Hi, I’m Brian Dys — a photographer from the inside looking out · a composer entangled in electronic music · a UX designer · a spouse, a parent, & everything in between.
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- The hand and the brain
Collaboration is a compounding investment: taken alone, each individual episode might not be optimal. Over time, the team learns and improves, gets more attuned to each other, uncovers surprising opportunities and novel strategies. That old saw: if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
Matthew Ström - Productive Thinking Model
- Memory bias: how selective recall can impact your memories
- Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant
Some days they did not speak; at other times they chatted; but they understood each other perfectly without the aid of words, having similar tastes and feelings.
Guy de Maupassant - Personal values: how knowing yourself can guide your actions
Many of us state values we wish we had as a way to cover up the values we actually have. In this way, aspiration can often become another form of avoidance. Instead of facing who we really are, we lose ourselves in who we wish to become.
Mark Manson - The New York Times
- Why Do We Still Have ‘Girl Stuff’ and ‘Boy Stuff’?
I don’t see gender nonconforming as an identity, I see it as a set of behaviors not hued to stereotypes. If we stop falsely labeling traits masculine and feminine and embrace ambiguity, there would be a lot less distress.
Lisa Selin Davis - Singing My Dad Back to Me
- How Pediatricians Are Fending Off Coronavirus Myths
- Covid in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
- ‘Remote Learning Is Not Working’: Shutdown Hurts Children, Parents Say
- Why Do We Still Have ‘Girl Stuff’ and ‘Boy Stuff’?
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Grabe! One would exclaim in a local language (Tagalog) as exaggeration of a feeling or an event. It’s part of my daily expressions, and exaggeration is one I consider a great tool in my existential musings.
It is not unlike a thought experiment or addressing edge cases in UX.
Two persons are in danger, who will you help first?
How do we handle a very long string here?
Will you eat turd for a million dollars?
What would you do if a love one is gone tomorrow?
Yes, simple questions, albeit provocative. The scenario might less likely happen today but what if it does? What would you do? How would you react?
In talks of exaggeration, there’s a pitfall to avoid, though — when facts are misrepresented for manipulation with malice. On the other hand, thinking in extremes helps us in realigning our principles and values with how we think and who we are now. It helps us be prepared for things unforeseen.
Oh yeah, the reading list
- Exaggeration: why we make a mountain out of a molehill
- 8 Design Guidelines for Complex Applications
- Writing Better Self Reviews
- UXmatters
- Growing Your Career as a Multidisciplinary UX Designer, Part 2
Do not wait for the perfect career opportunity to come along. It’s often necessary to create rather than find such opportunities. So keeping your career-growth goals locked inside your head could ensure that you’ll never achieve the growth you want.
Jonathan Walter - Designing with the Mind in Mind
Regardless of how well designed a digital product or service is, it won’t be perfect. Even if it were perfect, people are not. They will make errors, both mistakes and slips. To be successful, digital products and services should help their users recover from errors.
Jeff Johnson - Universal-Design Principles and Heuristic Guidelines
- Growing Your Career as a Multidisciplinary UX Designer, Part 2
- Speak Ai
Capture, analyze and share media, research, notes and more to improve communication, awareness, well-being and productivity.
A screenshot of Speak Ai’s Dashboard.
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Over the probationary period hump at Avaloq
A couple of weeks since lockdown (nearing April), Jaycelle and I made this major decision — for the lack of better words — to level up. It was scary, indeed, because the pandemic surprised us all. Most companies halted their hirings yet there I was with an offer on the table.
Fast forward to six months — this was an eventful week as I have passed the probationary period at Avaloq. The team’s trust and support has been tremendous. It is challenging — this role of a manager and individual contributor — nevertheless, everyone’s willingness in collaboration and their dedication to the craft made the ride rather smooth.
Here’s an excerpt from my third month evaluation, which I feel like will always ring true in my career.
What are your initial impressions of working with Avaloq? Have your expectations been fulfilled?
Challenging
3 months could very well feel like a year of working in Avaloq — probably because almost every thing was done online. It will even be more challenging if there were physical interactions with people — getting to know their ways of working, finding the right balance between personalities, all in achieving a common goal of championing UX and elevating the knowledge and skills of the Avaloq UX design team.
Exciting
Each step of the way, I would discover different kinds of terrain in Avaloq — mostly rugged hills and mountains. How to navigate it? Surely, you have to go around them or climb them. Stumbling blocks? You have to clear them for people following your lead. Some blocks can be arranged into stepping stones for us to reach higher levels.
What excites me is the big room for improvement that I am contributing to in filling. Accomplishments, they’re a bonus. There’s always what’s next.
