Books and Links: July

Pretty crazy month, personally and professionally. At this moment though, I am content and grateful. God is good.

Books

Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

Lean UX is the practice of bringing the true nature of a product to light faster, in a collaborative, cross-functional way that reduces the emphasis on thorough documentation while increasing the focus on building a shared understanding of the actual product experience being designed.

Begun in June. Finished two days before class with Josh Seiden in July.

This is a reference cookbook defining a collaborative, agile process called Lean UX. Given the current challenges I face at work… this book is a challenge. It’s hard to read at the moment without coming up with all the reasons that this can’t work for me.

I think that I need to take a refresher skim or pass through the notes with an eye towards “what can I learn from this?”

I was directly challenged in many ways... I tend to over-design or over-engineer, which is properly condemned in this book. It also points out that in my present role as a UX practitioner, I need to focus and hone my skills as facilitating collaborative exercises.

Across the Fence by John Stryker Myer

I heard about this one on the Jocko podcast.

Setting that record was a draining, often deadly exercise that ran like this: As the team leader, I’d get a target in the morning. Covey would pick primary, secondary and alternate LZs. The team would load up on the Kingbees, go into the primary LZ and get shot out of it. Then we’d get shot out of the secondary and alternate sites. Because the flights to the Prairie Fire AO were so long, we’d have to fly back to Phu Bai, refuel, eat lunch, get another target and try it again with identical results in the afternoon.

This book is a fascinating look at some brave young men. It's an exercise in doing more by doing less (I'm still working my slow way through Essentialism) and in bravery. I recommend listening to the podcast episodes with Mr. Meyer, pretty humbling stuff.

It's been hard to wuss out of workouts while listening to what they did and endured.

Links

There's a lot this week... I deleted games off my phone, so a lot more podcasts and links were read.

There's some themes here... so I'm going to take the liberty of trying out categories for the links. (It's my blog, my rules!)

Interesting

The case against lawns

Lawns, by acreage, are the nation’s largest irrigated crop, surpassing corn. Lawns consume resources, including fresh water (especially in those lawns cultivated in desert climes), fertilizer, pesticides and other chemicals, fossil fuels for mowing, and a mind-numbing amount of time, on an immense scale. Much hand-wringing goes on about the use of pesticides in industrial farming and the effect it has had on the worldwide population of pollinators, but less about its destructive use in lawn care. Lawns have introduced some of the country’s most invasive species, including English ivy, Japanese and Chinese wisteria, and decorative trees such as princess tree, Bradford pear, and mimosa. Second only to deforestation, invasive species are the largest threat to the world’s biodiversity.

And all this for what?

I'm a fan of Kate's blog McMansion Hell... and this is great too.

Books and Links: July

Books

Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

Across the Fence by John Stryker Myer

Links

Interesting

Notetaking

Code

Random