Ongoing Investigations

Tag: time management

  • What I Learned (and Didn’t Learn) from Ruby

    So, in case you haven’t obsessively backread every blog post I’ve ever made here, here’s the main thing you need to know for this post: at the beginning of the year, all of the interns had to set three goals, and three methods on how we were going to achieve those goals. Over the course of the year, we had to work towards those goals, with the intent of getting them done by year’s end.

    Now, my goals were as follows:

    1. Work on personal time management skills by testing published time management systems, evaluating what worked and didn’t work, and then writing up my findings.
      Results: I did it! You can find the writeup here.
    2. Develop my project proposal skills by writing up a proposal to a) learn the programming language Ruby and b) create a digital portfolio and/or website using Ruby.
      Results: … uh. I definitely developed my proposal skills — I’ve written three or four by now, for various things including the winter intern project, a plan to learn Ruby over winter break, and the digital portfolio I’m working on this term. But the latter two… aren’t connected. So. Hm.
    3. Use the project proposal written in goal #2 to create a digital portfolio reflecting on my time at Carleton, studying and working in both the humanities and STEM fields.
      Results: Well, the funny thing about the fact that I only kind of sort of met goal #2, is that without that project proposal, I can’t meet goal #3. That’s what’s known as a dependency. I’m still making my portfolio, just… without Ruby, in a different way.

    So, reading between the lines, the main thing that’s missing from this year’s goals is that I started learning Ruby over winter break, but didn’t have enough time to achieve or maintain proficiency in the language, which meant I couldn’t technically achieve my goals.

    And that’s fine! The best laid plans of mice and men, etcetera, etcetera. I am a senior, who spent the past eight months focused first and foremost on my comps project/thesis. I tried to do everything else as best I could, but I am a creature of non-infinite capacity, and there’s no sense beating myself up about it.

    Besides, I met my goals in other ways. Despite the way I set things up, Ruby isn’t actually directly relevant to my job. Being somewhat knowledgeable about computers and/or tech is, dare I say, a requirement for working in the digital ethics sphere. But learning one specific programming language isn’t. Ruby was a personal project that I was planning to use to augment my job.

    So, coming at it from a different angle: I didn’t fail. I succeeded in an unexpected way.

    Goal #2 wasn’t to learn Ruby. It was to develop my project proposal and planning skills. But if I’d said “develop my skills by, uh, I don’t know, I’ll figure it out”, that would have been a terrible goal! Imagine trying to meet that goal. I gave myself a goal, then gave myself a framework I could use to do it. And instead, I did it a different way.

    Similarly, right now, I am working on a digital portfolio. I made a project proposal for it and everything. I’m just not using Ruby. And that’s okay.

    What You Can Learn from My Failure Success

    If I had to sum up what I learned, and what you should do… I mean, it’s going to sound simple. Painfully simple. But it’s a really hard lesson to accept sometimes.

    Is it, “The ends justify the means?” No. “The means justify the ends?” What does that even mean? Of course it’s not that! It’s just…

    Figure out what’s the ends, and what’s the means.

    Ruby was a method to stave off the madness that comes from having no plan at all. But it wasn’t the only way to achieve what I wanted, and based on the time I had available and what else I had to do, it wasn’t even the best way to achieve what I wanted. I figured out ways to work my goals in using stuff I actually needed to do or opportunities I already had available, rather than make extra work for myself when I had very little time to do way too much.

    Figure out the thing that you actually want to get done, and don’t hold yourself to a method that isn’t working.

  • Working from Home? Hardly Working.

    So now there’s this.

    Carleton has moved online-only for the rest of the year. All academics and most staff activities are taking place over the internet, which means most of the Carleton population is now, in one way or another, working from home.

    Luckily, one of my long-term projects this year has been organization and time management. In the interest of digital ethics, I’m putting together a little compilation guide of What You Need To Know. There are three main steps: figure out what kind of problem you have, figure out what tools you have, and figure out how you want to tackle something.

    Two quick disclaimers: don’t try everything on this list at once. Seriously, just… just try one or two at first, okay? Also, if none of this works for you, you’re not allowed to blame me.

    What’s the problem?

    Start simple: you either have a tech problem, or you have a people problem. This is an important distinction! Tech can be used to aid people problems. It’s not a magic bullet. It can’t fix them altogether.

