Time for something new — but what?

10 Mar 2011 – 9:56

It’s with mixed emotions that I’m announcing my departure from the startup I’ve been working at since last August. I’m going to keep this post brief and follow up with a longer, more thoughtful post on why I left after the SxSW craze dies down.

In short, my startup was no longer a place where I could do the kind of creative work I want to do (and that I’m good at). The people on the team and the history we’d built up as a company made it a difficult place to do UX and design. Part of this is because we were larger (7 people) than we should have been given the certainty of the product direction. This led to every decision being made by committee — leading to premature compromises and resulting in bad product design. I was also the sole designer and I’ve come to realize that I’m more effective when I work on a collaborative team that understands and appreciates the role of UX.

So, what’s next? I’m not sure yet! I will be taking March off to consider a variety of options, using SxSW as a bookend to this chapter in my professional development.

Come find me at SXSW and let’s chat — I’d love to get pointers to new opportunities that excite you!

Oh, and of course: thanks to all my friends who’ve helped me through this decision and transition. It hasn’t been easy for me, and I’m grateful for all your support!

By brynn | Posted in personal, startup | Tagged , , | Comments (9)

Overlap 2011 – sneak peak

7 Mar 2011 – 9:24

This weekend Krista and I scoped out the venue for the Overlap conference that we’re planning for June 2011. It’s a lot of work to plan and prepare everything, but the people in the Overlap community, alone, make the undertaking worth it! Plus, we got pretty jazzed when we saw the venue for the first time this weekend! Enjoy!

Krista’s photos:

My photos:

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#1UP: Games for Change

4 Mar 2011 – 10:17

It’s exciting that South by Southwest is just around the corner! When I submitted my panel proposal back in, what, June? July?…I had an inkling that games would be an interesting topic, and I was particularly interested in social change. Hence a panel proposal which is now called: 1UP! Games for Change. (hashtag will be #1UP)!

Yesterday, James Renovitch published an article in the Austin Chronicle based on an interview with me, Thor Muller, and Dave Gray about our respective game panels: “Gaming the System: Applying the mechanics of play to the everyday“. It got me even more excited about picking the brains of my two awesome panelists, Zao Yang (of MyMiniLife/Farmville) and Jude Ower (of theplaymob.com), about their perspective on “gamification” and how games can be used to motivate people to change their behavior – for personal or social change.

The short version of the panel is this:

This panel will explore ways that games can be used to motivate personal change and increase productivity. We’ll start by talking about the theory behind games and gamification for behavior change — in contrast to games for social networking (e.g., Foursquare) — and how game-like activities have been used for a long time to encourage people to change their own behavior. Then the discussion will revolve around applications of game theory in practical, everyday situations (e.g., in the workplace, for dieting, parenting, reducing our carbon footprint, etc). Our panelists will talk about their experience in these situations — what games they chose, how the games helped change people’s behavior, and any take-aways they have for using games in your own life or building them into your next enterprise.

For the long version, come attend the panel in Austin!

1UP! Games for Change: Tuesday March 15, at 5:00pm in Room 6AB of the Austin Convention Center.

By brynn | Posted in design, social | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Using design for social good

28 Jan 2011 – 10:43

I’m in Chicago this weekend to participate in a pretty cool design event: it’s called UX for Good (hashtag: #uxxu)

The premise behind it is that we (designers) can apply our skills to actual, real-world social problems like unemployment, urban violence, public education, community mental health, and cross-cultural understanding. User experience and visual designers are known for being creative problem solvers, but their skills have not been traditionally valued very highly in organizations — or in the non-profit world. Mashable wrote a summary of the event and why designers, specifically, were picked to help come up with solutions to hard social problems.

Pretty rad, I think. And I am honored and stoked to be participating in it. Here’s why:

First, it’s important from a civic-duty perspective for us all to participate and “give back” to the community in our own ways. I don’t do much volunteering anymore, but I have in the past and it’s always been very rewarding. And today, one way I can give back is through design.

