Design@SAIF - Issue #12

June 27, 2016

Dr. Anders Ericsson’s research on expertise got attention in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers. Ericsson's studies suggests that practice leads to extraordinary performance. Gladwell converted Ericsson's study to a sticky, magical 10,000 hour rule—10,000 hours (20 hours for 50 weeks a year for 10 years) of deliberate practice to become an expert. Though Ericsson has disputed the magical number and this may, at best, be an average for lifelong learning and mastery. And even if there are multiple, magical 4, 5 or 10 hour hacks to learn, mastery does require practice.

In my weekly meetings with product teams I often meet young Designers and Product Managers, maybe onto their first or second jobs—or some who have pivoted from Engineering to Design or from Marketing to Product. And many are hungry to learn faster and do exceedingly better. And this commitment to excel isn't limited to brand new talent.

So what does the 10,000 hour rule mean in a world that is moving so fast, hungry for 4 hour hacks and changing so frequently? Disciplines with no visibly clear routines to practice unlike sports, flying or music? Here's some food for thought. This is a mere start of a thread, so welcome your comments and ideas.

"Major League Baseball’s highest-paid player, Alex Rodriguez, does the same thing every lesser-paid player does: he practices" says Jared Spool. The Web Design veteran offers some thoughts and insights on practice for Product Designers.

Projects spread over a long period are becoming the new norm. A way to practice a specific skillset, flex some creative muscles and keep it social, so you're much more likely to honour you commitments. Here's an interesting series to launch you towards your own practice from The Great Discontent Mag.

This isn't strictly on the 10,000 hour theme, but its a great practice and an increasingly disappearing art. It isn't uncommon to see Product and Design folks go to meet users and struggle with typing on their mobile devices. No notebooks and pens/pencils in sight. The same holds true for at least 60% of people who attend the Design Office Hours. Does it matter? I'll let Princeton, UCLA Researchers and TEDx speakers do the talking...

On Icons — ia.net

Changing gears to Icons: the headline may be deceptively simple but this is a thoroughly useful premier for all icon-happy designers or icon-hating-others. A series of interesting thoughts and arguments across the 'icon-only' to 'label-only' schools. And then theres this: "If you answer every design question with “Icon!”, one day Don Norman may knock on your door and, when you open it, he will look deep into your eyes and say..." 

Events/Conferences

June 28, Pune Free | Though strictly not UX, this is an informal meetup in Pune for entrepreneurs based in and around Pune creating the amazing next gen products. 

Sept 29-30, London $$ | Mind the Product claims to be "THE product management conference", and in the days when we monitored conference reviews, this scored pretty high. MTP brings together "product leaders from around the world to explore the intersection of design, technology and business, inspiring you to build better products."

Aug 12-14, Bukovina, Poland $ | RealUXCamp is a real camp and unique in many ways: "not only workshops, presentations and networking but also camping, making barbecue by the pond and watching sheep. Who will present and what topics will be covered is decided at the spot. Everybody can contribute: by giving a lecture, participating in a discussion, serving the drinks or chopping wood for the fire."

HFI has a series of basic (and advanced) courses for those looking to build on their basic UX chops. Across the year and across multiple locations in India.

Until next week,

@JDallcaps @SAIFpartners

PS: And if you're launching any 100 or 200 or 365 day challenges, keep us posted :-)