Blog

Posted on

The Occasional Mentor: On Making Decisions and Getting a Job During a Pandemic

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR:
A semi-regular column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in November.

Why do some people randomly do things to upset and confuse you right before you have to make a significant decision?

November 15, 2020

Whether they are deliberately doing it or not, there is some basic psychology and behavioral economics traps that can get in the way of making a decision that is in your best interest. Not having the facts, irrelevant facts or even having too many facts or too many choices can affect your ability to make a reasonable decision.

A famous psychology experiment explores a concept known as the “paradox of choice.” Supermarket customers were offered to taste test a variety of jellies at a supermarket. Those who were presented with six choices were more likely to buy than those presented with 24. Why? Providing too many choices can obscure the value of each individual part and make it difficult to compare one choice to another. Airlines use this when they give you a base cost and nickel and dime you for everything else. Auto salesman have been doing this for decades. Sometimes an abundance of choices causes you to accept (and pay for) too many variables. Other times, it leaves you putting off the decision altogether.

There could also be what you call random things that have little to nothing to do with your decision or that are things you may have little control over. Think about the decision you are trying to make and who it affects, and how it affects them and you. Try to eliminate anything that comes from outside that circle, especially if you know reasonably that you have no control over these things.

Here is a good mind-mapping method that will help bring you closer to a decision:

Write everything down, in concentric circles from the most affected to the least. Begin make connections and start crossing things off as a factor if they don’t connect. Do the same with people who are part of or not part of the decision, especially if they are coming up as possible factors. It’s good to do this in concentric circles so that the most affected people (or things) are in the center and the next level is in a circle outside of the center and the next one another ring further. Draw connection lines and note where those connections are weak or nonexistent. Cross off anyone or anything who is way on the outside or part of a weak or broken connection. Take what remains and draw a new set of circles and examine it. Things should start to come clearer.

Will COVID-19 make entry-level web design jobs harder to get?

November 15, 2020

It’s going to take a lot of effort and network building to land an entry level job in these COVID times. My advice is to try to attend online design meetups and join design slacks (google the phrase, there are many) that make time for interaction, not just webinars that have speakers or panels with no interaction. With the entire world online and hosting events, you don’t need to stick to your local area right now. At the online events and discussions, take note of people who are working in areas you enjoy or want to develop more and reach out to them for a private conversation. Be sure to follow up!

Get creative. Look for start up organizations and incubators at local universities. Look for nonprofits that need to get their holiday funding message out. If you are a graduate of a university or Bootcamp, connect with the placement or alumni office. Alumni are often willing to go out of their way to help someone whose shoes they used to wear.

Posted on

Downward Dot Voting

My friend Austin Govella wrote today on using a kind of whole-body dot voting to teach teams to “Vote With Your Feet“. We are in a Liminal Thinking group on Facebook where he initially threw his ideas around. I was excited that he chose to add my comment about using negative dots to vote down ideas, and use them in my undergraduate UX class as a discussion point about what we Won’t do or talk about on a project.

My students get to use dot voting on the first day of our UX/UI class at CUNY CityTech, where we talk about what we are worried about for the upcoming semester. Addressing concerns and potential problems is a good exercise in most occasions, but in these days of online classes, crushing economy and pandemic, talking about our worries is particularly important. It helps to alleviate anxiety and develop a growth mindset toward the months ahead.

In this first class, the students learn about a number of design practices using a shared, online whiteboard, including brainstorming, dot voting, cluster analysis, and Kanban as part of a pre-mortem exercise on what can go wrong with the class. (I learned this exercise while teaching with Jimmy Chandler at the New York Code and Design Academy and modified it for online classes).

To begin, students use virtual sticky notes to write down their concerns about the coming semester. Then the students attach green and red mini circles, three each, to vote on which issues they want to discuss and which ones they don’t. Then we use Kanban (To do, Doing, Done) to keep the discussion orderly.

