UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
October//18//2024
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
Following a brief break.
1.
Should You Become a Manager. Very interesting article from the Glassdoor Blog, addressing career paths and in particular, the momentum towards becoming a Manager. We’ve all heard it at some point, “just because you’re a great professional, that doesn’t make you a great manager”, the same way we’ve heard “just because you are possessed of much knowledge and skill, doesn’t necessarily make you a great teacher”. Those statements do surface with reason, since while being a manager and evolving in one’s career is a sensical path, not everyone however has the skills, and emotional maturity to actually be a manager. There’s a plethora of books and articles on this topic (magazines alone seem to exist based on this topic), but this nugget from Glassdoor emphasizes aspects such as delegation, responsibility, communication, and leadership as traits one must hold in order to pursue this path. Ultimately always think: do you see yourself as a manager you’d follow and be inspired by? And be honest in that assessment. Highlight of the article includes:
“Research what it takes to be a manager. People who climb the management ladder typically move through the ranks and end up managing more and more people over time. Transitioning into the management track is a big step, and it may not be the right one for you if you simply want to do something different or make more money. That being said, being a manager can be very rewarding, personally and professionally. You can more directly affect company goals and progress, which can increase your sense of self-worth.”
2.
What Makes a Learning Experience Good. Another great article from the Adobe Design Blog, this time authored by Victoria Hollis and Mercedes Vega Villar, this is an article detailing how the up-skilling/learning experience occurs at Adobe. The article details the LOAF process (Learning Outcomes Assessment Framework), by which learning is evaluated within Adobe. There are two interesting aspects to this framework, namely Emotional and Functional Outcomes. It’s an interesting framework to measure the effectiveness of training, even if it leaves out nuances and aspects such as memorability, progression of efforts, and staggering complexity and its impact on perception of acceptance. Worth reading and understanding more on how the learning process at Adobe is set in motion. Highlight of the article includes:
“An alternative way to assess how well participants understood the gist of a tutorial (and to identify which parts resonated most/least) is to ask an open-ended question like, “Describe, in your own words, what you learned in this tutorial,” but asking participants to solve a new problem by applying the skills taught in the learning experience is the ultimate test of success. If, for instance, the tutorial taught participants to arrange and group shapes in Illustrator, the hands-on exercise will ask them to replicate a new target image by arranging and grouping shapes in a file. If the tutorial showed participants how to remove an element from an image in Photoshop, the hands-on exercise might ask them to remove a person from the background in a new photo.”
3.
Keeping the Best Team Members. Interesting article from Inc. Magazine on the topic of keeping the best employees in a company’s roster (I prefer to subtly change it to team). These recommendations and suggestions come from Henna Pryor, a workplace expert, and while the current job market isn’t the same as it was in 2022 (the great resignation), the recommendations are pertinent and self-explanatory. These include: creating a compelling onboarding experience, using “stay interviews” and not just “exit interviews”, respecting work-life boundaries, flexibility, and celebrating wins and milestones with frequency. You’d think these recommendations are rather common sense and initiatives that should feel rather intuitive and organic for any organization, sadly they are not. As the job market is shifting yet again, it will be interesting to witness if these are tactics companies will wake up to. Highlight of the article includes:
“In my 14 years in the staffing industry, I often advised leaders to prioritize “stay interviews” and I still believe in that advice wholeheartedly. By the time an exit interview happens, it’s too late to fix the problem. Instead, schedule regular stay interviews with your team to find out what’s working, what’s not, and what could be improved. Yes, these conversations can feel incredibly awkward, and finding the right words may feel challenging, but this shows your employees that you care about their experience and are willing to make changes based on their feedback. The goal is to have an ongoing dialogue about what makes your business a great place to work — before any dissatisfaction bubbles over.”
