Strengths Based Leadership includes an access code for the Clifton Strengthsfinder, and is a helpful guide as you identify how your strengths are showing up, or where they could be showing up more.

My publishing efforts are now focused on the UX Cake podcast. Launched in Feb. of 2018, we are now in the top 25% of podcasts, with a global audience that continues to grow!

UX Cake is a podcast for user experience professionals who want to be more effective and happy in their career. Every episode we deliver practical advise on how to get the best outcomes for our work, our teams, our users, and our careers in UX. Our guests include well-known leaders like Don Normanand Jon Maeda, as well as many less globally-known voices with fantastic insights to share, like disability designer & activist Liz Jackson, agile coach & ux champion Shayna Atkins, and UX team experts Mary & David Sherwin.

Go to uxcake.co for all the episodes, or to whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts!

You can host a live recording of the UX Cake podcast at your event or conference! Connect with me to find out more!

It makes sense that we would see more effective outcomes and greater satisfaction from the same amount of effort by doing more of what we're good at, rather than always trying to shore up areas where we are weak. Sure we all have areas we can and should improve, but if we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths, we may end up with a job, or a life, in which our natural talents go untapped. Do you get the opportunity to do what you do best every day? If not,  the book Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath (Gallup), intends to help you change that, first by getting crystal clear on what your own strengths are, and then developing your goals around what you do best.

How clear are you on what your own strengths are? If you're anything like I was, you may feel like you generally could list off a few, but may wonder if you under- or over-estimate some of your own strengths, and feedback from other people doesn't always include a complete picture of you. That's why I keep recommending this resource to anyone who wants to design and develop their future based on what they do best.

The Strengths Finder 2.0 book - both the kindle version and the physical book - come with a code to take the Strengths Finder test (which is $25 by itself to take on their website, so the book is a good deal). The test is similar to the Meyers-Briggs personality test, but rather than focusing on personality traits it helps people uncover their talents, which is highly actionable for developing life-changing goals. I'm often skeptical of these tests (would I answer this question differently on a different day?) but I felt that my results were spot-on, and I found the advice in the book to be really insightful and more tailored to my experience than most books.

This is a great time of year to reflect on what we've accomplished and think about our goals, as we approach a new year. If you've ever wanted to get more clarity on your own strengths, I recommend this book as a first step to living a life designed around what you do best.

Strengths Finder 2.0
Tom Rath (from Gallup)

People who have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.

This article from Nielsen Norman Group offers really practical advise for getting more effective UX design by putting ideation sessions very early in the process. It also is clear that group ideation is much more effective than doing that work individually.

This has absolutely been my experience as well, which is why I bring that practice with me wherever I work. I also love helping product teams develop a good ideation process by facilitating their collaborative design sessions.

Read the article here on nngroup.com

I’m so excited about this new series of episodes on the Hidden Brain Podcast, called ‘You 2.0.’ Not because it’s a new subject — self improvement, personal growth… it seems every other article headline I see is about being a 'better you’ (or maybe it’s just my newsfeed). But if anyone can shed new perspective on a well-covered theme, it’s Hidden Brain’s Shankar Vidantam. Because understanding ourselves — our brains — is key to developing a fuller and happier life.

The Value of ‘Deep Work’ — and how to cultivate focus
The first episode in the series...

It can be SO hard to communicate your reaction to something visual using words. Whether it's negative, or positive, the words many of us come up with are often not very useful for creative direction.  But it is possible, if you can remember just a few rules (8 of them, conveniently listed here), to get the very best outcome from the feedback you give the designers you work with.
     Very few people - including designers - give really good design feedback. Good feedback should be actionable, but not prescriptive. Good feedback will help the entire team participate in the design of a product, and share the responsibility of  success, without creating ‘design by committee,’ which is a common way designs get derailed. Feedback that is given and received well should improve the customer experience, while allowing each person to add valuable insight.

The 8 Rules for Better Design Feedback

So much of what moves us forward -- or holds us back -- in any job is about relationships. And core to building healthy relationships -- or repairing damage -- is about how we communicate. Inevitably in mentoring sessions, this book comes up as a suggestion for common problems that arise at work. Whether the issue at hand is with a managers or co-worker, a spouse or family member, the techniques in this book are relevant to every situation. I've had multiple people thank me for referring this book to them, and I am grateful to the wise person who referred it to me. This is one of those book I still return to, in fact I bought it in both kindle and paperback formats because I like to quickly thumb through paperback when I'm looking for something in particular, but I like having the convenience of Kindle with me everywhere.

​Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

If you are a creative who's curious and loves expanding your design horizons, you will probably really dig this podcast. Unless podcasts aren't your thing, but then you should give it a try, anyway. 

Debbie Millman has been creating her Design Matters podcast for 12 years, and her experience as an interviewer helps make this one of the best podcasts there is on the subject of creativity and design. There are 281 episodes available on the website (216 in iTunes). Debbie interviews top-shelf names in the large design world, plenty of recognizable names like Clement Mok or Jonathan Adler, but chances are that most of them are people you probably never heard of before, who are doing really interesting and creative things. It's also refreshing to hear a podcast with just as many talented women interviewed as men.

There is so much interesting content here to discover that I don't think I'll have a chance to run out any time soon. Check out the website or download on iTunes.

What an inspirational book. If you consider yourself an 'idea person' but are waiting until you think up the 'next big thing' to take action on your ideas, you need to read this book! This book could help anyone though, because it turns out that what you need to come up with the 'next big thing' is curiosity, empathy, and imagination, and we all have the ability to cultivate those.
Some of my fave insights:
- Curiosity - Distraction reduces exploring our curiosity, and keeps us in our 'filter bubble'
- Empathy - whoever gets closest to their customer wins
- Imagination - are we so reliant on data that we become risk averse?
Curious? Read this book!
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Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights Into The Next Big Thing

Since I just found yet another great resource to tweet about thanks to Todd Henry and The Accidental Creative podcast, I figured I need to give a shoutout and spread the word about this show that I recently just discovered even though it's been around since 2011. Todd talks to incredibly interesting people about creative-related things in most of the shows, and he's got great insights himself. I've found it to be a pretty inspirational podcast to listen to, and have gotten insights from every episode I've listened to. I never have enough time to listen to all the podcasts in my feed, but this one is worth making time for. Todd Henry writes books and speaks on creativity and creative-type stuff, and leads workshops with creative teams. If podcasts aren't your thing, he also has a few books to help you be more - you guessed it - creative.

Tim Brown was one of IDEO's founders as well as one of the founders of the acclaimed D-School at Stanford. Some say they 'invented' Design Thinking, others call it a branded version of what many call 'User-centered design.' Regardless, for anyone who wants to get inspired and learn more about how Design Thinking could help them transform their organization, this book is a must.

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

If you have ideas, you like doing things with ideas, or you want to generate more ideas... You should read this book. Scott Berkun is a 'Maker' thinker... which makes this book feel tangibly helpful. Thinking is great, but making, that's where we find our magic. Yet it sometimes feels harder than it should be, this maker-thinker tight-rope that we balance on.

It's a fun read, 'guaranteed' cliché-free, and will give you ideas to improvise, be a genius, and stay motivated. BOOM!

If you're interested in getting more strategic with your UX, or helping your product or UX team get more strategic, you've got to read this book. Jaime Levy is an industry veteran who knows what the hell she's talking about. And that's putting it lightly!

In this book, Jaime walks you through the process she uses with her clients, beginning with customer discovery and competitive analysis techniques, identifying unique opportunities, running experiments using lean methodologies, and mapping user actions to meaningful metrics. These methods work for enterprise as well as start-ups, and anyone can glean valuable insights for creating better products - that people want.

Most designers will say they produce better designs when they have constraints. And yet, the guidelines we use to kick-off design thinking & innovation sessions typically encourage thinking outside the known constraints.

This article by Lisa Kay Solomon showcases a great tool to use for understanding 'loose' vs. 'tight' constraints, and how to frame those constraints so you get not only big ideas, but the most effective big ideas.

(From the award-winning designer Ayse Birsel)

• Think positively 
• Put yourself in the shoes of other people and see things from their perspective 
• See the big picture 
• Collaborate with others, as this makes the ideas so much richer
• Always ask yourself "what if?"

When Fast Company interviewed former apple designer Mark Kawano about his insights into why apple design is so great, the article went viral in the design community. His primary message was this — design can’t just belong to designers… for great product design, everyone throughout the product lifecycle has to want, understand, and contribute to great design. What Kawano was saying was so core to UX strategists and designers around the globe, why did it sound so novel, so different than the companies many designers work at, or products we produce? My experience is that it’s fairly uncommon to find UX really integrated with business and dev, especially at larger companies. If you have it, that’s something special (and I would love to meet you!).

‘us’ vs. ‘them’ mentality 
Designers like working in design teams, and developers like working in dev teams. PMs work in business teams, and marketers have their teams too. Having centralized functional teams can make for better morale, increased talent acquisition and retention, and can also help distribute specialization across workstreams...  
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