The Informed Life

Veronica Erb is the author of Finding Out, an email newsletter for people who do and use UX research. Previously, she led UX research at NPR and consulted with a variety of companies. In this conversation, we discuss Veronica’s reading and note-taking practices.

Since we recorded this, Veronica published a post with photos and screenshots of her notes. The link is in the show notes, in case you want to see what she's talking about.

Show notes

• Veronica Erb
• Screenshots and photos of Veronica’s notes
• Veronica Erb on LinkedIn
• @verbistheword on Twitter
• @verbistheword on Instagram
• Finding Out, Veronica’s newsletter
• @howwefindout on Instagram
• Finding Out on Twitter
• NPR
• The Boxcar Children
• Grinnell College
• danah boyd
• Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxanne Gay
• The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process by Michael Crotty
• Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
• Method of loci (Memory palace)
• Microsoft OneNote
• Substack
• Jane Austen
• Readwise
• Goodreads
• DEVONthink
• Google Surveys
• Google Sheets
• The Informed Life episode 8: Trip O’Dell on Dyslexia
• Advanced chess (Centaur chess)

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

Dorian Taylor is a consulting designer. He’s been influenced by the work of the architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander, who died in March. In this conversation, we discuss Alexander’s influence on the design of built environments and software.

Show notes

• Dorian Taylor
• @doriantaylor on Twitter
• The Making of Making Sense (Dorian’s newsletter)
• At Any Given Moment in a Process (Dorian’s post about Christopher Alexander)
• Fifteen Properties Through an Information-Theoretic Lens  by Dorian Taylor
• Christopher Alexander
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Fred Brooks
• A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander
• Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander
• The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe by Christopher Alexander
• The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander
• The Oregon Experiment by Christopher Alexander
• A City Is Not a Tree by Christopher Alexander (PDF)
• Patterns in Architecture OOPSLA 1996 keynote lecture by Christopher Alexander (YouTube)
• Cognition in the Wild by Edwin Hutchins
• Gall’s Law (jarango.com)
• Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry
• Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry
• Eishin School, designed by Christopher Alexander et al
• Stata Center at MIT, designed by Franky Gehry
• The West Dean Visitor Centre, designed by Christopher Alexander et al
• Vineyard Farmer’s Market, designed by Christopher Alexander et al
• Claude Shannon
• Marvin Minsky
• John McCarthy
• J.C.R. Licklider
• Douglas Englebart
• Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Community by Richard Gabriel

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

Laura Yarrow is Head of Design for HM Land Registry in the UK. She’s also a public speaker and educator. In this conversation, we talk about how designers can increase their effectiveness in organizations by becoming trusted agitators.

Show notes

• Laura Yarrow
• @laura_yarrow on Twitter
• The people, place and space newsletter
• HM Land Registry
• Laura’s Twitter thread about trusted agitators
• Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning by Stewart Brand
• Stephen Covey
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

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

Oliver Caviglioli is a former headteacher of a special needs school. Now, he’s an information designer and author of several books about education. His latest book, Organise Ideas, which he co-authored with David Goodwin, explains the practice and science behind using graphic organizers to teach and learn.

Show notes

• Oliver Caviglioli
• @olicav on Twitter
• Organise Ideas: Thinking by Hand, Extending the Mind by Oliver Caviglioli and David Goodwin
• Dual Coding With Teachers by Oliver Caviglioli
• Teaching WalkThrus: Visual Step-by-Step Guides to Essential Teaching Techniques by Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli
• Teaching WalkThrus 2: Five-step Guides to Instructional Coaching by Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli
• Teaching WalkThrus 3: Five-step Guides to Instructional Coaching by Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli
• Dave Gray
• XPLANE
• Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
• Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought by Barbara Tversky
• Cognitive load theory
• Generation effect
• Richard Saul Wurman
• Goldilocks principle
• Working memory

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

Indi Young is a researcher who coaches, writes, and teaches about inclusive product strategy. She was one of the founders of the pioneering UX agency Adaptive Path. Indi wrote two influential books: Mental Models and Practical Empathy. Now she has a new book, called Time to Listen, which is the focus of our conversation today.

Show notes

• Indi Young
• @indiyoung on Twitter
• Indi Young on LinkedIn
• Time to Listen by Indi Young
• Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior by Indi Young
• Practical Empathy: For Collaboration and Creativity in Your Work by Indi Young
• Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think by Dave Gray
• Gobstopper
• Daniel Burka
• Erika Hall on LinkedIn

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

Peter Bogaards is an evangelist, educator, and coach at Informaat experience design. Peter has shared design knowledge via his InfoDesign blog since 1997. In this conversation, we discuss his recently proposed canon on UX.

