Thought Leadership: Empowering & Inspiring Communities of Practitioners
Presenting Ideas to the Larger Community
My job is where I spend most of my time, and therefore it’s where I end up gaining the majority of my insights. However, my other major areas of growth have always been books, articles, classes, and participation in professional conferences. I’ve been fortunate enough to come a cross a great deal of high caliber professionals who have shared significant insights with me, and I always aspire to do the same for people in my trade who share the same general propensity for personal and professional development.
There are a number of professional societies that exist for the development of researchers and designers who work in the software industry. Real success in the UX profession requires being extremely informed. The field is an especially eclectic area; an amalgamation of people with divergent backgrounds like psychology, art, engineering, anthropology, etc.
The first part of my UX career was very research focused, and it took place at organizations like NASA and cognitive science programs at various universities. I spent time exploring and publishing research on human behavior as related to HCI. During this time I developed certain areas of expertise that have had a surprisingly high relevance (and success) in business and industrial application. Because of my background it’s second nature for me to translate academic insights into industrial practicality.
The images shown here are from a presentation I recently gave in Seattle on the link between new research emerging in social-cognitive neuroscience and the recent history of successful products in the software industry.
Teaching Courses
Teaching a Data Visualization Course in London (2014)
Sometimes the acquisition of professional skills requires more than simply attending lectures; it may instead require enrolling in a master class or a professional tutorial. I’ve certainly attended a number of these in my career. I’ve also taught a few as well.
In the previous section I elaborated on my work within the area of data visualization. Extending on the points made there, I believe that this is an area of expertise conspicuously lacking within the UX profession and I actively work at changing this. I think that data visualization fits no field better than it fits UX, but it’s an area that’s very difficult in which to gain expertise. It requires knowledge of more than just design principles, but also statistics and a high familiarity of the nature of data collection. The image shown here is me teaching full day a data visualization class held in London at the 2014 UXPA Conference. The attendees were a wide variety of business and technology professionals coming to sharpen their skills in the area.