Leisa Reichelt
Leisa is a freelance user-experience consultant based in London, UK, and a passionate supporter of the UX community. She speaks at conferences such as UX London, dConstruct, IDEA, UX Week, and the IA Summit, runs workshops, and coordinates the London UX Bookclub. Leisa works with start-ups, open-source communities, and companies implementing Agile UX. She also founded UX Bootcamp as well as UX Tuesday. She is writing a book, A Practical Guide to Strategic User Experience, to be published by Five Simple Steps.
More thoughts by Leisa Reichelt:
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I like working with start ups because they are brave. Sometimes too brave, of course, but unlike most big companies they are likely to have a vision for how the world might be different when their project is in that world, and everyone on the team knows and shares that vision.
There comes a time in almost every company's existence when people start to care more about their career than they do the product they're working on or the customers they're serving. This is when the fear seems to kick in.
Don't be one of those companies and try not to work for them.
They are vision vacuums. In this vacuum you are better off making no decision than making the wrong one. That's no way to be creative.
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I expect people think it's a compliment when they say 'I don't' know how you find the time ...'. Personally, I find it a little irritating. We all have the same amount of time, and we all choose what we do with that time.
If you don't understand how people find time to do all the things they do then chances are you're not being very thoughtful about the way you spend your time. What you do, what you don't do - that's your choice.
There is no good choice or bad choice, but there are different levels of thoughtfulness.
There are lots of ways to spend your time badly. You can be incredibly busy and still spending your time badly. Everybody, except the bored, wants more time.
What do you want your life to be? That's how you need to spend your time.
Your time is the most precious resource you have. Use it thoughtfully, productively and creatively.
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Do you ever get the feeling that, as a profession, we're not really getting much better? Designers aren't designing better. Researchers aren't researching better. Developers... well, it's not really for me to say.
I think it's because our best and brightest stop making and start managing too soon. Those with the most talent and ambition are plucked out of practice just when their work is starting to get excited and they become line managers of the less talented and less ambitious.
That's pretty broken, right?
How do we keep young designers designing, young researchers researching, young developers writing code.
How do we recognize and reward their great work without promoting them into a role where they stop doing what they're awesome at and become managers instead.
How do we make it as prestigious to be one of the best designers in the company as we do to give people line reports and fancy job titles?
How do we stop promoting people away from excellence to their level of incompetence? How do we encourage apprenticeship rather than line management? How do we encourage people to take their careers more slowly?
Let's redesign incentive and reward and make being an awesome designer (or researcher or developer) something with an exciting career path, something to really aspire to.
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I've been noticing the way the space I'm working in affects the way I work. I've always known it made a difference but until recently I've thought it was a sign of my ability, my professionalism, to make the best of whatever space I find myself in. Lately, I've given up that vanity. Fact is, the walls do make a difference.
I need the walls to externalise and visualise data and my response to it in a way that is impossible on a computer screen - no matter how many monitors I have. I need walls to allow me to interact with that information in a more haphazard way. I need walls so that my team can talk to each other without feeling like they're disturbing those around them. I need walls so I can get quiet time to think and read and make sense without having to wear my headphones. Music is great, but quiet is different.
I wish more of us worked in designed spaces. Spaces with variety - with openness for sharing and more enclosed spaces for thinking. Spaces for individuals to make their own, for teams and projects to own, for walls to externalise our knowledge and share our ideas (and ideals).
Less with the pool tables, more with the thoughtful workspace design.
Here are the dates of Leisa Reichelt's future thoughts:
- Friday, 25 May
- Sunday, 17 June
- Saturday, 28 July
- Friday, 17 August
- Tuesday, 25 September
- Tuesday, 23 October
- Monday, 19 November
- Monday, 17 December