    A tech problem is exactly what it sounds like: any problem with the tech you are using to do your job. Some quick examples: Zoom isn’t working! You can’t log into your Google account! Your hard drive crashed!

    I can’t solve tech problems for you. ITS is working remotely these days. Try calling them!

    People problems are everything else – anything that results from you or anyone else being a human person, with human needs. If you keep getting distracted, that’s a people problem. If you’re overwhelmed and can’t get organized, that’s a people problem. If you’re feeling lonely, that’s a people problem. If you’ve been on Zoom for 37 hours straight and you hate everyone, that’s a people problem.

    The good news is, once you’ve identified a people problem, you can figure out the tools you need to solve them.

    What tools do you have?

    Let’s tackle a couple different areas: focus, organization, and socialization.

    Focus

    What helps you focus is different for every person. Some people need total quiet. Some people need background noise. Some people need to cut out visual clutter. Some people can go for hours. Some people work better in sprints.

    So, in keeping with that, here’s a list of random tools and tips that might work for you, in no particular order.

    • Noisli: A customizable background noise generator that lets you pick from various non-intrusive sounds, mix them together, and save custom playlists. You need an account for the free version, which gets you 1.5 hours per day, 16 sounds, and 3 basic mixes. Also has a built-in Pomodoro timer (limited functionality while free).
      • Alternatives: A Soft Murmur (fewer sounds, no time limit), MyNoise (pick from a variety of options, no cross-mixing)
      • Alternately, if you hate noise, try earplugs or headphones. It won’t fix everything, but maybe it’ll help.
    • Do you have a to-do list? If so, keep it to a maximum of five items. Yes, I know, you have so many things to do– write them down somewhere else to remember later. When you’ve done the five things on your list, you can migrate some new ones. Five things at a time. That’s all you need to do right now.
    • Put stuff where you need it. If you don’t need it, put it somewhere else. Put it in a box. I don’t care where it goes. On my desk, there is a coaster, some photos, old pens, my drumsticks– wait, no, let’s not use me as an example. The point is: if you know what you’ll need, keep it where it’s needed, and if you can’t find it under the stuff you never use, put that stuff somewhere else.
    • Color-code. Things in bright colors stand out. If you can’t see it, you might miss it.
    • Take breaks, and use your breaks for something that could not possibly become work. Moving around is really good. Literally everyone says this. It sounds stupid. I don’t care. Set an alarm or something, get up, and windmill your arms in circles. Touch your toes. Shadowbox and swear at your imaginary opponent. Walk around the room. Blast a song that makes you want to dance.
    • Figure out when works for you. I would love to work in the morning. I cannot do it. I work in the afternoons and evenings, when my brain has gotten with the program. Don’t force yourself to do things that don’t work for you. But! And this is important. Get enough sleep, and keep track of how long you’ve been working. Don’t force yourself. A non-standard schedule doesn’t mean you have to work longer or be guilty about what you’re doing.

    There are going to be more time management tips at the bottom. These ones are, hopefully, specifically geared to help you focus. Everything else comes later.

    Organization

    Over the past term, I’ve compiled and annotated a short list of organizational tools – to-do lists, project management, etc. Check these out and see what sounds good to you.

    Small note: everything here except the bullet journals requires an account. All of them are, to one degree or another, free.

