Puget Sound, where I live, is far enough away from the equator that we get about 16 hours of sunshine at the summer solstice, in contrast with 8 hours of sun at the winter solstice (not counting clouds). It’s a season of activity over contemplation, high productivity despite extended weekends and holidays.

Every Friday afternoon, people flood out of Seattle to soak into the mountains and the waterways, enjoying every bit of the outdoor bliss.  

With that backdrop, here’s what I’m up to:

• July 3: Skills for Impact (20% off with code CHIRP20)

• July 9: Trisha Causley’s watch party: Content designer to prompt engineer at Button’s monthly event

• July 29: Content Design for Developers at THAT Conference, WI

Finds

I want everybody to watch Maggie Appleton’s talk The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI (h/t David Dylan Thomas for the link!) This is about not only how AI works at a high level; she uses the metaphor of the dark forest to think about the large-scale trends in human behavior as advertising and AI take over the virtual public sphere.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Work like mine, intended to make experiences easier to use, has been twisted to make experiences more profitable by making them less easy to use–driving up “engagement” at the expense of overall goodness. (Another talk from beyond tellerand—I didn’t go to Düsseldorf, but I wish I had!)

Flex and fumble

I’m proud that I hosted the monthly Button watch party for Aaron Irizarry’s talk about critique. Critique is so important and so difficult to do well. Aaron offered a distilled framework that I find makes a very effective critique: Center on the objectives, analyze which design elements are related to those objectives, and discuss how those elements are effective (and not effective) at meeting those objectives.

But even as I celebrate the critique goodness in Aaron’s presentation, I’m reflecting on how I personally could have done a better job at providing some feedback recently.

Here’s where I fumbled: I was asked for feedback about one person’s work by a third party. I have an existing relationship with that third party. They were looking for information about whether this work would be a good investment of their time and resources. They wanted my perspective in the context of our existing relationship. I wrote back about the strengths and weaknesses of the anonymous-to-me work. I thought it would give the third party enough to ask good questions, and so the overall final product could be improved for users like me.

When my feedback was shared back to the creator, they didn’t see it that way. They came to me and wanted to know why I had replied briefly. They were not interested in my feedback, nor did they believe it was valid.

On reflection, what I could have done differently was to imagine that next potential step in the feedback process: What if my feedback, that I shared privately, were shared verbatim with the creator? How would I change how I frame the feedback, so that they are more likely to feel it’s an appropriate assessment of their work? I’m not sure, in this case, what I would have done differently–hindsight isn’t as clear as I’d like it to be. But I do know that I failed to consider that possibility, and I want to do better in the future.

Philosophy

I've been thinking about the nuts and bolts of building infrastructure.

I’m speaking both metaphorically and practically: I’ve been rebuilding part of a dock. Between two floating structures, there are massive, 12mm (.5in) thick steel flanges. Pins go through holes in these flanges, making hinges that let the whole dock ride and bend at the top of the water.

We had to order new pins, and had measured them and ordered them. And then they didn’t fit anyway—a surprise new problem to be solved. But ultimately, it was just more time and energy needed (and a construction reamer). We need to spend that extra investment to save the whole project, and it’s a worthwhile cost.

I recently spoke with somebody who surprised me by talking about how UX writers “spend too long” on each word, as if we’re focused on perfecting it. But I think they miss the point. The point of getting the UX content right is to get the whole experience right, to realize the larger investment. We can also reduce liability, increase brand affinity, increase user confidence, and so much more. Taking the time to get those word-shaped nuts and bolts right is fundamental to the integrity of what we’re building.

So: Metaphorically and practically, the work is hard and sometimes takes more time than predicted. The important thing is to keep going toward our goals, while being as humane to each other as we can (and staying hydrated).

I write these newsletters myself, and I stand by what’s in them. If you have kudos, concerns, or questions, please tell me. —Torrey