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Fun, UX

2018, a Year in Review

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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.

Fun, Uncategorized, UX

Reflecting on 2107: Good, Bad and Ugly

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Jennifer Blatz UX Designer and Researcher

Seems like everyone has a “Year in Review,” or “2017 Wrap Up.” I am going to join the cliché train and talk about my trials and tribulations in 2017.

The Good

  • I still have my health. ha ha. Actually things were not that bad.
  • I have made several new friends in the new career paths and journeys I have joined.
  • I actually accomplished some of my 2017 Goals this year. Maybe not everything, but it’s a start.
  • I learned Sketch and feel pretty confident with it. But I want to practice it more and get stronger at using the program.
  • Continue to grow online presence in Twitter. Do you want to follow me too? I would be honored.
  • I did grow my UX network in Dallas. I’ve done a pretty good job, but I want to be more embedded in the UX community here.

The Bad

  • Imposter syndrome will never leave me. No matter where I work, how much I learn, how successful or accomplished I might seem to be. I always feel like I am looking over my shoulder trying to fake everyone out.
  • This could be good, but this is also bad. I started, but did not finish, “Design of Everyday Things.” So that has to be bumped to the 2018 to-do list.
  • My new job has taken up a lot of my personal time where I should be devoting that time to advancing my career and learning more about UX, Service Design and Customer Experience.

The Ugly

  • Working for a company who did not understand UX
  • Having a narcissistic boss who thought it was appropriate to try to sabotage your career rather than helping me succeed.
  • Changing 3 jobs in a year. Ouch! That can look really bad professionally, and I am stung by that potential perception. But the job changes were all for very good reasons, and I hope that things will settle down in 2018.