Beyond Tellerrand 2015 – Part 3
This is my 3rd post on #btconf 2015. It’s flown by so quickly!
Building Great Design teams – Aaron Walter
I really enjoyed this talk as it highlighted how important soft skills are in business.
He recommended that you need to use:
1. Parallel processes
2. Momentum – when people operate without constraint, they feel like they’re wandering, you need to celebrate small wins and set goals.
3. Lateral design – to deliver complex features, create small multidisciplinary teams.
Think less about checklists of skills, focus on the person. Are they a good fit?
Hiring
Initial call, screener. See if they crazy. Bring in a person that can do that. Talk about background and interest. Bring them in for a full day. Make them sign an NDA.
Take them to meetings, take them to lunch. Let them critique the projects you’re working on.
“If you hire people because..”
Soft Skills are important
- Adaptable people are important, it cannot be coached.
- If you make space to hang out with people, they tell you things.
The default is to hire people that are like you. You need to hire diverse perspectives. Creates a richer creative environment.
“Talented and humble people are important.”
His lessons were:
1. I wish someone would have told me that I need to talk to everyone 1 on 1. What do you think about the companies direction? How’s morale? How are projects going? 15five – 5 questions. What’s the morale of the team.
2. Match the right people with the right project. Figure out what people are good at, and let them know where the strong parts are.
3. People will trust you more if you own up to your mistakes, and you’re honest with them. It’s ok not to know everything. Be curious and ask lots of questions.
The hidden plot device – Steph Troeth
Steph explores the idea that story telling can add a much deeper meaning to your UX process.
“‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not beginning of a story ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” she explained.
Stories are a cognitive framework for us to understand our world. We can use UX in both research and design. Research is the problem space, design is the solution space.
In Letters We Trust – Tobias Frere-Jones
Tobias took us through the history of typography on bank notes. He showed us Jack Lew’s signature was originally a twirly squiggle and he was forced to change it by Obama himself!
Great talk on using typographic traps to protect old bank notes against forgery. This made awareness of letterforms a matter of national security. If a bank note was able to be forged, it could destroy the economy.
In 1810, the British had a problem with their own forgery. They had trouble with finances so they took the gold from people, and began issuing notes for 1 and 5 pounds in their place. Conterfieting became rife. 300 people were executed, and thousands more sent to Australia for forging Bank of England bank notes.
Punctuation contra punctum – Jay Fanelli & Nathan Peretic
This was a hilarious talk on business.
They explained how (and why) to start an independent, reasonably successful Internet-focused business.
The process is:
1. Quit your job
2. Get a partner
Shared decision making, less scary, diversity of skills
3. Don’t move
4. Bootstrap it
5. Find your niche
They then explained that these steps were complete bullsh*t. They pointed out that often speakers say ”do exactly this”, but what they actually mean “This is what worked for us, maybe it will for you”.
They then did the exact opposite talk, explaining the reasons why you might make a completely different decision:
1. Keep your job
2. Do it on your own
3. Move – because your city is boring
4. Take the money
5. Go big or go home
They raised a very good point about advice. It has to be personal to you. Otherwise it can be harmful.