Jeffery Tambor on Finding your Voice

Posted on May 22, 2012 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

Today I received my SXSW recap mag­a­zine, and while flip­ping through it, I noticed Jef­fery Tambor’s Act­ing Work­shop was high­lighted. I had the great for­tune to attend this AMAZING work­shop along with a room was FILLED with Inter­ac­tive atten­dees, design­ers, web devel­op­ers, prod­uct man­agers, etc. I sat next to Johanna Knoll, who is an Agile/Lean UX expert, and we were amazed with how applic­a­ble his advice was to the prod­uct devel­op­ment. In fact, Alan Cooper was there, and tweeted: “Jeffrey Tam­bor thinks he’s talk­ing about act­ing & direct­ing, but he’s really talk­ing about soft­ware design & dev.” Look­ing back on my Tweets dur­ing the work­shop, I was reminded of the wise advice Jef­fery Tam­bor gave in devel­op­ing your voice… Here’s how it went down…

We watched and lis­tened to Jef­fery Tam­bor coach two actors on stage as they deliv­ered lines from a scene. The two actors on stage read and acted out lines from a script, while Jef­fery Tam­bor watched. One of the actors on stage was very timid. I could relate very well to her. She wasn’t com­ing to life. She wasn’t show­ing her heart. She wasn’t giv­ing much of her TRUE self at all. In front of an audi­ence of 800 I would feel shy too! How­ever, Jef­fery Tam­bor, in his not-so-delicate ways, coached her, iter­a­tively, pulling out of her a REAL and AUTHENTIC voice. He had her deliver the lines and act out the scenes in many dif­fer­ent ways…

“Okay… now do it ANGRY.” Jef­fery Tam­bor said.

“Okay… now OVER-ACT IT.” He said again.

“Okay… now do it as a LOVE SCENE.”

This went on and on… until Jef­fery Tam­bor stopped and took the girl aside. He told her he wanted her to look deep into her­self, and think of her father as she deliv­ered the lines the way he would. She tried, and Jef­fery would yell, “More… MORE!!” and she’d get louder and louder. Suddenly you didn’t see this timid girl any­more, hid­ing her voice. A true-er and more authen­tic per­son was com­ing through. You could feel it. Jef­fery Tam­bor encour­aged this girl to take voice coach­ing, and told the audi­ence: “You gotta bring your life. You gotta bring your art. You gotta bring WHAT YOU’VE GOT.”

Sit­ting there, I couldn’t help but think about how this relates to what we do in UX and Prod­uct Devel­op­ment. Actors deliver lines and per­for­mances… we deliver prod­ucts and expe­ri­ences.  Jef­fery Tam­bor would encour­age us to pro­to­type and iter­ate. Then Jef­fery Tam­bor pushed it even further…

“Go around your per­son­al­ity. Get ideas. Go places you haven’t been before.” Jef­fery Tambor.

The actors took the scene in SO MANY dif­fer­ent direc­tions. It was hilar­i­ous to watch. Jef­fery Tam­bor kept yelling “More… MORE!” at them, and would get right in the scene with them, fol­low­ing them around stage. His point was, get OUTSIDE your com­fort zone. Take the scene, or what­ever you are deliv­er­ing, WAY BEYOND what you could pos­si­bly imagine.

This really hit home for me. Not only should we do this with our pro­to­types, designs, and lan­guage, this also applies to giv­ing great talks. Instead of mem­o­riz­ing your pre­sen­ta­tion, rehearse it a MILLION dif­fer­ent ways, in a MILLION dif­fer­ent voices, a MILLION dif­fer­ent points of view. Next time I need to give a talk, I’ll ask myself, “How would Jared Spool say this part?” or “How would Tina Fey give this talk?” Jef­fery Tam­bor says this is use­ful to GET TO YOUR CORE, and know every dif­fer­ent way you can go. Interesting!

Jef­fery Tam­bor left us with many ter­rific insights, but there was one more that I’ll never forget:

“Most of us go to the office to be loved. It’s a dis­ease. We gotta be the enemy of the sta­tus quo. We gotta make mis­takes. We have to count. We have to be MORE.” — Jef­fery Tambor

This is so true for me. I get so uncom­fort­able at the thought of say­ing NO to a co-worker, or hav­ing to dis­agree with some­one else’s idea. This is a dis­ease. To be an effec­tive UX Researcher, and to make a good con­tri­bu­tion to the prod­uct, I need to be the enemy of the sta­tus quo. I need to make mis­takes, and learn from them. I need to come to the office to be more than myself… I need to try things that I’ve never done before, be will­ing to fail, and learn from my failure.

