| Scheduling Lunch |
[19 May 2013|08:06pm] |
When I was a free-lancer I got hired to work on one project at a time, tasked with doing my part—all or some of the User eXperience work—until it was done. There would always be a daily rhythm of starting the day, the needed breaks, the end, and a weekly rhythm of meetings and updates, and the project rhythm. Things would become predictable: the team, the pressure, the personalities, the levels of talent and knowledge, and thus also when to have lunch.
Now I work in a permanent job for LBi at a director level, and I have multiple projects I am shepherding, ranging from major website rebuilds from the ground up to small mobile apps. Last week was particularly choppy with two small projects starting up between my ongoing ones, all requiring different levels of my involvement; one project has a stellar experienced UX team I only need to remind of the track we have chosen together to keep them going, and on another project I had to give an intense crash-course workshop on the User-Centered Design process to non-UXers. Impromptu. I need to turn on a dime here. Consequently, when Friday I wanted to have lunch with a co-worker to discuss a leadership training she took, I had to book it in my calendar. For Thursday.
Going into user-testing on some conceptual work tomorrow, and I have to attend a few sessions. Its going to be a super choppy day. It's a challenge but I am liking it a lot, though. The key seems to be how time is actually respected. When you are a free-lancer the clients that hire you—sometimes brands, sometimes agencies—for projects do often treat you as a resource to have do stuff at will: no matter how inefficient a process is, you are expected to do it and you have no influence, so with one client I went through 17 revisions of a section of about 10 pages. A new stakeholder would pop up and hey, next revision. They were burning stupid money on me this way, which I pointed out only once, because pointing out a problem too often as a free-lancer meant you were being difficult and I was never at the level where I was supposed to bring process solutions. When I did point it out I got shrugs and sighs, by the way. Now when I show up my time is hugely respected, I can influence quickly the process to maximize how I will be most effective, and I barely need to do that anyway because the company is so experienced already they know how to slot people like me in.
It makes all the difference, and thus not only will I put up with what I previously would have considered a crazy schedule, but I can see it working, and I am enjoying it.
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| What Did The Protagonist Miss? |
[19 May 2013|03:04pm] |
After a long absence, Hollywood screenwriter and Friend of Venture Todd Alcott is back at his old game of analyzing episodes of The Venture Bros., and, completist that he is, he's hell-bent on catching up with everything he missed. Starting with, weirdly enough, 2003's pilot episode, "The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay." Check out his website HERE.
We Love You,
JP
P.S. Shirt Club. Soon...
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| Oh man. |
[17 May 2013|11:38am] |
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It's been almost literally forever since I've posted to this journal, but I really, really don't want LJ to delete it for inactivity. I should go through and screencap all these entries for the day when LJ just isn't here anymore or they delete it anyway or ...idk, whatever. There's almost 15 years of history here, and it's kinda like reading the younger, more embarrassing me's diary.
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