    • Bullet Journals
      • PROS:
        • You’re not connected to the cloud, which means you know your data is safe.
        • Super customizable (Youtube has a ton of tutorials to make them fancy, but I didn’t use them; just figure out what you need to write down, and do it however works).
        • You’re not beholden to any company about what a system “should” look like.
      • CONS:
        • You’re not connected to the cloud, which means there’s no team sync, no automatic reminders, and no backups.
        • If you lose stuff easily, you might have trouble with this one.
        • Because it’s customized to you, if you’re not feeling it or you don’t know what you want, you might have a rough time keeping up the habit.
    • Google Keep
      • PROS:
        • It has a widget in Google Calendar, so you can keep it right next to your schedule for easy time planning.
        • Comes with a phone app, and you can color-code every note, pin the important things, set alerts, and more.
        • Technically meant as a note-taking app, but I find it makes better to-do lists than Google Tasks!
      • CONS:
        • One day Google will swallow the sun and we will thank it for the sweet relief of darkness.
        • Also, it’s very hard to manage indentations (very important for sub-tasks on a to-do list), and full customization functionality requires either a browser plug-in or going to the dedicated Keep page, meaning you can’t do it from your Calendar.
        • On a personal note, I hate the way it resolves completed tasks (they’re completed, I don’t want to see them anymore!
    • Trello
      • PROS:
        • Really, really good for team work and project management – we use it for the Digital Scholarship and Digital Humanities teams all the time.
        • Lots of integrated functions. You can comment, make checklists, separate tasks, separate lists of tasks, attach documents, schedule alerts… the list goes on.
      • CONS:
        • It’s best for teams, honestly. You can use it solo, but a lot of the functionality is aimed at keeping a group in communication and working toegether.
        • Recently got bought by Atlassian. I have no idea what that means for future development or privacy concerns.
        • There are extensions that help with readability and color-coding, but the ones that work best seem to be only available on Chrome.
    • Wunderlist
      • PROS:
        • Really good at readability and organization. Set my standards for how to-do checklists ought to behave.
        • Very easy to make subtasks, add notes, schedule things, etc. A lot of good functionality.
        • Very easy to organize — you can put your checklists into folders, and your folders into folders, and your folders into folders into folders…
      • CONS:
        • I hesitated to include Wunderlist because, here’s the kicker: it got bought by Microsoft, and they’re ending support for it in May. The team will be working on Microsoft’s To-Do application, and hopefully they’ll bring some good features to it, but right now… ehhhhh?
        • You can’t visually customize it at all. If you’re big into color-coding and visual organization, pick literally anything else on this list.

    Socialization

    I’m not really going to use this section to rate and review different softwares for staying in touch. Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype and Discord all have varying levels of video function and voice calling; Discord, Slack and Skype can host your messaging and keep it (somewhat) organized. Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Slack are professional. Skype is kind of professional. Discord is for hanging with your friends.

    There’s a bunch of stuff out there about making sure you’re still talking to people. That’s fine. That’s good. I encourage talking to people. I also encourage checking in with yourself. If you’re spending five hours a day in meetings or talking to people, and at the end of the day your friends want to chat for another two hours? That’s a lot of time.

    On the other hand, don’t be afraid to be the first person to message, or call, or whatever. People can be shy, or not know how to ask for support. Communicate. If you’re having problems at work, or you need some extra support, tell your colleagues. Tell your friends. They can’t see you. They don’t get any signals beyond what you give them.

    So, socialize, but not too much. Take care of yourself, but make sure to reach out to people. I don’t know what to tell you. Being human is a messy contradiction.

    How are you going to tackle this problem?

    So. You know what problem you’re having. You know what tools are at your disposal. You have, hopefully, a vague idea of what needs doing.

    BUT HOW THOUGH.

    There are only so many hours in a day, and yet there are so many hours in a day. You need a way to manage your time.

    Time Management Systems

    • Use your phone. I have every activity of mine plugged into my Google Calendar, which is plugged into an alert system on my phone. This one is less about getting things done and more about not forgetting what you have to do, though…
    • The Pomodoro Method. Twenty-five minutes on, five minutes off. Repeat four times. After four “Pomodoros”, you get a fifteen minute break. There are tons of timers for this stuff online. Just make sure whatever you’re using is noisy enough to get your attention.
    • Eisenhower Decision Matrix. Make a box with four sections: urgent/not urgent, important/not important. Write down all your stuff wherever it needs to go. Urgent & important = right away. Everything else, you can work on, delegate*, or ditch.
      • *President Eisenhower could delegate. I have no idea whether you can.
    • Kanban. Three sections: to-do, doing, done. Put your tasks on sticky notes, or use push pins, or get an app. Put whatever needs doing wherever it goes, and revel in the ability to move things across the board.
    • Ivy Lee. At the end of the day, write down the six things you absolutely must do tomorrow, in order of importance. When you start tomorrow, do those things in order. Then you can do whatever else is left. If there’s anything on the list that hasn’t been finished by the end of the day, that’s okay – it’s the end of the day, and it’s time to make a new list.