When I used the technique earlier on, I allowed each student three dots to vote on ideas that they want to discuss. There are usually concerns expressed that are common students commuting to our downtown Brooklyn campus, like getting to class on time (what if the subway breaks down? what if my work goes overtime?), having too much homework (it is a lot of homework, tbh), or dealing with a teammate that doesn’t pull their share (this happens on the job, too, unfortunately). It was OK. But these concerns, being fairly common are covered in the syllabus in the items about time management, group behavior and attendance, so the discussion becomes somewhat procedural.

There are of course new and now-common issues this semester about logging into school instead of commuting, managing family and job expectations, particularly for those students whose families rely on their job income and dealing with the combined stress of school, real and potential loss of family members (at least two of my students had a COVID death in the family and many have been displaced or ill), and just living in the 2020 political and budgetary climate. These issues are very personal and went largely unspoken but manifested as concerns about deadlines, time management and doubts that they have the skills it takes to be successful.

By allowing the students to select some issues that are not particularly a concern was a new idea and I found it especially interesting to explore them with the class. So along with items that have a lot of upvotes, I also selected items that have some upvotes, but also a few downvotes (more than one downvote, so as not to put any one person on the spot).

“Not a Concern” is key phrasing. For the upvote dots, I told the students to “mark items they want to talk about.” For downvote dots, the instructions are “mark items that are Not a Concern.” Te fact that someone wrote the issue on a sticky note in the first place means it is a concern for some students. I inferred from the “Not a Concern” votes that maybe there are people who have discovered ways to deal with the problem.

And for a teacher, it highlights differences in each class (there are always differences) that point to certain pedagogical approaches. For instance in one section the most up-voted concern was “potential weakness in design skills.” In the other section, a similar issue got a lot of down-votes. I wanted to know what was going on so made sure to expand on that concern in the second week’s discussion and begin a discussion of skills development, the importance of practice, and imposter syndrome.

This then becomes an opportunity for a discussion of growth. I tell them to ask themselves, How can I, as a student in a rigorous BFA program, discover ways to develop perspective so I understand where the doubt is coming from? How can I build confidence? Through practice, time management and simply being honest about the particularly stressful challenges this world is throwing at us and asking for help.

So cheers to Austin for giving me a fun topic to explore here. While you are at it, you can find his book, Collaborative Product Design at https://www.agux.co/cpd.

Posted on

No Longer, Not Yet

A walk down Broadway: counting closed—and yet to be opened—businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not Yet: Hex & Co game cafe planned to move from its current location on Broadway and 112th to Broadway and 114, the site of The West End Gate near Columbia University.

Today I had a dentist appointment. There weren’t any open appointments until October, but they had a cancelation, so I took it. I had just been there two days ago with my grown children, each reporting wisdom tooth pain, lost fillings and sensitivity. My pain was to be attributed to “Coronavirus Stress”. It’s something supposedly very common whether you’ve had the disease or not. Dr Cheung, the dentist, said he has it, too. No one is immune from dental stress these days. He recommended a night guard. And now I was heading back for a cleaning.

Taking a Lyft the other day, after a three month break from automobiles was strange. Traffic seemed to be going too fast and close for comfort. I didn’t want to touch the seat belt. Or the handle. Or the seat. This time, I decided to walk to West 79th Street, so I set out early for 40 minutes of late morning exercise.

No Longer: Storefront with scaffolding and a torn For Rent sign

It’s been so hot in New York, but the air was cool today. I walked over to Broadway and then down and across at West 97th before taking Amsterdam Avenue the rest of the way.

At this time of day, essential workers are readying stores and restaurants for lunchtime sidewalk service and street-side dining. Areas in the near lane of the road, tented or open are set with tables and chairs, not quite 6 feet apart, and surrounded by 18 inch planter barriers, some already planted but most empty and awaiting something cheery.

Many of these settings cleverly expand restaurant seating into space unoccupied by the adjacent store, boarded up or dark and bearing a “For Rent” sign. I counted a lot of closed up stores on my walk.

Not Yet: Lululemon store “opening early Summer 2020”, has been shuttered since March.

