A whiteboard saved my life
Maybe that’s a touch hyperbole but you get the idea.
I was battling, the other day, with a particularly curly personal finance issue which had me fluctuating between -snore- and utter panic . The problem just was just not resolving in satisfactory manner and then it struck me; I needed to white board it.
Drawing up the issue in a variety of ways helped me to better understand the problem and to better communicate it to my partner. At this point I realised that this is how I’ve been solving problems in my day job for years now and that I KNOW I need to draw to best communicate. Why is it that our useful and proven problem solving methods from the UX work place seldom venture out in to the rest of our lives? Even with in the work place we focus our UX eyes on the ‘hard problems’ (e.g. client has problem X) rather than the ‘soft problems’ (e.g. If I could on get X from Marketing on board this project would run so much smoother)
UX methods can help us in a few ways
- Solve our UX projects work problems (you know, strategy,analysis & design on projects)
- Solve our own personal work problems (strategy, analysis and design of ourselves and our problems as employees, colleagues, )
- Solve our own personal problem (strategy, analysis and design of ourselves and our problems at home)
UX at work (projects)
There is enough information to cover the entire planet if it were printed on how to solve UX project conundrums. Fact.
UX at work (interpersonal)
Solving personal work problems is a topic that has much less visibility in the UX arena but it exists and is of good quality. The UX leadership journal is a great place to see the beginnings of work interpersonal related UX thinking.
UX at home
Take that white board, grab those stickies and work out how you are going to save for that trip to Peru. OR take your side of an arguement and your adversary’s and put them on post-it notes, shuffle them around, see what happens when you understand the full picture (sound familiar? user vs business anyone?).
In the end we have great tools and they can be used for most everything
Our tools can be used in a huge range of situations. We already use our UX tools in work projects to get the clients project right. I’m going to be using the UX tools I love to get my working situation right and to get my home life right. Wish me luck!
Holy cow, you blogged! you are the only person I know with a blog who blogs less than I do (apart from Isha). Well done, thinking of painting a wall in our flat with blackboard paint after reading this. Like a whiteboard but a little less like bringing your work place into your home place. Then I shall draw giant Bob style Willies all over it.
I know, I’ve been so bad! – I’m finally releasing the drafts out in to wild now.
I picked a whiteboard up for $5 at a gararge sale so now I get to be a UX nerd at home.
I’ve always wanted to get a bunch of Information Architects then go in to their homes and see how they sort their music collection, books, pantries and wardrobe.
Do they sort their objects into in to neat little categories or is it controlled chaos?