Ethics and morals should be a big thing in our industry, and yet I’m beginning to think that some people have forgotten all about them recently.
I’ll tell you a story.
We have been working with a development company, who support a various range of their own products. Products that one of our clients use. Straight forward, when we have issues with their product we email their support line. The other day we discover that the client’s site was down, we trace the issue back to badly written script injection hack. Easy to fix.
Listening is one of those skills that no one really talks about, and yet listening is critical to User Research and general business as well.
You have to understand, and in some cases even become emotive, with the users you are listening to. Yes we can all listen to some degree, but the reality is this will not be that thorough, there will be gaps, major things that you will miss or just did not understand completely.
It follows in the field of user experience listening is critical. Without it you just aren’t going to a able to understand the issues your users are telling you, or worse you will miss important information.
I don’t know about you, but I have been to face to face networking events where it’s basically been like pulling teeth to get the people in the room to talk and discuss what they do and the benifits it has for me. There is nothing wrong with the event itself, it’s just some of the attendees don’t know how to network.
Networking doesn’t come easy, you can’t just expect to turn up to an event and it happens, you have to work at it. You have to build the trust and connections with people. You have to get people interested in you and vice-versa.
So the year has been and gone. A decade down. 2009 was a mixed year for me personally and business wise. It was an interesting year overall now I look back on it with hindsight. It was a year for discovering what I really wanted and achieving a few professional goals. However it wasn’t without frustration and disappointment. Time to reflect on it all.
