Cut Your Learning Curve

There is a focus in UX Design in making user interactions as “frictionless” as possible: reducing any additional steps or obstacles to take action. Another area of Product Design is building out rewards for a button pushed or a purchase made. All of this, carefully and subtly, build habits. Like so much of technology, these design practices can be viewed as either exploitative or beneficial, with dramatic, unanticipated consequences on both sides of the spectrum. 

How do we work with something as unpredictable as software development, where so many of the answers are discovered in the doing and not beforehand? This “expecting the unexpecting” is everything: it guides how software developers, teams and tech companies organize and the ways they promise results. How to evaluate and regulate these actions - in ways that protect the end user, the small start-up and society at large -  is one of the biggest questions for this century.

We all have an app on our phone that we love.  Yet what design thinking has not been able to solve, and in some ways has made worse, are the deeper, structural problems facing people today - namely, inequality, lack of opportunity and a global crisis in public health.  If design is to be truly empathetic, as so many designers claim, I hope design thinking moves beyond making a more intuitive Spotify to take up these bigger challenges. 

At creative digital agencies, our work always begins with Scoping. Rather than diving into “what are we going to build” we instead take a step back and ask, “what is the problem we are trying to solve?”  

The answer to this question is twofold: both a vision of what the software solution will be and a plan to implement it. Scoping is highly collaborative: design, product, engineering and clients all working together to arrive at a solution unique to the time, place and organization. 

From the Director of Learning at SWARM, Eve MacKnight:

"Technology today enables teams to form and re-form across the globe. But in an era of instant communication and increasing broadband speeds, little accelerates the forming of trust and loyalty at the foundation of any team working well together.  With our developers spread across continents and time zones, we at SWARM are always looking for ways to cultivate that ever elusive sprite, teamwork. 

Check out this week’s podcast as Nate and I chat about our own experiences - our disasters and successes - with building teams in our hyper digital age."

https://swarmnyc.com/learn

In this episode Olive Persimmon tells us how she was able to get a TEDX speaking engagement, while working on her second book, and at a fulltime job. She's quite the powerhouse when it comes to achieving her goals. If you're an aspiring writer or thought leader, you'll want to her how she was able to set herself to task and deliver with gusto.

http://natecooper.co/free

https://www.facebook.com/groups/rebootlabs/ 

In this episode I talk to business coach Chris Sparks about productivity and habit forming. Chris has a number of useful models for thinking about how to structure your time and work through problems especially when you get stuck.

http://natecooper.co/free

https://www.facebook.com/groups/rebootlabs/ 

Juliana Marulanda runs ScaleTime, a company which helps you save time by focusing on the things that matter and outsourcing the things that don't drive you.

http://natecooper.co/free

https://www.facebook.com/groups/rebootlabs/ 

The Internet is a great tool for learning but often it isn't utilized to it's full potential. What makes an online course work? What are the things you need to know about your students in order to build a course that keeps people learning and raving? Listen here.

http://natecooper.co/free

https://www.facebook.com/groups/rebootlabs/ 

In this episode of Cut Your Learning Curve, I speak with Molly Sonsteng. Molly is a producer, project manager, and entrepreneur dedicated to time well spent and deepening human connections. She’s created countless projects that encourage grownups to live creative and meaningful lives.

http://natecooper.co/free

https://www.facebook.com/groups/rebootlabs/