As I stood waiting for the walk sign to light, I was thinking about these boarded up places. Especially the ones that have “Coming Soon” signs, offering hope but already beginning to fade.

On these New York streets, dry cleaners and restaurants have closed. In the operating businesses, behind the plexiglass of the curbside, contactless payment center, lie abandoned spaces where patrons used to eat.

Many have gone out of business. We aren’t allowed to dine in these days, and the streetside capacity is too low for them to make a profit, so they remain closed or close for good. Anyway, The 18 inch planter barriers aren’t exactly cheap. And you don’t need to clean a “Zoom shirt” that often.

Not Yet: a papered window with Blue Bottle Coffee logo “coming soon”

Architecture_MPS, a research group where I manage social media, had an article some years ago called “No Longer and Not Yet” by Edward Hollis. It’s about a seminary near Glasgow that was built in the 1960s but abandoned almost immediately. What happens when there is no more use for a place?

As the light changed, I looked up and saw a young, nicely dressed woman, awkwardly carrying a magazine file full of Manila folders and a potted plant. She was wearing a mask, like most do these days, so I couldn’t judge her expression. Her eyes were watchful, dry. Perhaps she was just let go from her job. Or on her way to set up at a new one.

Another store. Another job. Coming soon.

“Come in we are open” sandwich board in front of a vitamin shop

The images for this story were taken by Noreen Whysel on July 16, 2020 near Columbia University. Each of these sites except The Vitamin Shoppe has been closed since the New York State PAUSE was announced on March 10, 2020.

Posted on

IA Conference in Quarantine: On-Site to Online in 30 Days

The IA Conference ended its four week run, which as some of you may recall was originally a five day event In New Orleans with 12 preconference workshops and 60 talks in three tracks. The format changed to all prerecorded talks released in three tracks daily over a period of three weeks. We put the plenaries on Mondays and Fridays and special programming, like panel talks and poster sessions, on Wednesdays. We used Slack for daily AMAs and Zoom for weekend watch parties and Q&A sessions with plenaries. Other social and mentoring activities took place mornings, weekends and evenings.

The workshops which usually come first were all moved to the fourth week except for Jorge Arango’s IA Essentials. We had a lot of student scholarship attendees and didn’t want to make them wait until after the main conference.

We have a lot of amazing people to thank for puling it off, starting with dozens of volunteers whose stamina is inspiring. I honestly wasn’t sure we could hold people that long. But Jared Spool thought we could do it and Cheryl at Rosenfeld Media gave us some valuable advice about connecting through online platforms.

So, what did we do? Check out this presentation “Rapid Switch: How we turned a five day onsite event into a monthlong, online celebration,” presented at the 500 Members Celebration of the Digital Collaboration Practitioners.

Posted on

Checking In: Coronavirus Edition

One of my startup groups suggested doing a check-in last week and one of the things I noticed In everyone’s worries was speculation about how markets might behave and comparisons to earlier periods of economic turmoil. I’ve been through 1987, 9/11 and 2008, so weighed in with my perspective.

The full effect of the 87 crash hit in 1990 right after I graduated from Columbia. Most of the companies I “interviewed” with at the career center admitted they weren’t hiring any time in the future. So, I temped my way to my first job at a small investment bank that went under within six weeks. I temped some more through most of April before landing an entry-level job in Business and Real Estate Valuation at Price Waterhouse. 9/11 pretty much ended my time there.

What I learned from that experience is that changing up your environment and learning how people do things at different companies is a good thing.

I did weird little jobs like stuffing gift boxes of logo socks at Ziff-Davis, cataloging buttons or prepping trunk shows at Chanel and a lot of phone banks and accounting. I learned a lot of software, and got pretty good at them.

I learned about how relationships work in business and solving problems, from the Chanel Boca Raton store dealing with button theft to fulfilling sweepstakes prizes and basic time and expense tracking. Plus if I ever got cold at Chanel I could always “go grab a sweater.”

9/11 was a weird time and very similar to now. Air travel was shut down. Bridges and tunnels were closed to private vehicles. Manhattan at least was pretty much on lockdown for three months. If you lived below 14th Street you had to evacuate.