In a strange way, this is actu­ally more com­fort­ing than being loved. Want­ing to be loved is a pow­er­ful force that will dis­in­te­grate your per­son­al­ity.  Want­ing to grow, fail, make mis­takes, and try new things that freak you out of your mind… that’s how you’ll truly find your voice.

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Thoughts on UX Research Documentation

Posted on February 10, 2012 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

What kind of research doc­u­men­ta­tion is most use­ful for agile teams? What I have seen to work best has been light­weight doc­u­men­ta­tion. This would be using a wiki to record issues, focus­ing on debriefs, cir­cu­lat­ing tran­scripts, and get­ting every­one to observe tests. How­ever, I find that there is a great deal of pres­sure in the UX Com­mu­nity to track all of our find­ings in a database.

Here is what I think:

  • With lim­ited resources, it’s not prac­ti­cal. I think track­ing usabil­ity issues in a data­base is a great idea in the­ory, but in prac­tice I haven’t seen it work out so well. We man­aged a “usabil­ity find­ings data­base” in a pre­vi­ous job, but it was unfor­tu­nately never used… Researchers spent a great deal of time main­tain­ing the data­base, but design­ers never ref­er­enced it. Researchers would even walk through the data­base with design­ers, but design­ers would always say watch­ing a fresh new study was so much more insightful.
  • It doesn’t align with lean/ux prin­ci­ples. Agile devel­op­ment val­ues work­ing soft­ware over doc­u­men­ta­tion. I think this means it is more valu­able to *see* some­one using your design. It’s becom­ing eas­ier and eas­ier to test work­ing soft­ware, pro­to­types, etc. (using unmod­er­ated test­ing, live-intercept recruit­ment meth­ods, etc.) Instead of doc­u­men­ta­tion, we should be focused on debriefs, dis­cus­sions, and get­ting every­one exposed to users…
  • Old usabil­ity issues get out dated — fast. I don’t think we should base today’s design deci­sions on data we col­lected a year ago — the web is chang­ing so fast, as well as our prod­ucts.  We should be putting our focus on ‘expo­sure hours’ get­ting design­ers exposed to users more, which has a direct, proven impact on mak­ing prod­ucts bet­ter and bet­ter. Some of the issues I found even a month ago, in an iPhone study, are no longer valid, since we’ve made updates to the products…

Here’s the real truth: the only doc­u­men­ta­tion that is nec­es­sary is in the form of *user sto­ries* on prod­uct back­logs. Period.

What has been your expe­ri­ence track­ing usabil­ity issues? Check back at a later date for fur­ther thoughts on UX Documentation.

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My perspective on working in traditional libraries

Posted on January 7, 2012 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

“Why aren’t you work­ing as a librar­ian?” peo­ple ask me as soon as they learn that I have a Mas­ters degree in Library and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence.  The short answer is, “…libraries just weren’t fast paced enough for me…”  As I say this, a ter­ri­ble feel­ing of guilt comes over me, and I ask myself: “Am I a sell out? How could I for­sake my grad­u­ate school edu­ca­tion?” But think­ing back, I real­ized there was much more that went into my deci­sion not to become a tra­di­tional librar­ian. I decided to use what I learned in a new way, and I’d like to finally be hon­est about my decision:

Rea­son #1: Many tra­di­tional libraries are not cus­tomer driven.

This may sounds like an odd state­ment, espe­cially because libraries are ser­vice ori­ented, and there­fore, must be cus­tomer focused to some degree. Yes, that is true. And, don’t get me wrong… like many librar­i­ans, I’m VERY PASSIONATE about get­ting more peo­ple to use libraries, teach­ing peo­ple to be smart about what infor­ma­tion they choose (infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy), and help­ing peo­ple make more informed decisions.

HOWEVER, my phi­los­o­phy of being “cus­tomer dri­ven” clashes with the cur­rent meth­ods libraries used to increase cir­cu­la­tion rates and patron vis­its.  While there may be some excep­tions to this, based on my expe­ri­ence work­ing in libraries, libraries seem to take what Theodore Levitt calls, “a sales dri­ven approach.”  He says:

“The dif­fer­ence between sell­ing and mar­ket­ing is that sell­ing is get­ting rid of what you have, while mar­ket­ing is hav­ing what peo­ple want.”