    But most importantly…

    Be kind to yourself. Seriously. There’s a lot going on right now, and everything’s stressful, and even at the best of times it’s really hard to be perfect. This is not the best of times. You don’t have to be perfect.

    I’m serious. I’ve missed the same meeting two weeks in a row for two different reasons, and I have spent the last year getting organized enough to write this blog post. I’ve forgotten so many different things this week. It happens.

    If you’re tired, there’s a reason for that. If you’re frustrated, there’s a reason for that. If you’re sad, or angry, or jittery, there’s a reason for that.

    This stuff can (maybe) give you a jumping off point. But here’s the deal – be generous to yourself, just like you would be to your friends and family. And don’t beat yourself up, okay?

    Sources & Resources

  • UXPA 2019 Reflections

    The theme for UXPA 2019 was, as far as I could tell, empathy. Empathy, caring and careful design, came up in as a refrain frequently, and when it wasn’t mentioned outright, it was implicit. This focus on thoughtfulness extended both within and without, which I found very interesting. I would expect a conference for UX Design to be, necessarily, concerned with the experience of others; I anticipated less the theme of kindness to oneself.

    SPEAKER SUMMARIES

    Keynote speaker Vivianne Castillo gave a talk titled “The Siren Call of Self-Neglect”, where she talked about the potential for burnout, and the necessity of self-care. While traffic meant we arrived partway through, I did manage to note down her focus on communication. She made two key points. Firstly, managers should make it clear that team members can be vulnerable with them, encouraging communication not just when things are going well but also when things are going poorly. Support systems can’t be built after they’re needed. Secondly, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel on discussions of ethics and other relevant fields. Those working in UX should explore other disciplines and talk to people working in those areas. Castillo also shared a Google Drive folder full of resources on self care and mindfulness, as well as some resources for white people who wish to educate themselves on racial privilege without burdening people of color. This folder is available in the supplemental materials below.

    Abby Bajuniemi’s talk, “I don’t talk like that! Research Methods and Ethics for Natural Language Interaction”, was less an exploration of digital design and more an examination of experimental ethics and how we communicate. The speaker touched on the fact that language, despite being an arbitrary social construct, is still a factor in discrimination and can be used to uphold ideologies of race, gender, and other identities. She then went on to discuss the ethics of experimental design, particularly in conveying information about the experiment to the participants and in eliciting usable data without infringing on the subjects’ privacy rights. While Bajuniemi did not have strict recommendations regarding these ethical questions, she was firm in her policies: make it clear to participants what is being collected, how it will be stored, and how it can be accessed/who will have access. She suggested hiring an interpreter or translator if there is doubt that the participants will understand the experimenter fully. Her appearance on a linguistics podcast, also mentioned in her presentation, is included in the supplemental materials.

    “Interruptions: Living in a World of Divided Attention” was the third presentation, given by Molly Hillstrom. Hillstrom outlined the cost of distractions in the workplace and in people’s personal lives, citing statistics regarding quality of work and mental health. This topic was integrated with the idea of design when Hillstrom called on designers to be careful, compassionate, and sparing in their use of notifications, to stop using features like autoplay and infinite scroll which make it easy for people to get ‘sucked in’, and to make it easy for people to adjust preferences which will help them not get distracted. There were no supplemental materials.

    Ellen Lucast presented “Opportunities and Challenges in the Voice Interaction Space”, which discussed the potential work required for true voice interaction (creating conversations, rather than programs like Alexa and Siri which have designated responses for specific statements). Much of this presentation was theoretical, and went over my head in regards to its technical aspects, but my primary takeaway was what Lucast called Grice’s Maxims, a set of rules for communication. In quick, simplified summary, they are: be truthful; give the right amount of information; be relevant; be brief and orderly. These rules were interesting to me because of the tension they suggest between usefulness and kindness. Grice’s Maxims seem, on the surface, designed to facilitate useful communication, but they also seem to allow for conversations which are trustworthy, interesting, thoughtful and intelligible. While they are good design principles for practical reasons, they also continue the theme of thinking about users as people. No supplemental materials were included in the presentation.