Stores were open and I don’t remember a lot of hoarding. (I could be misremembering. I had a running drugstore.com diaper order so was probably pretty well-stocked, regularly). I remember hearing figures like $20 billion in losses just in NYC.

We didn’t have social distancing. That would have been devastating. There was a lot of bonding with neighbors and coworkers I hadn’t really known that well.

I was at PwC then, working remotely for the global web team, mostly operations and reporting. Some of my coworkers who worked out of the Jersey City office saw the towers go down. I had been going in for biweekly Tuesday all hands meetings, but that day was the alternate Tuesday, so I was home with my kids, getting my oldest ready to go meet her first preschool teachers.

We could go outside. The weather was beautiful, and so quiet. I remember a conversation in Sheep’s Meadow with a coworker who was losing her faith. I’d like to think I helped her.

In 2001, were already downsizing our department at PwC, so when I learned we were giving sublease space back to Lehman Brothers, I figured correctly I’d get laid off. That happened in January 2002.

By 2008 I had two school age kids and a part time contract at a virtual association. I had freelance design and technology gigs, too. We had just bought an apartment at the top of the market, but had sold our old one at a near 300% gain over ten years. So we felt secure.

But 2008 meant layoffs and job changes for my husband, who was at Citibank, then Ziegler, then BMO. We are pretty frugal but it’s amazing how much you can spend to live in this city. He is now a full time professor at BMCC. I teach two design classes at CityTech and advise a lot of startups and nonprofits. We’ve cut back, but we have two kids in college now, so feeling very uncertain.

I expect we will probably hear a lot of comparisons to previous disasters. It feels like potentially very different this time.

9/11 was shocking. We were in mourning. Thousands of lives. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who died. It’s going to be the same for us, but it’s going to happen over a longer period of time, and we may not be able to predict who it will be or when.

That by itself is going to mean a lot of mental anguish and a lot of business lost. Hospitality may get its bailout, but how long before people are comfortable traveling again? We may all get our “two weeks pay” from the Feds. Then what?

We startup entrepreneurs and business owners need to brace for it. We need to brace for limited funding opportunities. We need to reach out to each other and partner, do in-kind swaps. We need to share info on grants and other opportunities.

We can’t hold hands or hug anyone anymore, but we can stay connected and check in with each other.

Here’s my check-in:

Going Well: Working on transitioning a three day, three track, all volunteer, live conference to virtual and it is actually going well! I also have my kids home from college, and Simone has been baking!

Excited about: The Information Architecture Conference. My grandnephew, born this past Friday. Moving my classes at CityTech online, and, somewhat ironically, how the fact that isolation breeds misinformation makes Mucktracker, the news literacy app I’m working with, much more prescient and needed.

Nervous about: The conference. My parents. How long this social distancing will last, wifi bandwidth, my IRA, running out of TP.

So that’s my check-in. How are you doing? I have been working from home since 1997, so can offer tips to anyone finding themselves out of the office or incubator spaces for the duration. Feel free to post your check-in and questions in the comments.

Posted on

Please Drive Slowly on Neutral Ground

August 26, 2019 NOLA Ready Alert instructing residents regarding parking restriction lift during flood warning.

My son, Jay, is a sophomore at Loyola University in New Orleans, so the worrywart parent I am signed up for NOLA Ready alerts to track emergencies during hurricane season. The above flash flood alert caught my eye, particularly the reference to parking restrictions on sidewalks and neutral grounds. Flooding in New Orleans streets can get dangerous so the city allows residents to to park cars in neutral areas during heavy rainfall.

The phrase “neutral ground” caught my eye in particular. I am co-chairing the Information Architecture Conference this year, in charge of Experience, so I’m interested in spotting terms that might be unique to New Orleans.

