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 greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
- The difference between efficacy, effectiveness and efficiency
- Selective ignorance: cultivating intentional knowledge in a chaotic world
- The Pandemic Gives Us a Chance to Change How We Get Around
- Why Do Some People Succeed after Failing, While Others Continue to Flounder?
- How Companies Are Winning on Culture During COVID-19
- How Leaders Can Open Up to Their Teams Without Oversharing
- Design Must Mature in the Digital Age
- Break your bar chart habit
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- Designed to Deceive: Do These People Look Real to You?
Is this humility or hubris? Do we place too little value in human intelligence — or do we overrate it, assuming we are so smart that we can create things smarter still?
Kashmir Hill and Jeremy White - The days are long but the decades are short
- The Quest to Be Good at Everything
If we define productive as a way of optimizing the outcome of you spending resources on something, then I think it’s more so the complete productivity obsession across the board of your life.
Henrik Werdelin - Debunking the Myth of the Fold
- Innovation in Orbit: Insights From NASA and SpaceX
- Don’t Blame Social Media. Blame Capitalism.
- Designing algorithm-friendly interfaces
- The Best Inventions of 2020
- User Control and Freedom (Usability Heuristic #3)
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The last week of November was Jaycelle’s birthday week so we were focused on preparations and celebrations. I didn’t really get to read a lot of stuff this week (in fact, I only got one).
- To Create a Better Society
Yes, we need to go into communities. But we should be looking to find the creative people in those communities who are already addressing their problems. People who live in the community don’t need anthropologists and design researchers to figure out their needs. They know the problems and they often have creative ideas. Moreover, they present practical solutions because they understand the culture, the capabilities, and the resources of the community.
Don Norman
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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