Meetings are everywhere. Whether it’s a team meeting at work, or a committee meeting of the local music society you volunteer for, a lot of us spend a lot of time in meetings. How many of those meetings are actually enjoyable, productive, and satisfying?
Forget about the usual meeting hacks you’ve read about (start and stop on time, have a clear agenda and action steps after the meeting, and so on). Kevin M. Hoffman, in his book Meeting Design, goes much further. He approaches the design of meetings as he would approach the design of a user experience, or a product interface.
In this episode of Human Tech we explore how designing meetings can change the team, and perhaps change the organization.
The best way to reach Kevin is to contact him via twitter:
@Kevinmhoffman
AND Kevin is looking to hire designers and researchers at Capital One in Washington DC area, Chicago, New York, Richmond VA, San Francisco, or Plano TX, so contact him if you are interested.
And check out his book: Meeting Design published by Rosenfeld Media.
Would you like to get FREE advice on how to start and/or improve the social media impact of your organization or brand? And help train the next generation of social media/UX designers?
I am an Adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. Starting in September of 2018 I’m teaching a course on Social Media. From the course description:
“Topics will include: the behavioral science of social communication online, the user experience of social media, legal and ethical issues in social media, and strategies for effectively using social media for growing a business and/or community. Student teams will work on case studies with actual organizations and companies to plan social media strategies, as well as experience the “care and feeding” of social media communities. Diverse applications will include, healthcare, wellness, tech, and non-profits.”
In the class we will use real life case studies. A team of 3-4 students will be assigned to a client. They will perform a Social Media Audit and make suggestions for changes to improve the impact of the existing social media, if any, and suggest changes for adding new social media channels. The teams will also be responsible for the “care and feeding” of one or more social media channels for the case study organization thoughout the semester.
If you have a social media existing channel that you would like evaluated and/or if you would like to start a social media campaign for your organizaiton, then you can apply to be a team case study. If chosen you receive free advice and you will be helping to train the next generation of social media and UX designers.
What you should expect:
You will spend about 2-3 hours a month for September, October, November and December working with your team. This will be via email, Skype and/or teleconference. You will be speaking with them about your company/organization, your social media goals and giving them feedback on the advice that they prepare for you.
At the end of the semester you will have suggestions for how to start, increase, and/or improve your social media.
Here are the requirements:
You have an existing or shortly to be deployed company or organization.
You have existing social media accounts and/or are ready to establish new ones. These accounts must work in English.
You or a member(s) of your team have time to meet with the team remotely, answer their questions and give feedback in a timely manner.
Here’s what you need to submit in an email to: susan@theteamw.com
Your Name:
Your Contact Info:
Brief Description of the company/organization
Brief Description of your current social media use
Social media goals or changes if you know them
Anything else you think we should know:
Let me know if you have questions, and thanks in advance for submitting your product for a possible evaluation. We will look through all applications submitted and get back to you in early September.
Control freaks and psychological safety — We brought Eric Olive on the podcast as a guest to talk about the science of decisions and we ended up talking about control and safety. How do you create an environment of psychological safety? And how does that encourage creative collaboration?
Eric has also offered a list of articles and books for more reading which we’ve added below.
Leaders as Decision Architects by John Beshears and Francesca Gino— Harvard Business Review. Structure your organization’s work to encourage wise choices.
“Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking”, Organization Science, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 409-421.
“The Identification of Solution Ideas During Organizational Decision Making,” Management Science 39: 1071–85. Paul C. Nutt (1993),
“Surprising but True: Half the Decisions in Organizations Fail,” Academy of Management Executive 13: 75–90. Paul C. Nutt, 1999.
Only for HBR (Harvard Business Review) Subscribers
The Art Of Thinking Clearly by Rolf/Griffin Dobelli
Winning Decisions by J. Edward Russo and Paul J.H. Schoemaker’
Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
You’ve probably heard (maybe too many times) how multitasking is not a good thing for your productivity. In this episode of Human Tech we share the myths and truths of multitasking and also explore the relationship between multitasking, the flow state, and mindfulness.
In the episode we talk about a video where you can test out your multitasking abilities. Here’s the video:
Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
In this podcast episode we talk with Johan Berndtsson about design and business in Sweden. Johan invites listeners to submit suggestions for speakers for his next “From Business To Buttons Conference” and also invites people to come do design work in Sweden.
Throughout the podcast we refer to videos, give web addesses and so on. Here is the list of links and recommendations from Johan:
Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
Has the field of user experience (UX) been invaded and co-opted by designers? Has it lost its way from its original roots in Psychology?
Nick Fine says “YES!”. In this episode of the Human Tech podcast we have a spirited conversation with Nick about his crusade to bring Psychology back in a big way to UX. We discuss what that means, why it’s important, and the need for large-scale user research projects.
If, after listening to this episode, you want to get involved, (and you may want to do that after you listen in), here are some ways to reach Nick:
Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
In this episode of the Human Tech podcast we bring Amii LaPointe on the show. Amii is a Professor at the Milwaukee School Of Engineering where she teaches User Experience. We talk about the “old” days of writing documentation manuals, and her experiment in “kanbaning” her life.
Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
We speak at a lot of conferences, and attend a few too. In this episode of Human Tech we “review” many of the conferences we’ve been to (that have conference dates coming up in the next 12 months). Some you probably know, and others you may never have heard of. These are all in the US, UK, Israel, and Europe. Maybe one of these will be part of your next traveling adventure!
Human Tech is a podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. Your hosts Guthrie and Dr. Susan Weinschenk explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect our brains.
You can subscribe to the HumanTech podcast through iTunes, Stitcher, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
I’m so excited to be adding courses on color and design to our online training curriculum.
Katie Stern, who has multiple degrees, books, and lots of experience designing with color and teaching others how to do the same, has put together the first course in what will be a whole curriculum on Color and User Experience (UX) Design.
The first course is Color Terms, Tools And More. I took it myself and learned so much from it. I highly recommend it.
Here’s a short introduction to the course:
If you use the promo code
colornews
when you register you will receive 35% off the regular price. This special price is for two weeks, March 1 to 15, 2018.
Here’s some more info about the course:
You will learn color terminology, the basics of color theory, and how to communicate color information with your team.
If you are analyzing or designing a product or website, then you are working with color. Making color choices can be unconscious or intentional, depending on how much thought you put into them. Identifying colors that will create a great user experience can be a daunting task, especially if you don’t have the vocabulary to communicate about color with your UX team members. When you learn color terminology you will be better able to communicate your color design intentions.
You will learn:
The challenges involved with naming colors
The difference between the additive and subtractive color systems
How pigment color is different than digital color
How monochromatic color schemes are built
The definition of tints, tones, and shades and how to create them
How the Adobe Color Picker and Paletton help build color schemes
Meetings are everywhere. Whether it’s a team meeting at work, or a committee meeting of the local music society you volunteer for, a lot of us spend a lot of time in meetings. How many of those meetings are actually enjoyable, productive, and satisfying?