One of Jay’s favorite places to hang out in the Uptown neighborhood is called Neutral Ground Coffeehouse. It’s a place where people of all ages can gather, sip coffee, listen to live music and generally enjoy themselves. Like Temple Sinai on Charles Street across from Loyola’s Jesuit campus, Neutral Ground is a place where a Jewish kid from New York City can find some familiar culture and feel at home, with nightly programming, a weekly poetry hour and open mic on Sundays.

The phrase “Neutral Ground” didn’t seem particularly unique as far as two word phrases go. Other than the clever play on coffee “grounds” it never occurred to me that “Neutral Ground” had a specific meaning in New Orleans history.

On the NOLA Ready alert, neutral ground refers to the grassy median space between the lanes of major streets. On lanes where the city’s iconic streetcars run there are expanses of neutral ground that accommodate the trains with additional buffers. The area may or not be elevated from the main street level, but with the sidewalks, they provide a place for cars to park during heavy storms. We found ourselves waiting in these areas for traffic to pass at several intersections where they do not have many traffic lights or pedestrian signals.

Canal Street Mid City Neutral Ground. Photo by Infrogmation of New Orleans, December, 2016. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canal_Street_Mid_City_Neutral_Ground_Dec_2016.jpg

A 2017 Times-Picayune story describes the original Neutral Ground as the center of Canal Street, which represented the division between the historically French and Anglo-American sections of the city. The French Quarter is on the north side of the divide and represents the First Municipality which was settled by French Creoles in the early Eighteenth Century. The Second Municipality, on the south side where the Central Business District is today, was settled by English speaking people after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

Below is an 1798 map showing the French Quarter and fortifications. The diagonal line to the left of the quarter is the boundary of an adjacent plantation, owned by John Greamer and his brother.

New Orleans in 1798 in accordance with an ordinance of the Illustrious Minustry and Royal Charter (as reprinted in the 1880s. Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by user Infrogmation.. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NewOrleans1798_map.jpg

Below is an 1816 plan for New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase was completed. The rectangular area at the peak curve of the Missisippi is the French Quarter. Canal Street is the leftmost street in the French Quarter area, one block to the right of the diagonal plantation boundary, now Common Street.

1816 Plan of the City and Enrirons of New Orleans, taken from actual Survey by Barthelemy Lafon, via book “Charting Louisiana, Five Hundred Years of Maps” edited by Alfred E. Lemmmon, John T. Magill and Jason R. Wiese, Historic New Orleans Collection, 2003. Posted to Wikimedia Commons by user Infrogmation.

Canal Street’s center divide was officially declared “The Neutral Ground” by the Daily Picayune on March 11, 1837 and the term has since been the general phrase to describe what most other places call the median.

I’m sure I’ll keep learning more New Orleans lingo in preparation for our conference in April. Just yesterday in a marketing team call, Joe Sokohl, our Experience Director who has family ties there, used the term “lagniappe,” another distinctively New Orleans term, derived from Quechua, to describe swag or giveaways we might provide at the IA Conference. I guess we all need a dictionary, so here’s a couple to keep up (these sites also have information for visitors):

Experience New Orleans, Say What?
http://www.experienceneworleans.com/glossary.html

New Orleans.com, NOLA Speak
https://www.neworleans.com/things-to-do/multicultural/colorful-words/

Posted on

Disaster Planning at Woodstock – 50 Years in Review

Article updated on the event’s 50th Anniversary with images from Woodstock then and in 2011 when this piece was first published.

August 30, 2011

This past weekend, while Irene was threatening the East Coast, my husband and I were in the Catskills for visiting day at our daughters’ summer camp. We decided to extend our stay through Monday to avoid the surge and inevitable traffic delays following the storm’s projected landfall in New York City on Sunday.

Satellite image of Hurricane Irene on August 24, 2011 via Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Hurricane_Irene_Aug_24_2011_1810Z.jpg/649px-Hurricane_Irene_Aug_24_2011_1810Z.jpg

Rather than avoid trouble, we found ourselves in the middle of it, as the Catskills experienced some of the worst storm-surge damage in the country: downed trees, road blocks, raging forest streams. If fact, a large white pine at the inn where we were staying fell inches from our unit’s porch, bringing several smaller trees down with it.