Dur­ing my seven years work­ing in aca­d­e­mic and spe­cial libraries, I noticed we always tried to get peo­ple to use what the library already had. My approach is the oppo­site, I believe we should have pri­mary focused on hav­ing resources that peo­ple WANT to use, not try­ing to get peo­ple to use the resources we already had. Instead of get­ting peo­ple to come to libraries more, librar­i­ans should be proac­tively going out to them, find­ing out what their infor­ma­tion needs are, what fun­da­men­tal ques­tions they have, what key deci­sions they need to make. Then libraries need to pro­vide inno­v­a­tive ways for them to access that infor­ma­tion, and help them make more informed deci­sions. Because my phi­los­o­phy unfor­tu­nately clashes with the think­ing of most peo­ple in the library sci­ence pro­fes­sion, and I knew that if I were to become a librar­ian I would have a life-long bat­tle to change the cul­ture of libraries.

Rea­son #2: Many tra­di­tional librar­i­ans behave like mar­tyrs, com­plain­ing that no-one rec­og­nizes their value.

In addi­tion to bat­tling “they must come to us” cul­ture of libraries,  I’d be up against the deep-rooted mar­tyr think­ing:  where you con­stantly hear libraries say, “Nobody appre­ci­ates us! Why do they keep cut­ting our fund­ing?” Fund­ing for libraries has gone down tremen­dously, and jobs are being cut.  In order for libraries to sur­vive, my think­ing is that libraries need to fun­da­men­tally change the way they think of their “prod­uct.” Instead of sell­ing the phys­i­cal space of the build­ing, and the phys­i­cal books them­selves, they need to invent new ways to meet deep infor­ma­tion needs.  The only way to prove your value, is to be of more value. This reminds me of the rail­road busi­ness… think­ing they are sell­ing trains, when they should have invented new modes of trans­porta­tion. Libraries need to throw out the think­ing that they are sell­ing books and dig­i­tal mate­ri­als, and should be invent­ing new modes of deliv­er­ing knowledge.

Here’s the deep truth: I don’t want to spend my career fight­ing, or hav­ing awk­ward con­ver­sa­tions with any­one about mak­ing libraries more cus­tomer focused. I just want to work for orga­ni­za­tions that value being cus­tomer dri­ven as much as I do. I want to spend my energy under­stand­ing cus­tomers’ needs, and cre­at­ing ways to exceed their expec­ta­tions. I don’t want to fight for the per­mis­sion to do it in the first place.

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Beyond your wildest dreams

Posted on December 8, 2011 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

Photo by jangkwee

The most ful­fill­ing parts of my life have been when things are bet­ter than I could have ever dreamed. Peo­ple always say to chase your dreams, but you can’t chase some­thing you have never imag­ined com­ing true.

The times in life that have been least ful­fill­ing have been when I’m chas­ing other people’s dreams for me — becom­ing a lawyer, designer, var­sity vol­ley­ball player, a nice sweet girl.

The best times in life have been when I’m try­ing out “unpop­u­lar” things — and end up hav­ing fun with them: cross coun­try, musi­cal the­ater, ball­room danc­ing, marathon run­ning, library sci­ence, user expe­ri­ence research, etc.

I’m not a main­stream kind of girl — I know that from being Annie in the musi­cal Annie when I was 8 years old. I really didn’t like being the cen­ter of atten­tion, being the lead role, being what ever girl “thinks” they want to be. I just wanted to be Tessie, or Molly. One of the smaller roles, and kick ass at it.

I can’t tell myself to dream big… I’d rather be open minded… try things I’ve never done before… try things most peo­ple don’t do… and see­ing what comes my way.  Instead of dream­ing big, I tell myself to “try big.” Because if you never try you’ll never know… :)

Do you chase dreams? Do you let dreams chase you? Tell me what you think in the comments!

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Trying to do it all

Posted on October 25, 2011 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

photo by Rob, rjs1322

My week was tough. The projects seemed doable, but then Mon­day hit me like a ton a bricks. Seven dif­fer­ent projects, each one seemed sim­ple enough, but when you start to see stress-enduced fore­head acne all over your face, you know you are in trou­ble. I know a lot of peo­ple who try to “do it all.” But let me tell you this– I am the queen of try­ing to “do it all” and failing…every..time.

