I skipped last week’s communication but I feel great about it. Here’s why.
FIRST, WE HOSTED OUR DAUGHTER'S SIXTH BIRTHDAY PARTY
For context, her birthday parties are like my Burning Man! Crazy crafting, decor, games, food, yadda yadda. This year she chose a Star Wars theme. Making lightsabers out of pool noodles was one of the preparations. In addition to the typical yearly pre-party craziness, her grandparents planned to surprise her in costume!
A week before her party, while scrolling through Pinterest for “birthday cake inspiration” (like every typical six year old does, right?), she challenged me to make a super complicated cake. I am not a baker but there was NO WAY I was going to turn her challenge down.
Turns out the cake making was a blast and a whole family effort! Turns out fondant is like sticky Play-doh! She made all of the stars and applied them herself. Then she concocted the idea to top them off with circular, modeled, glittery “death stars” and ran with it.
She was incredibly proud of herself. The look on her face was priceless. That experience of making the cake with her may be one of my proudest achievements in life. (The handmade pink flamingo piñata for her luau party is a close second though!) Anyway, here are some fun pix of Sunday’s special guests and other festivities.
ON TOP OF THAT I ORGANIZED AND LAUNCHED A CROWDSOURCING EFFOR
The goal was to define 150 of our industry’s most confusing terms. Fifty-plus colleagues (most unknown to me) contributed from around the world. The target audience is MY MOM (and her name is Princess Leia. LOL). The audience is more accurately described as non-researchers who know something about technology but do not have deep expertise with UX or UXR. While I’d love for my mom to actually understand what I do, it's high time for a comprehensive glossary (with a decent user experience!) of our industry’s cluster**** of terminology, acronyms and slang.
My initial thinking was that we’d all benefit from a shared vocabulary and our teammates and clients would reap the benefits as well! Now I also realize it can serve as a living document to chart the evolution of the industry. That’s pretty cool, right?
Anyway, the deadline to complete the definitions was Sunday (the same day as the party). Yea, you read that right. It was a total and complete nail-biter but wWE DID IT! You can read more about the logistics, goals and surprisingly successful effort and feedback in this LinkedIn post. Please help us celebrate!
Milly Schmidt, a UX designer in Sydney, Australia who I did not know, created this sketch note illustration based on one of the two "kick off" Zoom calls I held. The calls were intended for me share my thinking and gather feedback from volunteers on how to approach this effort (the process, organization, collaboration tools, etc.) before diving in. Her masterpiece captures that design thinking process beautifully. (Hey Milly, can I interest you in some birthday party crafting around this time next year?)
This fantastic accomplishment and body of work would not have been possible without the following incredibly very talented and committed contributors. NOTE each name links to their individual LinkedIn Profile so please send them a virtual high five!
Team leads Roxy Jones, Janet Standen, Kaleb Loosbrock, Danny Spitzberg. A special shoutout also to Rachel Auckland, from South Africa, who blazed the trail with an astounding contribution of nine definitions out of the gate.
And every single contributor on each of the five teams Maxwell Wolf, Rachna Tiwarya, Frances James, Jennifer Epps, Liberty Matias, Mary Denise Robertson, Shane Nehring, Eddie Y. Shieh, David Beckley, Jasmine Gutierrez, Aileen Liu, Siddhant Patel, Quinne Fokes, Amit Sathe, Caleb Sexton, Ashley Gardner, Adriana Varisco, Julie Keenan, Eva M. Durazo, Masha Bell (Mary), Stephanie Krieger, Ujala Anis, May Reid-Marr, Shadi Aljazzar, Nhu-Anh Le, Sheila Manhães, Michael T Lombardo, Andrew Maier, Michael Long, Mary Denise Robertson, Sujit Tulcidas, and Betty Troy.
Thank you also to everyone else receiving this communication who provided support and showed interest and but may have been sidetracked due to life and other unexpected circumstances.
NO FEAR! There is much more work to do so stay tuned for how you can still participate! For example, I’ve already amassed 75 more terms to add to our initial list, and we need to turn it into a useable format (with good UX)! Luckily, in this next phase it looks like we will have additional contributors from India, Italy, Croatia, the UK, Vietnam, Indonesia, Canada and more. People continue to reach out to me from all over the world! It's thrilling this work has generated so much dialog and excitement.
SO THOSE ARE MY TWO EXCUSES FOR MISSING LAST WEEK'S DISTRIBUTION
I hope you'll agree it was worth it too! Next week I'll do my best return to my regular format and intended schedule. In the meantime, please forward this communication to someone who you think might enjoy it. Better yet, sign them up to to receive future versions here. It will be the gift that keeps on giving..