When it was safe to venture out, a trip to the Bethel Woods Museum at Bethel Woods Performing Arts Center, site of the 1969 Woodstock festival, interestingly, provided some perspective on disaster planning in the area.

Magic Bus. Image by Steve Brown https://www.flickr.com/photos/13111644@N00/9788610043

The Woodstock Music & Art Fair was held from August 15-18, 1969 at Max Yasgur‘s dairy farm in the hamlet of White Lake, Town of Bethel, Sullivan County, NY. We passed Yasgur’s farm several times while exploring the area’s restaurants and outdoor recreation facilities.

The area is marked by rolling pastures and clear lakes reflecting big white clouds in deep blue skies. Aside from a very visible lawn signs either declaring “No Fracking!” or “Friends of Natural Gas,” it seems little has changed in forty some years.

Museum artifacts on the planning of the Woodstock festival showcased the local debate regarding the chosen site of the concert. With over 200,000 tickets pre-sold, planning for traffic and security was a huge concern, as was local opinion on exactly what the festival was to be.

The festival organizers had mere days to move from Wallkill, NY where local opposition succeeded in preventing it from being held there to White Lake, where the Bethel Town Supervisor approved the plan despite some local protest. Newspaper articles and advertisements documented the debate.

Woodstock Ticket via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woodstock_ticket.jpg
Woodstock Ticket via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woodstock_ticket.jpg

Also on view were documents from the local Sheriff’s department outlining traffic and security plans and telegrams to other county departments requesting additional coverage. Handwritten notes and official telegrams from Allegheny County and other Sheriff departments indicated a shortage of officers. All stated that they could not spare any men.

Traffic was beginning to get backed up days before the concert started so that it became impossible to get close to the festival site. People were leaving their cars on the highway and walking the rest of the way to the concert. Performers were flown in and out again by helicopter.

An estimated 400,000 people were in attendance at the concert’s peak.

Then there came the rain. Though not hurricane force, the rains that fell on the Woodstock festival and in the week leading into it created saturated conditions, muddy roads and an already difficult traffic situation.

The audience at Woodstock waits for the rain to end, image by Derek Redmond and Paul Campbell, 1969 via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Woodstock#/media/File:Woodstock_redmond_rain.JPG
The audience at Woodstock waits for the rain to end, image by Derek Redmond and Paul Campbell, 1969 via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Woodstock#/media/File:Woodstock_redmond_rain.JPG

Officials had called in 150 state troopers, and deputies from adjacent counties ultimately did pitch in to direct traffic away from the area. The Evening News of Newburgh, NY reported that by the last day of the festival, mainly due to a lack of food and unsanitary conditions, the crowd had dispersed to only 10,000 and no traffic jams were reported.

This weekend’s storm called for similar measures, but on a much smaller scale. As we left the area, we noted state troopers and national guardsmen directing traffic near the interchanges of Route 17, I-87 and Route 6. Southbound traffic on I-87 was closed above the Tappan Zee Bridge and it was an hour drive between Route 17 and our usual favorite route, the Palisades Parkway.

At the Route 6 traffic circle near Bear Mountain, the Sloatsburg exit was entirely washed away.

Hurricane Irene Highland, NY flooding via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hurricane_Irene_Highland,_NY_flooding.JPG
Hurricane Irene Highland, NY flooding via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hurricane_Irene_Highland,_NY_flooding.JPG
Deep gorge created in road after Hurricane Irene flooding in Ulster County, NY, via Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Deep_gorge_created_in_road_after_Hurricane_Irene_flooding%2C_Oliverea%2C_NY.jpg
Deep gorge created in road after Hurricane Irene flooding in Ulster County, NY, via Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Deep_gorge_created_in_road_after_Hurricane_Irene_flooding%2C_Oliverea%2C_NY.jpg

Could the traffic situation have been prevented? In 1969, the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department was working with an estimate of 50,000 concertgoers, a figure provided by the promoters that was 150,000 short of pre-sales figures.

