Inspiration

Only a brief newsletter this month. I'm deep into the writing of Navigating the Politics of UX, Volume 2: Operations, and I need to keep my focus there.

My goal for this next book is to provide you with some fresh ways of thinking about the practice of human-centered research, analysis, and design. But mainly, my goal is to reignite your passion for your work, and before I can inspire you, I must first inspire me.

So every day when I start to write, I read the following blurb. I may decide to put it on the book jacket; I might not. It's raw and unpolished, but it captures "my why" and inspires me to keep working.

Here it is:

Regardless of your current job responsibilities, regardless of your status or lack thereof in your company, regardless of the demands pressing down on you – I want you to embrace the mission of UX. It sounds safe enough, but I warn you: it is a mission fraught with political minefields. It will not be long before the corporate immune system rears up to destroy you and the new ideas you propose.

Your colleagues will resent how you’re meddling with their jobs, and not just publicly disagreeing with them, but PROVING them wrong.

Your managers will wonder what you’re up to and how it relates to the job you were hired to perform, and worry whether your diversions into new mindsets will embarrass them in the next staff meeting.

Middle-level managers – those who fear change the most – will chastise you for questioning decisions that were once routine no-brainers, and then be astonished that you have hard data and irrefutable logic to back up your challenges.

I’ll walk you through this transformation. Sure, if you follow my advice you could be fired, but you shouldn’t let that stop you. If this book does what I hope it does, it will ignite a passion within you that will leave you no choice but to keep going – you won’t be able to think about your job in the same way again.

Will this book do all that? I don't know. But I'm going to give it my best shot.