Change feels risky, while existing paths seem safe no matter how dated they are.

Things change; it happens nearly every nanosecond in tech. The only problem with this constant reality is our ability to move with the tide in ways that benefit the profession; design, UX, development or otherwise. We get mired in the details, side swiped by edge cases and wrapped up in defining things that won’t matter in 6 months. So let’s do some house-keeping shall we?

Glass houses make better stories
If we can track, articulate and make clear measureable meaning out of what we do and how we do it, our stock inherently rises, internally (your personal value perception at your job) and externally (our industry on whole). The mythical smoke screen around how and what we do should be lifted. We can’t very well create advocates for our work, if no one understands it.

Do something that adds relatable value
No one cares about anyone else’s plight, so why not solve problems that people care about? What larger issues can be made better by a bit of your brain power and talent? If designers and devs can show their skills have reach beyond the screen glare emanating from our cubes, we could then begin to inspire a larger, inclusionary conversation that creates value and meaning.

Expression + Impression = Addition
Often, egos mask collaboration with compromise. Yet, real innovation is a social act, founded on idea interchange and iterative conversation. And the output is well structured, more concrete, better idea with a team of consensus and excitement to make it even better.

Day 1: Stephanie Vargo sketching out her concepts.

It’s no surprise that Adaptive Path’s 2 day workshop on sketching and prototyping was such a great experience. I attended UX Intensive in Austin in December of 2008, and was taken by the passion and depth of the discussion and team based activities. Leah Buley and Rachel Glaves lead most of the presentation and hit a homerun with well crafted content.
The first day we dove into sketching as Rachel walked us through methods of how to get ideas across in the simplest way, with the most impact. We quickly learned how to visually express challenging design ideas, like gestures and human emotions. Leah and Rachel got us sketching right away, so by the end of our first day, we where no longer worried about being ‘terrible at drawing’. In fact, most of us were pleasantly surprised at how we had improved in a few hours time.

Day 2: Isadora updates our sketchboard.

The second and final day was focused around prototyping our ideas and making them come to life. David Verba presented his ‘Why Prototype?’ material with great proofs for ways to have prototyping really count and garnish the best results. As with every workshop Adaptive Path creates a client/project scenario for the teams to work on. Our team; Josh Gould of Flixster, Justin Singer of Walmart.com, Isadora Marlow-Morgan of iMedia Connection , Susan Michael of Aplia, Stephanie Vargo of Market Surf, Gilberto Medrano of ThoughtWorks and I narrowed down the most important interactions of our product to show and develop. The idea, a food identifier iPhone app for collecting and discovering recipes, would ‘recognize’ (we employed a bit of magic to make that possible) the food or dish in a photo and then help you discover recipes and ingredients. By the end of the day we were showing off our product with the other teams and generally having a blast in the process.

Many thanks go out to Leah Buley, Rachel Graves and David Verba for their guidance and thought leadership. I think everyone in the workshop walked away empowered and energized. Also thanks to everyone on the team I worked with, I had so much fun and learned bunches from all of you!