From what I’ve seen from this weekend’s rains, emergency services would already have been taxed from heavy rains and flooding in the region. Had they known that attendance would approach half a million people, it is likely that the concert would have been called off. That said, I doubt it would have stopped the hundreds of thousands of people from coming.

Posted on

The Occasional Mentor: On Minimal and Natural UI, Mid-Career Change and Hailing Taxis in NYC

THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR:
A monthly(ish) column based on questions I’ve answered on Quora, heard on Slack groups, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Feel free to challenge me in the comments, if you have a different experience. Below are questions I answered in May. This one has a fun one at the end.

Why are more and more companies moving towards making their UI white?

Answered May 6, 2019

I trace the emergence of white background, minimalist design to the popularity of flat design and the explosion of sites offering crowd-generated content or media from disparate sources, like Medium and iTunes.

Flat design became popular for two reasons. The first, related to mobile frameworks like Material Design, is that people were becoming used to how buttons and links work and the raised, skeuomorphic styles were beginning to look old. Button colors that contrast starkly with the (usually) white background and colors with significant meaning (think red outlines for field errors) were enough to generate meaning. The second reason is the rise of mobile, which required sites to load faster in order to use less data. It’s become less of an issue as free WiFi becomes more and more available. This, along with a need for our mobile launch buttons to stand out, is why we are starting to see things like gradients and shadows making a return.

Minimalist design arose for utilitarian reasons. Having a busy, colorful layout too often competes with the images used by third party sources, so a clean, white (or black) layout makes sense on sites that aggregate a lot of content. There is also a recognition that certain background styles or fonts become dated very quickly. If you avoid using the style du jour, your products are less likely to seem old sooner.

How can I make the UX/UI design of a product feel more natural?

Answered May 1

There were a lot of good answers to this question. I thought I’d add a couple resources that might be useful in understanding the fundamentals of natural, usable design.

First is Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, which discusses affordances like door handles and light switches and how people understand that a thing is something one can interact with.

Then read Indi Young’s Mental Models and Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. These will get you good information about how to approach design in a way that is natural to the user.

I also like Donna Lichaw’s The User’s Journey, which pulls back to the whole experience of how a user finds and solves a problem and what their emotions and struggles are along the way. It goes well with the Empathy Map that some people described in previous answers.

Is it too late for me to take an UX design boot camp and get hired into an UX job? I have no design experience. I am 32 years old?

Anwered May 1

In an earlier post, I discussed the kinds of soft skills that are essential for an older, but new UX designer to highlight in a resume and portfolio and ways to bring up one’s design skills, in addition to boot camps, which I should say I have taught and recommend as a way to get the basics of UX along with some collaborative experience.

The list of tools that I mentioned should be updated, as I predicted. We see shiny, new tools every year, but a few seem to get mention in job posting more than others. We did use Sketch and InVision in our course. There are other tools you might consider working with including Figma, Adobe XD (which is now free), UXPin, Balsamiq, Framer, Proto.io and collaborative design tools like Mural, Miro (formerly Real Time Board), etc. you can find a lot of these if you search “Best UX Tools”.

Don’t try to learn them all and don’t worry about having an expert level at any of these, as you will likely be introduced to new ones on the job. If you have a positive attitude toward learning new tools, it helps a lot. Pick a few to create some mock designs, and then see if you can find a pro bono project to work on. You can also do a mock project for your current company, which would be ideal since you probably know a lot about your customers/users and would stand out in your portfolio. (Ask your boss first).

I know a lot of people who transitioned to UX at a later age from other careers, including similar roles in graphic design and communications, and as distant as restaurant management. Some were over 50 when they made the transition. 32 is still very young, so you won’t have to struggle against age-related bias nearly as much.

Do I have to whistle really loud to hail a taxi in NYC?

Answered Apr 21

I love this question. Lol, no. Though it does call attention. I know a few doormen who have a pretty strong whistle.