I didn’t see a lot of options.  I was blinded by the desire to do EVERYTHING, say yes to EVERYONE, and prove to myself that I CAN DO IT ALL.

I tried break­ing down my days like I break down my work­outs: one inter­val at a time. I counted down my tasks by half hour incre­ments. Sched­ule a bunch of cus­tomer calls. Sched­ule another bunch of cus­tomer calls. Launch a sur­vey, and self recorded stud­ies. I cranked through each task like clock­ing the miles in a work­out — one at a time. After one day, I felt very busy, very pro­duc­tive. I tried it again the next day — I was slammed, but things were mov­ing along.

Then the end of the week came, and I was totally exhausted. I was dri­ving the projects for­ward, but not really get­ting any­where. I was doing too much, and not really being of value. I wasn’t improv­ing, I wasn’t see­ing the research make any dif­fer­ence whatsoever.

I real­ized research tasks really aren’t like clock­ing the miles. It’s not about the quan­tity of tasks you com­plete — it’s truly about the qual­ity. How much did your work make a dif­fer­ence? How much value are you giv­ing your company?

Some­times we get so caught up in try­ing to do EVERYTHING, that we end up doing nothing.

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Mobile testing: filmed in front of a live *stakeholder* audience

Posted on July 21, 2011 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

One of the best ways to build tech­nol­ogy that truly fits into people’s lives is to observe peo­ple using your tech­nol­ogy.  At my job, I fre­quently set up usabil­ity tests, so that we can observe peo­ple using the inter­faces we have designed.  It has become eas­ier and eas­ier to run these stud­ies, thanks to tools like GoToMeet­ing, or Morae, how­ever, one of the most chal­leng­ing tests to set up are tests on mobile devices.  You start out with many of the nor­mal tasks to con­duct web site usabil­ity tests: email cam­paign­ing, sched­ul­ing par­tic­i­pants, coor­di­nat­ing con­fer­ence rooms, tech­ni­cal set up… but then you have the addi­tional chal­lenges of set­ting up mul­ti­ple web­cam feeds, try­ing to stream live video into the next room, host­ing a remote obser­va­tion room, and keep­ing your eye on stake­holder ques­tions while mod­er­at­ing the test with the participant.

We know how pow­er­ful and inspir­ing it is for stake­hold­ers and devel­op­ers to watch ses­sions live, while you are con­duct­ing the tests with par­tic­i­pants.  But watch­ing mobile test­ing live? While in the field? My sister-in-law inspired me to believe this is pos­si­ble because she once live streamed her­self run­ning the Oki­nawah Marathon in Japan. It was almost like being there with her…the kind of expe­ri­ence you want your devel­op­ment teams to have, so they can under­stand the con­text your users are in…

So how do you run a mobile usabil­ity test in front of a live stu­dio audi­ence? Here are a few tips I picked up from watch­ing a lot of 30 Rock (NBC’s Com­edy Series, cre­ated by Tina Fey, about putting on a late night talk show).  The fol­low­ing are a few thoughts you can use to emu­late “Liz Lemon” traits:

1. Speak your mind.
When things are get­ting tough, go to your boss and be vocal about it. They are never going to know what you are strug­gling with unless you TELL THEM. Just tell them the whole story, and they will help you find a solu­tion… or at least tell you not to worry about it.

2. Keep track of the details.
Keep lists of to dos. Make check­lists for repeat tasks. Dou­ble check your work. Test. test. test. Rehearse like crazy. Nail your open­ing script. Be on time. Do every­thing in your power to cover the details. You might start to feel hope­less, if you are cov­er­ing all your bases, but not scor­ing any runs… if you know what I mean. But try not to worry about that. Just try not to drop any balls.

3. Stay focused on your work.
Many peo­ple will try to tell you how to run your test. This can be dis­tract­ing if you are not stay­ing focused on the test you crafted. They are great at offer­ing their opin­ion on the par­tic­i­pants you’ve brought in, the sce­nar­ios you wrote, and giv­ing their sug­ges­tions of what you should have done dif­fer­ently. Every­one has an opin­ion, and while it shows that they care about the research, they are almost always wrong. For exam­ple, peo­ple who com­plain about the peo­ple you recruited wouldn’t know the first step in find­ing the right peo­ple… most of them wouldn’t even know how  to describe who the “right” peo­ple are! Just stay focused on you… you need all the self con­fi­dence you can muster up for this “show” to go off well.

