In a lot of cases, obsolescence is triggered by external changes in a world in which things are connected: when one evolves the others have to evolve as well.
Conversely, when I see programmers not launching features quickly, the issue is often overengineering. Or when engineers do launch quickly but the quality is bad, then the issue is usually under-engineering or sloppy code.
Your answer will help you identify what has to happen to get to the outcome you desire. And your answer will be rooted in your values. All of these components give you agency and a kind of control.
Without a dedicated designer on the scrum team, what you have is a software engineering team and, while that team will absolutely deliver a user experience, it will not be of the same level of quality without a designer’s input.
In an ideal world, people would, like a self-teaching computer, immediately adopt a better idea. But humans are not computers and if we care to work with people and not just with information and data, we must adapt.
If you have skills, commitment and passion, careers tend to take care of themselves. Over the long haul, it really doesn’t matter if you have a few years when your career is in canter mode while you prioritise young children.
The idea that our brains are essentially Russian dolls of diminishing complexity is a concept that’s fairly easy for us to grasp. That’s part of why this myth is so compelling, Barrett says, especially when the truth can’t be boiled down to a neat, simple idea.
But it’s important to ask: Are immoral people attracted to industries where there are big rewards for bad behavior? Or do big rewards for bad behavior cause good people to slide into immorality, justifying their decisions along the way?
Social media more generally have overturned naming and credentials practices. The good side is the neutering of titles. The bad side is the elevation of popularity in their place.
As long as we are willing to progress toward some designed solution, we can learn where the design has fallen short once it’s out and in the world. Then our job shifts to be adaptable and responsive.
Without the distraction of unnecessary detail, you are less likely to fall into the restrictive trap of thinking “but we have always done it this way”. Thinking in an abstract manner allows you to come up with new perspectives that are creative, and in many cases, better than the ones stemming from fixed ideas.
Data visualization is the translation of data into visual representations to communicate some significance. Raw data is encoded by position, shape, size, symbols, and color. This encoded graph is then decoded through the human visual system to gain understanding. Without this understanding, there are no benefits to the viewer.
Brian Dys’s Avaloq ID on top of a computer keyboard.
It was May last year when I virtually onboarded Avaloq. It was a time when most of us, office-goers, were adjusting to this “forced” setup of working from home. Consequently, everything needs to be done online. You had to double down on clear and proactive communication because the computer gets in the way of telepathy — kidding aside, the computer is all we have to communicate with other people.
Avaloq was a different environment compared to my previous experience at PayMaya. From serving local businesses via PayMaya Negosyo, the world opened up in front of my eyes because the fintech products that I am now working on cater to the global market. Of course, with that comes the fact that the workforce is also distributed globally. So in one way, my incumbent colleagues are already used to fully-online communication. And I was in a hangover of missing in-person interactions.
A screenshot of the design team’s video call welcoming a new joiner.
In a span of a year, Avaloq supported a continuous growth in my knowledge and skills. When I say “Avaloq” I mean the people that I work with, directly and indirectly. The HR, for example, is supportive in helping me know the ins and outs of recruitment and onboarding. The same way for the design team itself, because we are expanding to support the growing needs of the business, it pushes me to step-up and help other team members grow in their roles, as well. Indeed, scalability is a frontier that I am excited exploring.
A diagram showing Brian Dys’s Avaloq roles in 2021.
I find myself being constantly challenged to learn how to do my job better — whether it is about navigating a process, finding the best way to communicate with someone, or learning new skills. Working with people coming from different cultural backgrounds and varying professional experiences will always be challenging but with its benefits, too — first, I am reminded that there’s a wealth of knowledge from everyone if I keep my understanding open, and second, I feel like having a Swiss Army knife of communication approaches depending on who I collaborate with. Being always on the edge of my seat is a great thing for growth.
What makes me thrive in Avaloq?
It boils down to trust. With leaders trusting their teams in being responsible professionals, autonomy ensues. This is why even in a remote setup we are thriving. The collaborative environment empowers us to hone our design craft. My approach to design comes from my own perspective and it benefits the project to uncover many different angles via design reviews — this is where my colleagues’ level of support really helps.