If you can’t whistle, what you should do is cautiously step out a little off the curb, especially if you are on a block with parked cars, so the driver can see you. Corners are also good places to wait since you can direct a taxi heading the opposite way or on a perpendicular street to turn your way.

If you are too shy or too short to be seen, NYC Taxis also respond to Curb | The Taxi App.


Posted on

NYC Charter Revisions and GIS Oversight

Since well before 9/11, GISMO, the NYC region’s oldest GIS interest group, has been working on advocacy initiatives to improve the way New York City collects, stores, shares and manages Geospatial Data and the processes and strategies around the City’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related functions. Beginning in 1996, the City’s first GIS Director, GISMO member Alan Leidner, held this role until his retirement from civic service in 2004. During his tenure, Leidner oversaw NYC’s emergency mapping program in one of the country’s most complicated rescue and recovery operations, the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

Just two years prior to 9/11, the City had launched a common base map for all agencies to use in GIS applications. Prior to the 1999 base map, there was little coordination between agencies on the underlying coordinates of various features on maps. As a result, data such as street center lines (which were available from the US Census though not always accurate) and building footprints would not match up with the level of accuracy needed for an effective response in an emergency situation. As City agencies created their own maps and datasets, using proprietary systems and software whose license agreements precluded data sharing, it was becoming increasingly difficult to form a common operating picture. This created difficulties for routine maintenance projects like coordinating access, excavation and repair of street corners and threatened larger operations.  After the World Trade Center attacks, when visible landmarks were no longer available, the new base map saved time, money and lives.

But things have changed since 2004. When Leidner retired, a new GIS Director was appointed, but he was not given the same level of responsibility and did not get the assistant commissioner title the post had carried previously. Laws providing the public open access to a multitude of agency datasets created a market for public information and tools created taking advantage of them. Mayor Bloomberg wrote an executive order that created the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, but the mandate did not cover the kind of sensitive data that would be required to handle multi-department programs and, crucially, emergencies. As a result response to events like Hurricane Sandy was fractured, affecting the ability of emergency services, DEP, MTA, ConEd and other entities to coordinate their activities.

GISMO recently published Guiding Principles and Policies for New York City’s Geospatial Architecture outlining its position on the role of geospatial technology and governance in NYC government. It presented the Principals and Policies work at a public forum at Hunter College in April 2018. GISMO further pursued its position that NYC must have a GIS Director and coordinating committee made up of GIS leads at all city agencies and is recommending a Charter amendment or legislation to make this happen.

GISMO posted its introductory statement, video and written testimonies regarding the proposed amendments to the New York City Charter at http://www.gismonyc.org/events/amend_nyc_charter/.  These testimonies were delivered to the New York City Council Charter Committee on April 30, May 2, May 7 and May 9, where several GISMO members, including myself, testified at the public hearings.

Through this Charter initiative we have advanced the cause of GIS in NYC by bringing our demands for better governance into the public forum. GIS saves lives, protects infrastructure, supports planning, improves City services, increases tax collections, and enhances economic development. We estimate that GIS at least doubles the analytic powers of traditional IT. We call on City government to recognize these facts and act accordingly.

You can find my testimony (gismonyc.org) and video (YouTube), starting at 02:25:15 but to get the full context, it’s best to review the statements in order. To explore how lives are saved by faster 911 response visit NYS GIS Association’s GISCalc tool created by Decision Fish, Results that Matter Team, and funded by the Fund for the City of New York.

If you are interested in learning more about GIS governance in New York City, contact GISMO at info@gismonyc.org or contact your New York City Council representative.

Posted on

Pervasive Information Architecture in Emergency Management

NYC Emergency Operations Center, NYC Office of Emergency Management

The floor plan of the NYC Emergency Operations Center is a great example of pervasive information architecture, where the structure of the physical space mimics the structure/hierarchy of the people and systems in the space. It shows what each watch commander monitors, how reporting agencies and government community services like Department of Homeless Services and the Red Cross are grouped. It is a space that is designed to get optimal information flow from person to person, which supplements data flow from machine to machine.

For more, see my presentations on the Semiotics of Emergency Management.