4. Shake off the mis­takes.
You can’t get held up with the mis­takes you make. You might for­get to record the audio prop­erly, or ask that extra ques­tion your stake­hold­ers asked you to put into the script last minute. Your com­puter might go to sleep, leav­ing your observers with noth­ing but a blank screen.  Just shake it off… take a deep breath, and ground your­self. Focus on what the par­tic­i­pant is say­ing, and fol­low their lead.

5. Don’t sweat the stress induced fore­head acne.
Your adren­a­line will kick in once you get doing dur­ing your tests. Then, all of a sud­den you will lightly brush your hand across your fore­head to dis­cover a sore lit­tle bump, freshly arisen, out of nowhere. Even if you swear to be calm, and not sweat the small stuff the week you are test­ing, your adren­a­line will kick in, pro­duc­ing stress hor­mones that cre­ate break outs on your face. Don’t pick at it, just let it run its course.  Your body needs to heal.

Just remem­ber, run­ning a usabil­ity test in front of a live stake­holder audi­ence may be stress­ful, but it is reward­ing. Watch 30 Rock, and pick up some tips.

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5 tips to… just get over it

Posted on June 14, 2011 by jillchrist| 1 Comment

Photo by Don Debold: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ddebold/5674779338/

There are times in our work­ing, pro­fes­sional, or per­sonal lives when some­one says some­thing to us just rubs you the wrong way. It can be espe­cially painful when it is done in front of oth­ers, in your blog’s com­ment thread, in an online forum, or with oth­ers copied on the email thread. We can feel offended or put off by these obnox­ious com­ments or ques­tions. When this hap­pens, the most impor­tant thing to do is to move on, and get over it. The worse thing you can do is to let it drag you down.

If you hold onto a grudge it WILL:
…keep you from pur­su­ing your per­sonal inter­ests, such as marathon run­ning, or cool DIY home ren­o­va­tions
…keep you from doing great things, like mak­ing that great dessert you wanted to make for the din­ner party
…keep you from your call­ing, such as learn­ing new tech­nolo­gies like HTML5 or web ana­lyt­ics tools that can help you solve more prob­lems at work

No mat­ter how ter­ri­ble you feel when some­one embar­rasses you, here are five tips you can use to… just get over it.

1. Accept the fact that it’s an ‘ego-thing.’

I heard once that usu­ally peo­ple don’t get over things because they hold onto their ego too much. They can’t believe that some­one could pos­si­bly find fault in them, or could not love them. How­ever, if we accept the fact that offense is all about the ego, we are well on the way to get­ting over the issue, and mov­ing on with hav­ing ful­fill­ing per­sonal and pro­fes­sional lives.

2. Do not tell any­one, do not gossip.

No mat­ter how hard it is to resist, do not tell any­one about the offender — it will NOT make you feel any bet­ter. This will not help you to get over the offender, and it will just make you look like you are a com­plain­ing gos­siper. Peo­ple who are famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion, and involved with the offender, will look dif­fer­ently toward them. No mat­ter how much you want oth­ers to join you in your mis­ery, this can seri­ously back­fire. You should just give every­one the oppor­tu­nity to inter­act with the offender, and let the truth speak for itself. (Unless they have phys­i­cally harmed you, or are caus­ing harm to oth­ers. In this case, you should talk with some­one about it). It’s best to talk with a neu­tral party if any­thing, some­one who does not work with you, and is not related to you. If you have to let it out, jour­nal about it.

3. Let time run its course — by dis­tract­ing yourself.

Some­times you just need some dis­tance from the offender, or dis­tance from the offend­ing inci­dent. One thing I like to do is escape into enter­tain­ing TV shows, movies, or exer­cise. Some­times only time can help heal from being hurt.

4. Always keep some spare choco­late on hand — dark chocolate.

Don’t deny that dark choco­late makes you feel bet­ter… embrace it. This is def­i­nitely not some­thing to fight, but to allow it to soothe your bro­ken heart. You will soon be so mes­mer­ized by the bit­ter­sweet taste of the dark choco­late, that you will for­get all about the offender… at least for a lit­tle while.

