Available now from Catbird Content:

• UX Writing Fundamentals, STC India, starting January 17

• Content Design Fundamentals, 8am PT, February 17

• Skills project, including survey, reports, and skill-specific resource list

• Ask about consulting, fractional leadership, mentoring, keynotes, and speaking

• Open office hours with Torrey (free!)

Finds

As my co-authors and I work on the UX Skills for Business Strategy book, I’m thinking a lot about the way we work within UX teams, and how we measure the work we do there. In many teams I’ve been in, “metrics” is both a watchword and a dirty word. I recall Goodhart’s law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."  

So what can we set as a target, as an expectation, that we don’t need as a measure? Something that is within the UX team’s purview, including the content designer’s purview, is the frequency with which they engage in critique. To the end-user or to the business, that frequency doesn’t matter–it’s not a good measure to begin with. But it is a good target, as argued by Paco Martínez in Time-to-critique: the metric that will level up how you manage your Design Team.

When I say critique, I mean asking for feedback in a structured way. That structure includes (generically, and at a minimum):

1. The designer articulates the problem to be solved, and the constraints on the solution as needed.

2. The designer describes the intended solution, including pieces informed by research, assumption, or guidelines.

3. The critique participants ask questions and provide feedback about whether the intended solution is directionally appropriate to solve the articulated problem. They may also present additional problems or concerns with the design that haven’t yet been addressed.

It doesn’t matter whether this takes place at a formal time and place set up by a design team or in informal meetings set up by individual designers. A common way I get critique is just to ask a teammate “Hey, can I run something by you?” I can follow a critique structure even if they don’t.

When I’m working in a healthy team, one of the outcomes of critique is encouragement. Healthy teams want each other to be successful! That doesn’t mean that I don’t get feedback that’s difficult to hear–but when I do get challenges (including “why are you even working on this?”), I also get the redirection necessary so that I am contributing the right things to the team.

When I don’t leave a critique encouraged, that’s an indicator to me that the team isn’t as healthy/happy as it could be. In those cases, the problem isn’t the work critiqued, but something interpersonal or about the problem to be solved. In a few cases, the problem was me: I was the person that wasn’t behaving in healthy, happy, or sustainable ways.

In his article, Paco Martínez presents an interesting approach to setting expectations for time-to-critique. The outcomes for a healthy team include greater practice in identifying and communicating problems and solving those problems with diverse perspectives in mind. It also, in my mind, helps to identify problems within the team faster and more actionably.

Flexes and fumbles

I mostly took the holidays as holidays. I’m pretty proud of myself for that. I made my husband’s favorite holiday treat, spent time with people I love, and just as importantly, spent time with myself, resting.

No fumble detected. :-)

Philosophy

2025 is looming large and frightening in my imagination.

In the USA, fact-based news sources are warning folks about all kinds of uncertainty. This includes the uncertainty about trends in re-hiring in our industry. It also includes potential tariffs that will re-destabilize consumer prices. There are uncertain (but documented) policies promised by the new presidential administration that economists say will undermine economic success There’s also the loss of human rights (reproductive, bodily autonomy, etc.) as a result of state-level legislation and national court rulings.

Then there are the certainties: the ongoing loss of life and livelihood in armed conflicts around the world, the effects of unchecked climate change, avian influenza outbreaks in flocks and humans, and more.

Those are just the pieces that are top of mind for me today. It’s a lot.

Most of these, I can’t do much about. I’m not a policy expert, and I’m only very slightly involved in local politics, much less national politics. So how can I prepare for the impact on my family, my community?

I can make sure I know the people in my community. That includes my loved ones, in my innermost circle. It also includes my neighbors (even the unlovable ones). These are the people I need to know and work with if there are natural disasters, another pandemic, or other catastrophe.

I also need to know the people in my professional community. As a small business owner, I need to work with clients. I also need those clients to know what I can offer them. As a professional community, we set expectations for what we can do, together. Every time one of us gets a great job, with realistic expectations for what we do and the difference we can make, we’re all better off.

So there are a couple of things I can do to make my world better. There’s even a new Instagram account suggesting one small thing that most people could do every day: OneSmallThing2025 by the inimitable Stacey King Gordon.

But perhaps the most important thing I can do is to prepare myself for some emotional regulation.

Even in 2025, I’m determined to be fun and silly, flexible and warm, courageous and caring–professionally and personally. Some parts of 2025 will be sad, frightening, and infuriating, but I don’t need to “borrow trouble” and let the fear of these outcomes ruin otherwise good days.

We’re all in this together, folks. I’m glad you’re here with me in 2025.

Hire Catbird Content

When I can help you or your team, please get in touch.  

• Design consulting: Solve problems with adoption, onboarding, usage for products and services, and design process and skill alignment for teams.

• Training & facilitation: Keynotes and other presentations, plus hands-on workshops in UX content, visioning, naming, and team building.

• Mentoring: I work with individuals to focus their own career development, including navigating change, constraints, careers, and more.

• Open office hours (free!) I hold 2 hours a week open on my calendar to connect with people who don’t have business with me, but just want to talk.

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