I got tagged by Jim, so here’s my career goals for the next six months…
Learn more about usability, interaction design, human factors, and user experience.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with some individuals on recent projects that were incredibly good in these areas. There’s a lot that I have to learn here and it’s an area that developers are usually really bad at. I’m convinced that these areas are frequently overlooked and that we all need to learn how to integrate these items into our software. I want to understand the thought processes around these items deeper than I currently do.
Build out some (very) compelling presentations / talks / stories.
I love to speak, but I don’t do enough of it. I’ve got a lot of things that I want to say, but I haven’t been doing a good job of saying them (outside of my standard work environment) lately. I need to build out some really good presentations and start giving them. This takes quite a bit of time, but it’s well worth it.
Build a WPF app on the side.
I love WPF. It’s a great technology and I have some interesting ideas for places that it can be applied. I’ve got a simple side-project in mind that I want to create and distribute. I’ll probably do this as an open-source application and hopefully learn a lot in the process of building it out.
Question my assumptions about process.
I’ve been preaching the benefits of agile methods for quite a while now. Actually, maybe a little too long. I’m afraid that my “default” arguments are becoming routine. I need to step back from what I (think I) know and question myself more. There are still plenty of areas where agile methods can be extended and improved.
Strive for simplicity.
I’ve become obsessed with simplicity and minimalism. This is still playing out in everything from my day-to-day work to my living arrangements. I want to continue to explore this in my everyday work life. I’ve recently completely replaced taking notes with drawing mind maps. I feel like the next step is probably to make the mind maps much smaller and more precise.