5. Keep sooth­ing scents nearby that remind you of peace­ful places.

Some­one told me recently that smell is the strongest of the five senses for mem­ory recall — he said this is why, for exam­ple, we are able to remem­ber child­hood mem­o­ries so well when we smell the choco­late chip cook­ies bak­ing. I don’t know if this is true, but it seems to work well for me when I’m try­ing to just calm myself down. The scent I like to have with me is laven­der. It reminds me of my favorite yoga classes I used to take when I was in col­lege, which were SO sooth­ing. The instruc­tor used to spray laven­der on our hands just before chavasana, or the final relax­ation phase. Every time I smell laven­der, I can’t help but think of sooth­ing thoughts… and it gets rid of the embar­rass­ing thoughts I’m try­ing to for­get about.

In sum­mary, build a bridge and get over it. Seri­ously, this isn’t just a say­ing. Find some way to get past your hurt — built that bridge that gets you from where you are to the other side of the river.

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A broken leg, but not a broken heart

Posted on May 28, 2011 by jillchrist| Leave a comment


My hus­band recently broke his leg play­ing bas­ket­ball. He was going up for a lay up, and some rough guy fouled him while he was in the air. My hus­band fell on his leg, heard a crack, and then crawled off the court, bloody legs and all. He even drove him­self home, and didn’t com­plain once. We wouldn’t have believed it was bro­ken unless the xrays showed the crack through his fibula. He’s a run­ner… a 2-hour-and-58-minute-Boston-marathon-finisher. I know I’m biased, but I think he’s pretty bad ass.

What is most incred­i­ble, is that he hasn’t lost heart. He flew to his cousin’s wed­ding in Col­orado Springs, and walked around the poorly hand­i­cap acces­si­ble grounds that you encounter while trav­el­ing. Then he flew to a con­fer­ence that he had been look­ing for­ward to so much in the Bay Area on com­mis­sion soft­ware. You gotta have heart if you are will­ing to fly to San Fran­cisco for a con­fer­ence on some­thing as bor­ing as com­mis­sion soft­ware! wink wink… He loves it though. That’s what is so great. He pur­sues what he loves, with­out mak­ing ANY excuses for his bro­ken leg.

You can’t go through life think­ing you’ll never break your leg. And when it does, you can’t let it slow down your life. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to draw some far-fetched metaphor between break­ing your leg and break­ing your prod­ucts, ser­vices, or user expe­ri­ence. But please, if you break your leg — be that guy that doesn’t wine, com­plain, or argue. And still PURSUE WHAT YOU LOVE. Go to events, get your­self out there, and try to enjoy your time in the cast.

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2011 Boston Marathon Recap

Posted on May 13, 2011 by jillchrist| 1 Comment

The Full Story…of the 26.2

I really had no idea what I was get­ting myself into when I started the Boston Marathon.  I knew I trained harder than I had ever trained before, tapered, and carbo-loaded bet­ter than before, and hydrated well (drank my tra­di­tional gal­lon of water the day before the race). I packed warm run­ning clothes, chem­i­cal hand warm­ers, thought I was pre­pared. I fig­ured that any­thing I did wrong would be made up by the fact that I’d have thou­sands of fans there to pump me up, and my adren­a­line would kick in.  I planned to start out slow, run­ning about 8:00–8:30 pace in the first few miles, then slowly bring it down to 7:50… then race the last 5 miles as fast as I could.  Lit­tle did I know what the next 26.2 miles had in store for me…

The Race Begins in Hopkinton

We woke up at 4am to get to the race.  It was quite an adven­ture just get­ting to the start line, get­ting to the buses down­town Boston, rid­ing for an hour to Hop­kin­ton, and wait­ing in Athlete’s Vil­lage until the race started.

Wait­ing for the Boston Marathon to start in Athlete’s Vil­lage, Hopkinton

My race started at 10:20am, as I was in the sec­ond wave of run­ners.  Every­one was lined up by what ever time they had qual­i­fied with — I was run­ner #12321.  I kept my sweats, long sleeved shirts, and jacket on because I was afraid of shiv­er­ing my energy away. (Our coach had warned us to stay as warm as pos­si­ble).  The start­ing cor­rals were sort of crazy, with so many crazy run­ners packed in, and fran­ti­cally try­ing to find their spot in the cor­rect cor­ral.  Finally the race started.

