approaches all have their own pros and cons. Auditioning is like trying to convince a group that your skills will compliment the collective and help them head to where they want to go. Being asked to join one means that you’ve already shown enough of your worth on your own to make it past all the initial vetting hurdles in order to add to the greater good. But building something from the ground up means you’re not only defining the direction, but also identifying who is going to help you get there. It’s like playing the instruments and the room at the same time. 

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, adding an element to an existing solution can be tricky. But so can developing one. Do you build a team based on the direction and destination you want to go, picking members based on the specific skills they have which you think will help you get there? Or do you gather people whose instincts, curiosity, and decision-making you trust, putting them together to see where they end up? To make another potentially clumsy music analogy, it’s like deciding between composing for an existing string ensemble, with all the inherent sonic constraints, or booking time in a recording studio and inviting your favorite players to bring their preferred instrument to record whatever they concoct. 

I’m not sure which way my thinking is headed yet. But I need to find something relatively soon. All I know is there are a lot of strings to pull and speakers to hear and venues to try them out in. Like SunnO))). Who I’m headed out to see now. 

See you tomorrow? 

Update: I made it home just after 11 p.m., my ears ringing, head spinning, a smile plastered on my face, and these words posted mere moments before the witching hour. Thanks for letting me force these analogies night after night — it’s definitely therapeutic, at the very least, and sometimes even helpful.

02 December 2022

I want to revisit an idea that I mentioned a few days ago. When I talked about the World Cup, and the FIFA World rankings, I got a bit hot under the collar about how sure certain commentators are about their predictions. A lot of this confidence comes from the arrogance of ignorance. But another good portion comes from a lack of imagination about how well a team can come together when they share a vision and purpose. 

Now, I don’t think this tonight’s post will be as long, or as much of a tirade as that other one, but who knows? What I do know is that there is a prevailing wisdom that there are things that should happen “on paper,” but when results turn out differently, these talking heads are stunned. So, let’s break that down a little bit. For analysts to compare teams, they usually do it one-to-one; which goalkeeper is better, who has the more prolific forwards, which defender is the fastest. They may even go so far as to compare individual matchups, trying to predict how a forward may fare against a specific defender, for example. All of those comparisons can be done on paper. But that’s exactly the reason why they’re shit. Nobody plays the game on paper.

When these players take the field, they do it as a team. And if their coaches and training have been effective, they become a greater entity working as one whole than they do as individual 11. That cohesion isn’t going to show up on any stats sheet. Just look at this year’s squad from Japan as a prime example of this. They have, twice, come from behind to win games very few analysts gave them a shot in. But they believed in themselves. Believed in their system. In their coaching. And they never quit. It’s been remarkable to watch. And the same argument can be made for Morocco or Australia or Senegal. These “underdog” teams are playing better than expected because the expectations are on paper, and they all came to win on the pitch. 

As the knock-out round gets ready to kick off, and the favorites start to dominate, it’s not going to be because they’re better on paper. It’s going to come down to training and coaching and conditioning. More likely than not, Brazil will get a long way through toward the Final. But if this tournament has proven anything, it’s that no one knows anything. And the five-time winners could be derailed by something utterly unpredictable, like a fluky own-goal, deteriorating field conditions, or a team-wide outbreak of COVID. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the hours and days to come. That’s true in football and in life. But I’d love it if we could contain a little more of life’s unpredictability to soccer instead of our survival.

See you tomorrow?