It’s a Clean Machine

I ordered a new laptop last weekend to replace my aged MacBook Pro from 2010. The new machine is a fully decked out 13″ MacBook Air — 1.7 GHz Dual-Core Intel i7, 8GB RAM, 512GB flash storage.

Why am I writing about this in this blog? Mostly because I bought this machine specifically with work in mind, and I’m always curious what other UX practitioners are using for work.

I spent quite a bit of time debating the merits of both the Air and the Pro with Retina. I pored over specs and reviews online. I sent emails to friends asking for opinions. I went to the Apple store and thoroughly fondled both models. And I peppered my boyfriend with questions about his MBP-r.

By the time I finally came to a decision, I think everyone in the universe was tired of listening to me debate about it. In the end, the lighter weight and longer battery life of the Air won out over the power and resolution increases of the Pro with Retina.

And, let me tell you, I made the right choice. I am so in love with my sleek, light, super-portable MacBook Air that I barely have the words. It’s amazing.

My goal is to keep this machine as nimble as I can while still having everything I need on it to work effectively as I can. With that in mind, here’s what I’ve installed on it initially:

• Dropbox – because I do a lot of stuff with my phone and my iPad Mini, I tend to keep a lot of my work artifacts and documents in Dropbox so they’ll be accessible to me across devices.
• Evernote – I shove a lot of stuff into Evernote. It’s become my catch-all for not just notes and reminders, but also interesting things that I see on the web that I might want to reference later.
• Chrome – This is largely for things related to the project I’m working on now.
• Balsamiq – I’ve been using Balsamiq since its very early days. When working with teams that want to run fast, I find it invaluable.
• Silverback 2 – I’m going to be doing some rapid testing for this project, and can’t really wait for the Silverback 3 release expected later this year. Silverback just makes my quick-and-dirty testing life so much easier.
• PyCharm – I do some tinkering with Python on occasion. PyCharm in my environment of choice.
• TextWrangler – Because sometimes I just feel an inexplicable need to write some HTML and CSS by hand.
• FileZilla – I’ve always found that I never think about needing an FTP client until I really, really need one. Instead of waiting until that moment presents itself and scrambling to download and install it, I thought I’d just get that over with up front.
• OmmWriter – I know it seems silly to some to have a dedicated app for just writing, but this one really works for me. Whether on my laptop or my iPad, I can slap on a pair of headphones and really churn out a lot of words in a single sitting. I find this to be especially true on airplanes. OmmWriter actually makes me want to write. Talk about great UX.
• Found – My boyfriend turned me on to this one. I don’t have much feedback on it at this point, but a single point of search through all of my folders, emails, and docs (both local and cloud-based) was too enticing to pass up.

And that’s it. Those applications along with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers are pretty much everything I need to do my work. I’m going to be giving a Gliffy a go for creating some diagrams and concept maps this weekend. If that works out, great. And if it doesn’t, I’ll have to install Omnigraffle…but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.

Week One Is Done

My first week with the startup team has come to an end. Technically, it came to an end yesterday, but I came home and spent many hours vegging out and letting all of the information I tried to absorb over the course of the week settle in.

Information saturation is really the best way I can describe the week. Well, information saturation and a stunning feeling of incompetence. I was busy reading prior research on the problem domain, and wondering how I was even going to begin to dive into useful problem framing and solving with these guys.

The potential audience just seemed too big, and the problem too unwieldy to really get my arms around. I formed and tossed out three different different research and discovery plans. I took two days by myself at home puzzling through approaches (and taking delivery of a new laptop). Finally, I went back in at the end of the week with what I thought was a good plan.

And, of course, as soon as I got to my desk and one of the founders started showing me some scenarios he had been trying to work through during the two days I was gone, I threw out the plan I’d walked into the office with that morning and promptly formulated a new one.

The new plan landed me in a room with the three founders and a lot of Post-It pads and markers. We spent the rest of the day walking through basic scenarios, doing free-form word association and affinity diagramming exercises. We walked out of that room with a new common base vocabulary for talking about our product and the beginnings of a solid mental model that will allow us to put structure around how we think about prioritizations, enhancements, and innovation within the space.

Now I just have to get the mental model poster started so we can hang it on the wall and really get to work. Exciting times ahead!

It’s all happening.

I’m throwing my lot in with a startup next week. And I don’t mean a startup that has an early version product in the market with a growing user base. I mean the kind of startup that would be comparable to that “Oh my gawd, what are we doing?” stage I’m sure people go through in that first few weeks after someone pees on a stick and finds out that a baby is on the way.

The founders have an idea. They’ve laid down some infrastructure and very basic architecture. Now, they need to coalesce around a real product vision.

That’s where I come in. I’m bringing them my extensive user experience and product background, and every tool I can muster from my UX bag o’ tricks to help them get there. I don’t know where it’s going to end up, but I’m sure it’s going to be a wild ride.