Start of the Boston Marathon (pic­ture from Endurance Sports http://endurancesportsnw.com/blog/2011/05/jeff-martins-boston-marathon-race-report/)

Sure enough, the ENTIRE CITY came out to cheer us on.  Thou­sands of Bosto­ni­ans lined down the marathon course, 3–4 peo­ple deep in some paces. It looked like they were all there to watch the Rose Parade. I couldn’t help but start to cry, because they looked so proud. It was such an honor to make these spec­ta­tors happy, and be part of their tra­di­tion.  But they weren’t just watch­ing… they were going nuts!!

Even with all the adren­a­line, about half way I was winded, and my legs started to hurt. I started think­ing I wanted it to be over. I couldn’t set­tle into a good pace — as soon as I’d pick up my speed, I’d nearly run into some­one. (Learn­ing to dodge peo­ple dur­ing a race is some­thing I need to work on!) But I said to myself, you gotta see Rusty (my coach), make him proud. Be strong. I passed Wes­l­ley, and all the girls cheer­ing, and that was uplifting.

I wore my name tag on my shirt, and tons of peo­ple yelling “Go Jill!” How­ever, I felt the most encour­aged when I saw peo­ple I knew. We were so for­tu­nate to stay with fam­ily, David and Bar­bara Spin­ner, and they came out to cheer us on, and I saw them just when I needed to: right before Heart­break Hill. They were hold­ing a helium bal­loon so I could spot them as I came down the road. It was hot. I totally missed my coach Rusty, and my pace dropped from the 7:50s to 8:20s… I was think­ing just get through the hills and then bring it home.

The Last 5 Miles

After the top of Heart­break, I started fly­ing down past Boston Col­lege, and was feel­ing like a rock star! I was run­ning a 7:05 pace!! I thought, only 5 miles to go, I totally got this, and thought I’d fly home. But just about 4 miles to go, my quads felt totally thrashed, and each step was extremely painful! I started check­ing my breath­ing to see if I was winded, and I was feel­ing weak, I was los­ing gas, and was scared I wouldn’t have enough to fin­ish. I saw my run­ning friend Jay at mile 24, and yelled, but he didn’t hear me. The streets were packed with run­ners, and the crowds were going nuts!! The T train was pac­ing with me for a while, then passed me.

Even with all the sup­port I just wanted it to be all over. And I wanted to fin­ish strong. I looked down at my watch ad could cal­cu­late that I wasn’t going to PR, but at that point I didn’t care, I just wanted it to be all over! I just wanted to fin­ish strong, I knew I could pull out a sub 8:00 mile for the last mile. I wanted my last mile to be sub 7:00, but it wasn’t easy. I remem­ber going down­hill and pick­ing up some speed, and then I lost it com­ing back up. I made a right then the final left onto Boyl­ston, and gave it all I had. I had I keep look­ing at my watch, to hold myself account­able. Some­times the watch said sub 6 minute miles, and some­times it said sub 7 or 8.  It was excru­ci­at­ing, but it was almost over. I finally saw the clock, it was 3:59:42, so I sprinted to the end, so my pic­ture would look like I broke 4 hours! (Even though this clock was from the start of wave one, and I was in wave two).

I fin­ished in 3:36:28 and stum­bled through the fin­ish­ing area. I wanted so badly to sit down, but I knew it would be hard to get back up again to find my hus­band. I was very light­headed, and really exhausted. I got my bag, and wan­dered around for nearly an hour look­ing for my hus­band who had started before me in wave 1.  I went to the hos­pi­tal tent to find him, think­ing, “If I’m feel­ing this bad, Doug MUST be in the med­ical tent.” The med­ical per­son­nel looked up his race num­ber, but he wasn’t there. When I finally made my way through the crowds, and back to the fam­ily areas, get­ting lost mul­ti­ple times, I finally found Doug.

I hugged him, think­ing he prob­a­bly had run just as bad of a race as I had — I thought — my mis­ery had finally found com­pany. Then he told me his time: 2:58 — I WAS SHOCKED! This was the time he was shoot­ing for, to break 3 hours!  I was so sur­prised and happy for him!

Then he asked me how I did, and I burst into tears, so ashamed of myself and not get­ting a PR like he did.  He was so sweet to hold me there, shiv­er­ing in the wind, until I could pull myself together. I guess I was feel­ing pretty bad, even though those last few miles I didn’t care about any­thing but just that it would be over soon!

