But even with a project that is “documentation-heavy”, you have to be careful not to fall into the “to do list trap” of just crossing off things. Here’s why: You can get all your design work done in a timely matter, but if the design sucks, who benefits? Certainly not the user, and definitely not your company. Yes, you will “look good” in the short term, in that management sees you are “hitting your dates”… but you will be burned later if the design was rushed and ill-concieved. Trust me, I’ve been there (a few many times).

But how do we, designers, measure our own productivity? There are many different techniques I have seen and tried. But in the end, I think UX design isn’t about “productivity” it’s more about problem solving, and making a difference for users. So I look at satisfaction (and conversion rates) as a more important personal metric around my design work than the number of UI “pieces” I can crank out in a week.

In addition to the above, we need to make sure that we have time to refine, iterate, and fail. Yes, fail. We learn a lot by piloting early designs with users and finding out what doesn’t work. We need to Identify key milestones, follow the process that we are comfortable with, and focus on quality. Keeping in mind, of course, that deadlines are absolutely necessary as a motivator and a way to “focus the brain.”

This past weekend, I came across this video from the PBS special about Steve Jobs after he passed away that resonated with me a lot:

“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

A list of more resources about user personas and mental models are listed at the end of the post.

But seriously, we need more ponies on our websites ;-P

Do you see a shift at some point in the future where corporate websites will become arenas for that amount of dialog? Couldn’t it only be beneficial if that interaction was done on the corporate website? For example, rather than fans dialoguing on Facebook and commenting on the Wall there, do you see a point where a corporate website will have fan profiles and a corporate Wall? If so, do you think that would be detrimental to the company’s overall reach for exposure? It is interesting to see how social media forces the evolution of corporate behavior.

I personally love learning more about a company by hearing from its “fans” and consumers through social media rather than having a company website tell me who they are. On facebook, there are many ways to tell that story about your brand or company.

I noticed that VW ran a commercial with their facebook.com/vw website on the bottom right of that commercial. That was awesome!

1. Design awareness can and ideally should be something that every employee of a company makes their best effort to acquire. I would say exactly the same thing about technology awareness. In the corporate culture I dream about, there would be a balance between the two—along with a healthy respect for best business practices—in every employee.
2. Design literacy is also something that can be acquired with a bit more effort by any employee, regardless of background. If your company has employees who suffer from “Apple (AAPL) envy” in terms of the nature of the products that they produce, building such literacy is a very real and useful step in helping combat that particular affliction. Designers need technological literacy, too, and both need an equal dose of business acumen. Without this, none of us has any right to complain about not being understood by those in other disciplines. We all need to be able to handle multiple directions.
3. Design thinking is something that takes even more of an investment, requiring a level of competence that—with dedication and practice—can be acquired by anyone, to a reasonable degree. Cognitive science makes it clear that the strategies designers use in approaching problems or questions are different (not “better”) than those employed by those trained in engineering disciplines. Both strategies are complementary. Given the complexity of the problems that confront us, it seems to me that expanding our collective arsenal of techniques is something we could all benefit from.
4. Design practice, however, is not something available to everyone. This is a full-time job for highly trained professionals. It requires people who have invested just as much to acquire their set of skills as the computer scientists have put in for theirs. Yes, there are exceptions. There always are on both sides of the table. But it is risky, if not foolhardy, to generalize from the exception.

However, the lack of a new term is significant in itself. These people are not entrepreneurs because they don’t spend their time managing a business. They spend their time writing, painting, making toys….following their passion. They are writers, painters, and toy makers.

As more of us start using these new software and technology  tools to make money from what we love doing, the need to replace the term “entrepreneur” disappears. We are designers, photographers, musicians, match-makers, illustrators.

Slow times are a perfect time to start putting together self promotional materials. What are the patterns in your business? How can you demonstrate competency beyond what everyone else is doing? Every designer has a portfolio of their designs, but how many have a portfolio of their minds?

- B.J. Fogg