    McLean Donnelly’s presentation, “An Accessibility Case Study: Expedia”, outlined the initiative Donnelly took to help Expedia make its website more accessible. He gave a series of steps, which touched on initial proposals, research, an internal audit of the system, and the feedback and design cycle, among other aspects. These steps gave transparency and a good model to people who might wish to undertake similar initiatives at their own workplace. Donnelly’s work was a practical expression of the design philosophies at play throughout UXPA. He included multiple recommended resources to help practice and learn about accessible design, and recommended people draft accessibility policies for their organization as well as practicing skills-based volunteerism. His resources are listed in the supplemental materials.

    Liz Tupper’s talk, “Empowering People through Tech”, discussed human-centric/empathetic design, and a design initiative that centered the needs of the users. She emphasized the need to listen to feedback given during the testing phases, and outlined four steps for empathetic design. First, engage with people in their own space; facilitate collaborative creativity; test and get feedback from the people you seek to help; and organize a support structure for the tech and for the people the tech is supposed to exist. This talk, like Donnelly’s, gave very practical examples of design steps and brainstorming practices, but these examples were centered more around getting ideas from the users the product was intended for. Tupper did not include supplemental materials, though her design exercises may be part of a future blog post.

    Beth McKeever presented a talk called “Symbiotic Product Relationships”, which, rather than exploring empathy for the user or empathy for the self, discussed the ways in which UX designers can foster good working relationships with their coworkers, particularly their product managers. Her advice once more came down to communication. Knowing each others’ strengths and weaknesses, attending meetings together in order to facilitate detailed discussion, gaining comfort disagreeing with each other, and constructively talking about office culture were all things McKeever considered vital to a working relationship. In fact, she recommended overcommunicating when building a new relationship, in order to set up that foundation of openness. McKeever also mentioned a book on developing a culture, included in the supplemental materials.

    The closing talk was given by Jeff Sussna, titled “Beyond the Designer as Auteur”. In contrast to some prior speakers, Sussna’s consideration for the user’s experience framed the experience as an ongoing service, rather than as a one-time consumable product. The example he gave was of food: a candy bar not only fills you up and tastes nice, but it also gives you energy that you take with you throughout your day. Ultimately, Sussna stated that design was less about features and more about outcomes. He also discussed complex/emergent systems, the potential for failure, and the need to lean into chaos and learning from a) system failures and b) the creative/unintentional uses consumers find for a product. My favorite part of this presentation was a quote of Sussna’s which I found both evocative and lovely: “What problems might our solutions create?” Sussna also recommended several books, which are listed in the supplemental materials.

    PERSONAL TAKEAWAYS:

    UXPA 2019 was a challenge for me to condense down to a few words on the ethics of UX. In part this was due to the fact that each speaker’s talk touched on ethics, but some did so obliquely or veiled through a different topic. The conference was less concerned with setting out specific ethical principles or guidelines, and more concerned with exploring the ways in which we treat people with respect and dignity. At the core, this is what designing experience should be: carefully considering the feelings, needs and rights of the person whose experience is being designed. While the nature of the conference placed emphasis on interaction through questions, I am looking forward to investigating the exercises and resources recommended by presenters which merge empathy with UX design.

    SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS:

    Vivianne Castillo:

    “Vivianne’s UX Self-Care Resources”: bit.ly/uxselfcare

    Abby Bajuniemi:

    The Vocal Fries podcast, “Bilingualism isn’t Just for White Kids”: https://vocalfriespod.com/2019/04/16/episode-37-bilingualism-isnt-just-for-white-kids-shownotes/

    McLean Donnelly:

    Accessibility for Everyone, by Laura Kalbag: https://laurakalbag.com/book/

    “UX Accessibility”, by Doug Collins through Skillshare: https://www.skillshare.com/classes/UX-Design-For-Accessibility/166696059

    The Makery Group’s Accessibility Policy: https://www.themakerygroup.com/accessibility-policy.html

    Beth McKeever:

    The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, by Daniel Coyle: http://danielcoyle.com/the-culture-code/

    Jeff Sussna:

    Design for Dasein, by Thomas Wendt: https://www.amazon.com/Design-Dasein-Understanding-Experiences/dp/1506166539/

    How Do Committees Invent?, by Melvin E. Conway: http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html

    Drift Into Failure, by Sidney Dekker: https://www.amazon.com/Drift-into-Failure-Sidney-Dekker/dp/1409422216

    Designing Delivery, by Jeff Sussna: https://www.sussna-associates.com/book

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