Davin's blog

Tag: work

  • How to write better personal work goals

    How to write better personal work goals

    As managers, we require our employees to set goals, and then we measure them against those goals during annual performance reviews. While this is common and sounds reasonable, the goals often end up disconnected from real performance. This is a waste. (Managers: it’s okay to nod your head in grim agreement.) Why does goal-setting fail,…

  • Attitude-adjusting pointers for professionals

    Over the years, others have shared a few attitude-adjusting pointers with me about work. They’ve stood the test of time for me in a number of different jobs. Here they are. 1. Remember, you don’t need this job. You need a job, but not this one. In my first full-time, salaried position, my boss shared…

  • The “Pause.” Cup Escapades, June 2010

    I have a coffee cup at work. It resembles a jumbo marshmallow with a handle and “Pause.” printed on the side. There’s a small story behind the cup itself, but today I write for another reason. It was abducted, and I received a series of sinister photos. Due to a back problem, I had to…

  • My 2.5 days in San Francisco: MX 2010

    Saturday PM: Sunshine! I actually began to sweat under my blazer from the warm sun shining brightly through the window. I had arrived in San Francisco a little early on Saturday, dropped my suitcase off at the Intercontinental Hotel, and walked around the corner to a sandwich shop for a bite to eat and to…

  • Argh! I’m pen-less!

    Pen-less. It’s 9:30 in the evening, and I need to write out some thoughts (about a split-complementary color set). At work last Friday, the pen that I’ve had with me for some months now finally gave up its last ink. It was a Pilot Precise V5, black. My habit has been to have that pen…

  • Experience theme for Covenant Eyes

    Cindy Chastain’s article, “Experience Themes,” at Boxes and Arrows outlines a neat way to package the concepts that help user experience designers put creative work into context. When I was leading many design/development projects at a time, I’d write a creative brief for each—it helped me and the team stay clearheaded about each project. An…

  • A Sad Tale of Pagination

    I imagine some professional chefs are accused of over-analyzing a bowl of soup now and then. Like that, as a user experience designer, I get caught up in little pieces of user interface on a regular basis. This particular story concerns a navigation system that utilizes pagination in what at first seems an obvious choice,…

  • Next week: IUE2009

    I’ll be at the Internet User Experience 2009 conference in Ann Arbor, MI this week with a crew of coworkers. In addition to the conference itself on Wednesday and Thursday, I’ll attend 2 full-day tutorials: Use Cases in an Agile World Field Research for User Experience Design I’m looking forward to the events, and intend…

  • I educate

    Slightly over a year ago, I switched careers from website producer, consultant, and business owner to technology educator. I entered an organization in the midst of its ongoing, subtle identity crisis. Do we think of ourselves as trainers? We are called that, sometimes, because we give short courses and workshops on various computing topics, and…

  • Transitioning into this job

    I thought I wanted a career, but it turns out I only wanted a paycheck. I read that quote, it was taped to a cash register at Espresso Royale, back in July, about a month into my job as a technology trainer at the university, after having spent seven years producing web sites full-time. Tomorrow…