Show notes

• Peter Bogaards (about.me)
• Informaat
• InfoDesign – Sharing knowledge is better than having it
• A canon of user experience: Seminal works of a discipline (A work in progress)  by Peter Bogaards
• Man-computer symbiosis (pdf) by J.R. Licklider
• DARPA (formerly ARPA)
• As We May Think (pdf) by Vannevar Bush
• Vannevar Bush
• Douglas Engelbart
• Ted Nelson
• Cybernetic serendipity: The computer and the arts (pdf), Reichardt, J. ed.
• The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual search engine (pdf) by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
• Information Anxiety by Richard Saul Wurman

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

Madonnalisa Chan is director of product management, taxonomy, and content services at Salesforce. I’ve known Lisa for a long time and admire her work as a taxonomist. But this conversation doesn’t focus on her work; instead, we discuss how she uses physical notes to manage her personal life.

Show notes

• Madonnalisa Chan on LinkedIn
• Salesforce
• Pensieve (Harry Potter Wiki)
• Learning How to Learn course
• The Shoebox Method (YouTube)
• Evernote
• Google Docs
• Ryan Holiday
• The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul
• The Informed Life episode 74: Annie Murphy Paul on The Extended Mind
• Smart but Scattered: The Revolutionary “Executive Skills” Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential by Peg Dawson and Richard Guard
• Mind map
• Girl Scouts

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

Boon Yew Chew is a strategic designer at Elsevier and a leader in IxDA, the Interaction Design Association. In this conversation, we delve into Roam Research, which Boon uses to take notes and tame “an ever-evolving multi-dimensional beast of knowledge.”

If you’re enjoying the show, please rate or review it in Apple’s Podcasts directory:

 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-informed-life/id1450117117?itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200

Show notes

• Boon Yew Chew on LinkedIn
• Boon Yew Chew on Medium
• @BoonYCH on Twitter
• Elsevier
• IxDA
• IxDA London Meetup
• Interaction Conference 2022
• Adding life back to my notes: Roam after 4 months by Boon Yew Chew
• Roam Research
• OmniOutliner
•  The Informed Life episode 43: Rob Haisfield on Roam
• The Informed Life episode 54: Kourosh Dini on DEVONthink
• Evernote
• OneNote

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

Dan Klyn is co-founder of The Understanding Group, an information architecture consultancy based in Michigan. Dan has also created useful and influential IA frameworks, and in this conversation, we focus on his latest: the BASIC framework.

If you’re enjoying the show, please rate or review it in Apple’s Podcasts directory:

 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-informed-life/id1450117117?itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200

Show notes

• Dan Klyn
• The Understanding Group
• The BASIC framework
• Chris Farnum
• Peter Morville
• Louis Rosenfeld
• Andreas Resmini
• Richard Saul Wurman
• Bob Royce
• Edith Farnsworth House
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
• Kimbell Art Museum
• Louis Kahn
• Renzo Piano
• Brian Eno

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

In observance of the winter holidays, this episode doesn’t feature a guest interview. Instead, I reflect on five themes that emerged in the diverse conversations we hosted on the podcast during 2021. I wish you and yours happy holidays!

Cover photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash.

If you’re enjoying the show, please rate or review it in Apple’s Podcasts directory:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-informed-life/id1450117117?itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200

Show notes

• The Informed Life episode 53: Jason Ulaszek on Healing Social Rifts
• The Informed Life episode 54: Kourosh Dini on DEVONthink
• The Informed Life episode 55: Hà Phan on Product Leadership
• The Informed Life episode 56: Margot Bloomstein on Trust
• The Informed Life episode 57: Ben Mosior on Wardley Maps
• The Informed Life episode 58: Jesse James Garrett on Leadership and IA
• The Informed Life episode 59: Matt LeMay on One Page / One Hour
• The Informed Life episode 60: Kat Vellos on Friendship
• The Informed Life episode 61: Jeff Sussna on Customer Value Charting
• The Informed Life episode 63: Sophia Prater on Object Oriented UX
• The Informed Life episode 64: Sarah Barrett on Architectural Scale
• The Informed Life episode 66: Jim Kalbach on Jobs to Be Done
• The Informed Life episode 68: Mags Hanley on Career Architecture
• The Informed Life episode 69: Karl Fast on Interactionism, part 1
• The Informed Life episode 70: Karl Fast on Interactionism, part 2
• The Informed Life episode 71: Sunni Brown on Deep Self Design
• The Informed Life episode 73: Patrick Tanguay on Newsletter Curation
• The Informed Life episode 74: Annie Murphy Paul on The Extended Mind
• The Informed Life episode 75: Hans Krueger on the Cycle of Emotions
• The Informed Life episode 76: Dan Brown on IA Lenses

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