Second, I’ve been to iPhone Dev Camp and other hackathons as a “guest” — not as a participant — since I’m not a developer. It always looked like a lot of fun to work with a small group for a day or two, build something, and compete against each other on a project. But there haven’t been any “hacking” competitions for designers (that I’ve known of). UX for Good is specifically a designer hackathon — which is just about the most exciting thing I could imagine right now!

(Side note: I’ve been organizing a hybrid design/hacking competition in San Francisco recently, because I’m passionate about getting designers and developers to talk and work more together! The focus also had a civic-duty angle: to help prepare people in times of natural disasters/emergency response. Unfortunately, I had to resign from the organizing committee because organizing 3 conferences at the same time while working at a startup is crazy business. I believe the event is still being planned, so if you’re interested….stay tuned!)

Third, the UXXU attendees are some rockstar designers that I’m very honored to be working with! I’m hoping that this weekend lets me learn and grow in ways that I can’t (or don’t) during the week at work.

Fourth, it’s based in Chicago! Chicago is an awesome town and, importantly, it’s not San Francisco! I believe the dedicated technorati of SF need to branch out from the Valley and learn from practitioners elsewhere. This seemed like a perfect occasion for that very thing, even more so than an Interaction’11 or IA Summit (both of which I’m bummed to be missing!).

In addition to being an awesome design event, it happens to be the same weekend as ORD Camp — a barcamp inspired event that’s put on by a few folks from Google, and happens to be invite-only, but brings together the top tech thinkers and do-ers in Chicago. Chris and I attended last year (as the token out-of-towners) and we were both planning to attend this year as well! When UX for Good came across my radar, I realized that it’d be a better event in terms of professional growth — but we were still able to travel and stay with each other in Chicago over the same weekend! Bonus!

By brynn | Posted in design, personal | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Startups, products, and pivots. Oh my!

17 Jan 2011 – 9:37

I’m not sure how old our company is officially. Tim was working on the seeds of the idea in July 2010. I remember this because I was “moonlighting” with them once a week after work (at an apartment in Pacific Heights), helping with design, strategy, and some early research into the idea. I joined him officially the last week of August 2010. It was just the two of us for about a month. Then Dan joined sometime in September.

This week our company just hired its 6th employee! With Tim as our founder, that makes 7 people! Kind of hard to believe — but amazing nonetheless, and they’re all bright and brilliant and seem to fill each of the key roles and skills that we need. (We have the CEO, the ops guy, now *two* engineers, the front end developer, me — the designer, and a jack-of-all trades who’s filling in a product manager. Pretty complete list there.)

So maybe we’re 6 months old? What’s more interesting is that we’re on our 2nd pivot! I’ve been thinking a lot about how “pivot” is a strange concept since it can mean a big shift in the product or it can be a smaller, internal shift in the way you *think* about and position your product. The first pivot of ours was more of the former. This is more of the latter.

But even though this is a smaller pivot, it’s going to have big ramifications for our product and we’ve decided to take this time and redesign everything from scratch (at least in the front-end). I’m actually really enjoying this time. We’ve learned a lot from getting our alpha product designed, built, out the door and tested with 50 users in 2.5 months in the fall. Phew, that was hard. But we learned a lot about what we want to be as a product and how to work together as a team.

As a result, we completely shifted around who works with whom (how, when, and how much) — so that this time around, our process is smooth like buttah. The product team (me, front-end guy, and our jack of all trades) has been on a roll going through tons of ideas and moving even faster than we were in the last 2.5 month round. I didn’t think it was possible.

I’m also willing to recognize that, since we learned a lot about our product in the fall, we now know better what we’re designing for. It no longer feels like a big experiment, hehe. I see reason in nearly everything I design now — I ask better research questions — and I am even better at managing my email, filtering out what’s simply not relevant and responding to the stuff that’s urgent and important for what I’m working on right now.

It’s a strange world, startups. But you just can’t have these kind of experiences and learnings as a consultant or at a mega company. So I’m enjoying it while it lasts ;)

By brynn | Posted in startup | Tagged , , | Comments (1)