Issue 25

WELCOME

This issue of Being Designerly features articles on LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® as it turns 20, UX Design parallels with a TV show, a framework for design leadership, improv techniques that are also designerly habits, and a one-pager template to distill research findings.

Don't miss the heated discussion about becoming a UX Designer with no experience...

Issue #25 means that Being Designerly turns 1 year old with the next issue!

FEATURE

Happy Birthday LEGO SERIOUS PLAY

September 17th was the 20th anniversary of the launch of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP). Depending on your professional circles, you may have been bombarded by an international LinkedIn flash mob with short videos of what LSP meant for different people.

I was fortunate to be trained by one of brains behind it: Robert Rasmussen. If you're not familiar, this article is a quick introduction of how LSP can unlock creativity and innovation through facilitated exercises in a business context.

UX

7 similarities between UX design & LEGO Masters

If you haven't noticed LEGOs pop up quite often in this newsletter ("Hi, I'm Lyndon, and I'm an AFOL - Adult Fan of Lego")...

My family has been hooked to LEGO Masters since it started airing in the US. After the Season 2 finale a couple of weeks ago, I wrote this article for Bootcamp about the similarities between UX Design and LEGO Masters. Whether you are a fan of the show or have not watched a single episode, you will quickly recognize some of the similarities between the show and UX Design.

So, you’re managing a design team

Alex Mandel shares his framework outlining all the things a design manager should do. There's a summarized download at the end if you would like to pin it to your desktop or wall...

VISUAL

In an Internet Minute, Way Too Much is Happening All the Time

Data Never Sleeps chart for 2021 shows the numbers of internet searches, posts, messages, uploads, and dollars spent that take place every minute. Instagram users went from posting 55,140 photos per minute two years ago to 65,000 per minute this year. Google went from 4.5 million searches per minute in 2019 to 5.7 million per minute currently. Thanks to remote work, the number of times Microsoft Teams users connected was 52,083 per minute in 2020, but it's 100,000 per minute this year.

TOPICAL

Innovation theatre doesn’t just kill startups. It kills innovation managers, too

A frank interview with an Innovation Manager, discussing “innovation theatre”, where there is a lot of talk about transformation but very little actually gets done.

The UX design equivalent is called... you guessed it... "UX Theater"

TOOLS

Using One Pager Presentations To Present Research Findings

Slides from Mike Ryan's UXPA presentation on using one-pagers to communicate research findings, with a template.

While we do a lot of research, distilling the results down to a quick and insightful presentation is an art. Mike shares his one-pager approach....

OnePagerTemplate - Google Slides

The one-pager template by Mike Ryan for you to download, customize and use

INSPIRATION

7 Improv Techniques You Can Use to Talk to People at Work

The author has taught improvisation to people of all ages, and has worked with companies to use improv techniques to improve collaboration, communication, and confidence.

This article highlights some of these improv techniques and break down how they can be applied specifically to the workplace and work-related interactions.

Read it and you will see why these are also designerly behaviors...

Practice Active Listening

UNTIL NEXT TIME

I hope you enjoyed this issue of Being Designerly with articles on LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® as it turns 20, UX Design parallels with a TV show, a framework for design leadership, improv techniques that are also designerly habits, and a one-pager template to distill research findings.

If you think someone would benefit from Being Designerly, please forward it to them.

I'm looking for feedback, of the brutally honest kind, so this can improve over time. You can reach me at lycerejo (at) gmail.com - thank you!