2018, a Year in Review

It’s that time of year again. It’s time to reflect on the goals that I set for myself, and see where I succeeded and where I fell short. Before I begins with my retrospective, let me just toot my own horn for a second and say that I am pretty pleased with how things shook out generally this year. 2018 was for of great professional opportunity and learning for me.

I want to take a look back at the Goals I set for 2018. Sure I did not accomplish everything. But it was a busy year and I did have a few small wins.

Books

Finished two of the 3 books “Checklist Manifesto” and “Sprint.”

Blog

Wrote a good 12, long-format blog posts with valuable content. Plus, I succeeded at writing my series of “UX Tidbits” and “UX Quotes” sprinkled throughout he year.

Social Media

I wanted to increase the account numbers for the twitters that I run.

Professional Development
  • Continue to learn Sketch well enough to mock up several designs to expand portfolio and skill set. – Success!
  • Create UX assets and deliverables to sharpen my skills and enhance my portfolio. – Always a work in progress. So I am going to claim semi-success for this one!
  • Wrap up the “UX Process” project I have been working on. – Failure. But gives me something to work on in 2019.
UX Community Involvement and Leadership
  • Launched the, much-anticipated IXDA chapter in Dallas. As a leader of the group, I’ve helped plan events, bring in great speakers and even moderated a large panel on diversity.
  • Acted as Social Media Chair for WIAD 2018. I guess I did a pretty good job at helping the event that I was recruited to organize the 2019 WIAD Dallas leg on the international event. Stay tuned for a write up about how WIAD goes in February 2019.
  • Spoke about UX Design Laws and Principles at North Dallas Product Owners Meetup.
  • Guest speaker for two sessions for the professional development course “Agile for Patriots.”
  • Worked for 2 charitable hackathons, doing research and design. I participated in BigGive Dallas and Dallas Give Camp. Both events were exhausting, yet fun and personally rewarding.
Personal development
  • Have better work/life balance. – This one is a huge SUCCESS with the job change that happened in April. Much happier in my new work place.
  • 2017 was not a great year for travel for me. This is especially true for international travel.  – Sadly I must say 2018 was the same. Not a lot of opportunity for travel. Being a contractor is touch. But 2019 is a new year so fingers crossed!
  • Read more outside of UX. – I did read a couple of business and professional development books in 2018, so I can declare this a success.

Again, 2018 was a good year for me. I am thankful for my better job, good health, wonderful professional opportunities and great friendships I have made and maintained in 2018. What does a person like me do next? Start to think about goals and opportunities for 2019. Stay tuned.

How to… Do Interview stakeholders

How to logo for serious of career and UX topics by Jennifer Blatz, UX designer and researcher.With mosts UX projects, you are not working alone. Someone is coming to you with a project in mind. They want a website built, or a new mobile app, or they just need to make changes to an existing project. Whatever the case, you still are working with the person who has “The Ask.” And it’s this person you must tap in to to get as much information as you need to get started on the project.

Awhile back, I wrote another blog post, “Questions to ask your Client in a Kickoff” that lists a number of questions you should have ready to ask for a Client interview. But many of these same questions can be applied when interviewing a stakeholder as well.