User Experience newsletter — February 2020When visiting a friend in hospital, I came across this sign: "Please bear with us… We have a new computer system." When did, "We have a new computer system" become shorthand for, "Get prepared for delays and inconvenience"? I've spent some of this month looking at ways for product teams to record and share the results and insights from user research. I've been impressed by Microsoft's Human Insights Library and Uber's tool, called Kaleidoscope. There's an increasing number of dedicated tools but, with my love of Notion, it's no surprise I'm drawn to using that as my tool of choice. If you're interested in creating this kind of tool in your own team, I recommend this post from Sofia Quintero titled Why UX Research Repositories Fail. I enjoyed this YouTube documentary on the difficulties the design team ran into when creating the original iPhone. This in turn led me to re-watch the original launch video with Steve Jobs, which made me realise that Apple pretty much nailed the product in version 1. Although I'm running iOS 13, I don't think there's much I'd miss if I downgraded to the original. (Well, perhaps I'd be lost — literally — without directions in Google Maps). I'm currently working my way through the boxed set of Lauren Ober's Spectacular Failures podcast. I recommend starting with the episode on Kodak. When asking why a company failed, it's easy to be seduced by a simple reason — for example, assuming that Kodak didn't "get" digital photography. But the truth is more complex. Kodak's management realised that the future of photography was digital but just couldn't transform the company. Last month, I favourited a tweet by @sladner where she wrote, "A fantastic way to learn ethnographic methods is to start on the subway. Just start. Observe things [like] dynamic social contexts, turn taking, reciprocity, norms and anomie." Soon after, I noticed that the person next to me on the tube train was designing a restaurant floor plan. I looked over and noticed he was doing it in Excel, by outlining and colouring in cells. I wanted to be horrified but it looked brilliant. I take this as an example of how users adapt tech to meet their needs. 5-minute videos on UX
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