The Informed Life

Jim Kalbach is the chief evangelist at MURAL, a leading provider of online visual collaboration software. He's the author of Designing Web Navigation (O'Reilly, 2007), Mapping Experiences (O'Reilly, 2016), and his latest, The Jobs to Be Done Playbook (Rosenfeld, 2020). In this conversation, we dive into Jobs to Be Done, how it relates to design, and how jobs can create an “out of body experience” for organizations.

Show notes

• @JimKalbach on Twitter
• Jim Kalbach on LinkedIn
• MURAL
• The Jobs to Be Done Playbook by Jim Kalbach
• Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams by Jim Kalbach
• Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience by Jim Kalbach
• JTBD Toolkit
• Book Notes: “The Jobs To Be Done Playbook” by Jorge Arango
• Know Your Customers’ “Jobs to Be Done” by Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan
• How We Align Product Development with Jobs To Be Done at MURAL by Agustin Soler
• The JTBD toolkit
• Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice by Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan

Disclosure: I received Jim's book for free as a previous Rosenfeld Media/Two Waves author.

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Udhaya Kumar Padmanabhan is a Global Strategic Design Director at Designit, an international strategic design consultancy. He is based in Bangalore, and in this conversation we talk about challenges and opportunities inherent in designing information systems for the Indian market.

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Show notes

• Udhaya Kumar Padmanabhan (LinkedIn)
• Designit
• Languages of India (Wikipedia)
• IndEA (India Enterprise Architecture)
• Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
• Swiggy
• Zomato

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Sarah Barrett is a principal IA Manager at Microsoft. She's been writing compellingly about information architecture in Medium, and in this conversation, we focus on her most recent posts, which deal with how architectural scale affects our perception of information environments.

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Show notes

• Sarah R. Barrett
• @documentalope (Sarah Barrett) on Twitter
• Known Item (Medium publication)
• Microsoft Learn
• MSDN
• docs.microsoft.com
• World IA Day
• Breadcrumb navigation
• Rachel Price
• Websites are not living rooms and other lessons for information architecture by Sarah Barrett
• Understanding Architectural Scale: Tabletops and landscapes by Sarah Barrett
• Microsoft Bob
• The Informed Life episode 17: Rachel Price on Improvisation

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Sophia Prater is a UX design consultant and chief evangelist of object oriented UX, a methodology that helps teams tackle complex design challenges. In this conversation, we discuss OOUX and how it differs from other methodologies.

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Show notes

• @sophiaux on Twitter
• Rewired (Sophia's consultancy)
• Ooux.com
• The Object Oriented UX Podcast
• Object-Oriented UX, by Sophia Prater (A List Apart article)
•  Double Diamond
•  Object Oriented UX Podcast, episode 10: Information Archaeology with Ren Pope
• Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
• The Elements of User Experience, by Jesse James Garrett (pdf)
• Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design, by Austin Henderson and Jeff Johnson

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Alla Weinberg helps teams and organizations improve the quality of relationships at work. She has a background in design, but now calls herself a ‘work relationship expert.’ In this conversation, we discuss her new book, A Culture of Safety, and how teams can create environments that allow people to do their best work together.

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Show notes

• @IamAllaW on Twitter
• Alla Weinberg on LinkedIn
• Spoke & Wheel (Alla's consulting company)
• A Culture of Safety: Building a work environment where people can think, collaborate and innovate by Alla Weinberg
• Scientific Management (Taylorism)
• Frederick Winslow Taylor

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Jeff Sussna is a consultant and author specialized in helping organizations deliver software more effectively. This is Jeff’s second appearance on the show. In this conversation, he tells us about Customer Value Charting, a visual tool that helps teams balance strategy and agility.

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Show notes

• Sussna Associates
• Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT in the Digital Service Economy by Jeff Sussna
• The Informed Life episode 15: Jeff Sussna on Cybernetics
•  Customer Value Charting: A Visual Tool for Customer-Centered Discovery & Delivery by Jeff Sussna
• Software as a service
• Salesforce
• Slack’s new DM feature can be used to send abuse and harassment with just an invite (The Verge)
• Promise theory
• Mark Burgess
• Wardley map
• Impact mapping
•  User Story mapping
• ServiceNow
• JIRA

Kat Vellos uses her background in experience design to empower people to learn, grow, and thrive. She’s written two books on adult friendship, We Should Get Together and Connected from Afar. In this conversation, we discuss the importance and challenges of making friends, especially during this time of ‘social distancing.’

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Show notes

• Kat Vellos
• We Should Get Together (website)
• We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships by Kat Vellos
• Connected from Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You’re Far Away by Kat Vellos
• Hydroponics
• Connection Club

Matt LeMay is a product management consultant and author. He’s a co-founder and partner at Sudden Compass, which helps companies reconnect with their customers and helps teams focus on addressing human needs. He’s the author of Agile for Everybody and Product Management in Practice. In this conversation, Matt shares with us One Page / One Hour, his pledge to make project collaboration more agile.

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Show notes

• Matt LeMay
• Sudden Compass
• One Page / One Hour
• Tricia Wang
•  The Anatomy of an Amazon 6-pager
• Designstaq

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Jesse James Garret is a renowned leader in the user experience design field. He’s a co-founder of the influential UX consultancy Adaptive Path and author of The Elements of User Experience. These days, Jesse coaches UX design leaders. In this conversation, we discuss the relationship between leadership and information architecture.

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Show notes

• Jesse James Garrett’s website
• @jjg on Twitter
• Jesse James Garrett on LinkedIn
• The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond, 2nd Edition by Jesse James Garrett
• Peter Merholz
• Finding Our Way podcast
• MacGuffin
• Concept map
• Mind maps

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In his consulting practice, Ben Mosior teaches Wardley Mapping, a tool for visualizing strategic intent. In this conversation, we dive into Wardley Maps: what they are and how they can help us make better strategic decisions. 

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Download episode 57

Show notes

Learn Wardley Mapping

@HiredThought on Twitter

The Phoenix Project by Kevin Behr

Leading Edge Forum

Wardley maps: Topographical intelligence in business by Simon Wardley

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

How to Read a Wardley Map video

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.