I’m in the right place, at the right time
When I wished to transition to the next level in my career — Avaloq is the next level. It is global — I find myself collaborating with people who have widely different perspectives and knowledge which I learn from. The UX design team in Manila is solid and open for growth. It is a perfect combination of a conducive environment wherein I can grow and support others’ growth, as well.
Oh yeah, the reading list
- How the Best Forecasters Predict Events
- My design systems reading list.
- Creating connections
We spend hours, days, weeks, and months discussing and refining the perfect user experience for an app, yet we’re not that great in designing the experiences of our own lives? One thing COVID has proven is that we need our physical connections and the emotional support of one another.
Anton Sten - making computers better
- Average UX Improvements Are Shrinking Over Time
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A couple of weeks since lockdown (nearing April), Jaycelle and I made this major decision — for the lack of better words — to level up. It was scary, indeed, because the pandemic surprised us all. Most companies halted their hirings yet there I was with an offer on the table.
Fast forward to six months — this was an eventful week as I have passed the probationary period at Avaloq. The team’s trust and support has been tremendous. It is challenging — this role of a manager and individual contributor — nevertheless, everyone’s willingness in collaboration and their dedication to the craft made the ride rather smooth.
Here’s an excerpt from my third month evaluation, which I feel like will always ring true in my career.
What are your initial impressions of working with Avaloq? Have your expectations been fulfilled?
Challenging
3 months could very well feel like a year of working in Avaloq — probably because almost every thing was done online. It will even be more challenging if there were physical interactions with people — getting to know their ways of working, finding the right balance between personalities, all in achieving a common goal of championing UX and elevating the knowledge and skills of the Avaloq UX design team.
Exciting
Each step of the way, I would discover different kinds of terrain in Avaloq — mostly rugged hills and mountains. How to navigate it? Surely, you have to go around them or climb them. Stumbling blocks? You have to clear them for people following your lead. Some blocks can be arranged into stepping stones for us to reach higher levels.
What excites me is the big room for improvement that I am contributing to in filling. Accomplishments, they’re a bonus. There’s always what’s next.
I’m in the right place, at the right time
When I wished to transition to the next level in my career — Avaloq is the next level. It is global — I find myself collaborating with people who have widely different perspectives and knowledge which I learn from. The UX design team in Manila is solid and open for growth. It is a perfect combination of a conducive environment wherein I can grow and support others’ growth, as well.
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Recently, I hopped on to Spotify as an artist. I released several electronica singles under the label Weet Weew. The experience was liberating in the sense that I’ve been putting it off for quite some time and finally got to grapple with it. I got to revisit some old compositions and reacquainted with a DAW (digital audio workstation) of choice: FruityLoops.
The signature
Preparing for a (rather bleak) future when crazed fans would ask me for autographs, I thought I needed to have one. So I practiced using a big round-tip marker and settled with a 0.6 mm-tip pen.
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One of the items in the reading list is about copying and how it is inherent to design (and child development, actually). As designers, we pride ourselves of our originality — personally, to the point of stubbornness. I recall a period in my career when I avoided looking at other people’s works as inspiration — out of fear of being unoriginal. It was pride, as I retrospect. Collaboration is key to almost anything one wants to accomplish efficiently. All of us rely on each other even indirectly. Copying is inevitable in a world where no person is an island. Legalities and what your conscience says, that’s a different story. “Really, you’re giving it away for free?” A mentee uttered in surprise (pertaining to a solicited advice). Perhaps our session provided her with some nuggets of wisdom (as it should be). I could imagine lightbulbs flashing in her mind as we discussed about her career. “This is also how I got them through the years,” I said, “for free”. To all the generous folks out there sharing their thoughts, resources, and anything that helps anyone, I’m also paying it forward. I liked the style of the copying article so I replicated it in the “Libre Sakay!” graphic design. If you would like to spin it out yourself, feel free!On copying and collaboration
Sharing for free
In the spirit of copying
Oh, yeah, the reading list
- Hindsight bias: the knew-it-all-along phenomenon
However, the hindsight bias can be a barrier to rational thinking, and it can reduce our ability to learn from experience. If we always think we correctly predicted an outcome, how can we draw lessons from wrong decisions?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
- Copying (is the way design works)
Whether you believe that it’s worthwhile or worthless to copy, whether you think that copies are a valuable part of the design community or a scourge, you are using software, hardware, websites and apps that all owe their existence to copying.
Matthew Ström
- Bad Design Kills Eight
The solution to this problem is simple: have experts trained in interaction design determine the behavior of these devices during the initial design phase. Unfortunately, almost all of the makers of such products confuse interaction designers with software engineers.
Alan Cooper
- 10 Directions to Take Your UX Career
- Compensatory vs Noncompensatory: 2 Decision-Making Strategies