Since May of last year, we’ve onboarded 5 designers in Manila, 2 in Zürich, and established a team of 5 in Berlin. Also from that month, Avaloq marked its first Philippine partnership with BPI and I’m proud to be part of its project team. From taking care of its employees during this pandemic to the acquisition by NEC, it was one heck of a ride. I’m grateful for being part of Avaloq’s continuous growth.
A screenshot of Google Maps showing the different locations of the Avaloq design team.
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Leveling up in your career?
You might be in the same crossroads like I was last year. When I mentioned how the world opened up in front of my eyes when I joined Avaloq, I hope you would also find yourself in a journey that lets you discover new things that you’re capable of.
A throwback of my video introduction
All new joiners at Avaloq are suggested to share a video introduction a week before their first day — this was mine.
As technologies and methods advanced, workers in all industries became able to produce much more value in a shorter amount of time. You’d think this would lead to shorter workdays.
Practice is more than just repetition of behavior—it’s a movement of energy that creates a fissure in us to reveal what’s within. More movement, more revelation.
Those were the three devices that kicked off the scientific revolution in the 17th century. It was the MTC stack. The microscope, telescope, clock stack. What every cultured full-stack gentle-scientist had to master in 1687.
When you are the smartest person in the room, you inevitably become a teacher. Everyone else fills out a skill hierarchy where they are either teacher or student depending on who they interact with in the same room.
When you’re blessed with intelligence you’re cursed with the ability to use it to concoct intricate stories about why things happened – especially stories justifying why you made a mistake or why you’ll eventually be right in an area you’re wrong.
But it’s all too easy to imagine some enlightened, superintelligent being standing outside our world, looking at us with the same pity and smug superiority that we feel toward the piranha.
The goal of coaching isn’t to make someone feel good. The goal is to break through a person’s guise of knowing. Human beings are master rationalizers in an effort to protect themselves from feeling challenged and embarrassed.
We played his favourite classical music (one for a future episode of Troika), read the news or books, and generally waffling in an attempt to provide some comfort. Mostly he slept, and we listened to his breathing, trying to discern any changes.
Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as “a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking”. What kind of risks? Expressing ideas, concerns, feedback, etc, without fear of any kind of repercussions. The idea is that when everyone’s perspective is shared, the team can learn from all these perspectives and perform at its best.
When the two groups were given a variety of puzzles, children in the second group were more likely to choose a harder puzzle. Dweck also found that praising the process made them more likely to feel confident in a task even if they made a mistake.
If the whole team is responsible for product success, not just getting things built, then the whole team understands and contributes to both kinds of work.
Describing the whole from so many different angles illuminates the complex. By chronicling microinteractions, such as those between areas of hot and cold water or high and low pressure, we can see how changes in one aspect produce cascading change.
But is there a better term that would describe a non-specialist person whose chief skill is curiosity, generalist knowledge and an ability to integrate various disciplines and their specialists to solve a problem? As it happens, there is – and it comes to us from a science fiction novel from 1950.
Feature factories are deeply unsatisfying for craft obsessed designers as it turns them into “short order chefs”. It feels like we’re somehow skipping the parts where we feel we can add the most value to both the companies we work and the users we serve.
They have to feed you every six hours. So if I can stack six hours on six hours on six hours, and just focus on getting to the next meal, it doesn’t make matter how much I’m in pain, doesn’t matter how cold I am.
But Tversky’s point is that if your job is to be creative and think through a tough problem, then time spent wandering around a park or aimlessly lounging on a couch might be your most valuable hours. A little inefficiency is wonderful.
Consistent effort over time is more sustainable than pushing your limits to work as fast as possible. To do our best work, we need mental downtime, space for self-reflection, and a realistic schedule we can actually keep up with.
All of this does not imply that you can choose your own reality. Firstly, you can choose what questions you ask, but the answers are given by the world. And even in a relational world, when two observers communicate, their realities are entangled. In this way a shared reality can emerge.