It was his day. And I am so proud of him. I remem­ber think­ing wow, I don’t want to run his course again, I’m not happy. Then when I fin­ished my hus­band said “I want to do this course again. The water sta­tions every mile really helped.”

Doug and Jill after fin­ish­ing the Boston Marathon

The Play by Play: Aver­age Minutes/Mile

Mile 1. 8:44 — start­ing out in Hop­kin­ton, downhill
Mile 2. 8:33 — still down­hill, try­ing to hold back and save my quads for later
Mile 3. 8:32 — still downhill
Mile 4. 8:28 — slight uphill
Mile 5. 8:22
Mile 6. 8:20
Mile 7. 8:15 — entered Fram­ing­ham, mainly flat, TONS of fans!!
Mile 8. 8:08 — slight uphill
Mile 9. 8:13 — slight uphill
Mile 10. 8:05
Mile 11. 8:06
Mile 12. 8:00 — ran past Wellsely College’s girls scream­ing, “Kiss Me!!”
Mile 13. 8:09
Mile 14. 8:06
Mile 15. 7:56
Mile 16. 7:54
Mile 17. 8:00
Mile 18. 8:08
Mile 19. 7:58 — saw fam­ily we were stay­ing with, David and Barbara!
Mile 20. 8:30 — Heart­break Hills begin…
Mile 21. 8:38 — Heart­break Hills end
Mile 22. 7:45 — flew past Boston Col­lege, downhill!
Mile. 23. 8:14 — quads fell apart
Mile 24. 8:18 — every…step…was…excruciating!
Mile 25. 8:23 — every…step…was…excruciating! Slight uphill…
Mile 26. 8:05 — every…step…was…excruciating!
The Final “.2″ — 6:32 pace, to the finish!

Final Thoughts…

I built this race up so much in my mind, think­ing I would be on a mag­i­cal cloud 9 dur­ing the race. How­ever, I had no idea how gru­el­ing the course would feel on my body! Those down­hills tore my quads to shreds, mak­ing the last 10k of the race extremely painful! I was happy to walk away with neg­a­tive splits, but sorely dis­ap­pointed not to get a PR…Seems like the road to get­ting PR in the marathon is long, espe­cially when it takes mul­ti­ple marathons.

Now that I’ve com­pleted 3 marathons, I want to cut back and focus on my goals in the 5k, mile, and half marathons. I’m feel­ing inspired to chase my dreams of break­ing my PRs in the shorter dis­tances. I always wanted to break 20 min­utes in the 5k, and 6 min­utes in the mile. Look­ing for­ward to get­ting some speed in my legs, and bring­ing this speed into the marathon, and hope­fully get­ting my PR in the 26.2!

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Planning for Content

Posted on March 12, 2011 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

Karen McGrane gave a ter­rific pre­sen­ta­tion on Con­tent Strat­egy, and what hap­pens when we re-design a site, and decide to go live with the exist­ing con­tent. Any­one inter­ested in pro­vid­ing their users with a good expe­ri­ence with their con­tent should absolutely watch this presentation.

Karen McGrane on Web Con­tent Strat­egy or “Avoid­ing the Eleventh hour Sh*tstorm Prob­lem” from UX Mel­bourne on Vimeo.

Here are some of my favorite take­aways from Karen’s talk:

  • “We tell our­selves we don’t need good con­tent, we just need good templates.”
  • “We don’t plan time to cre­ate and edit con­tent…“
    “Empha­size the real goal…better infor­ma­tion for site visitors.”
  • “Do usabil­ity test­ing with con­tent providers…(not just end users).”
  • “Chal­lenge the sched­ule: con­tent before design!”
  • “Don’t just per­suade: start plan­ning, writ­ing, and editing.”
  • “Peo­ple don’t go to your site to look at your tem­plates. They go for the content.”

When you think about it, we all pro­duce con­tent: on Twit­ter, our blogs, pod­casts, and other social media updates.  I would be inter­ested to dis­cuss how impor­tant it is to pro­duce a good con­tent expe­ri­ence per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally. This reminds me of the old say­ing, “If you don’t have any­thing nice to say, don’t say any­thing at all.”

What are your thoughts on plan­ning for  con­tent? How do you plan for con­tent on the sites, blogs, micro-blogs, pod­casts, etc. that you are producing?

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