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.

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.

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?

Learn­ing how to say “no” is not easy.  Deal­ing with what comes after the no, the dis­ap­point­ment, dis­ap­proval, and rejec­tion from those you said no to, can some­times seem unbear­able. As a User Expe­ri­ence Researcher, I think we are con­stantly told that we are worth ‘less than’ our more tech­ni­cal coun­ter­parts. We are told we are a ‘cost’ to the orga­ni­za­tion, and that we can’t be picky about the work given to us.  If we say no to stay­ing over the week­end to com­plete a project, we fear that we will hurt our pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships that we have worked so long to build, and jeop­ar­dize our job security.

I started read­ing The Power of a Pos­i­tive No by William Ury, and it has dra­mat­i­cally changed the way I view my work as a UX Researcher. The fol­low­ing are a series a lessons from the book, and how I think these ses­sions in pos­i­tive assertive­ness apply to a UX Researcher.

1. “I need to tell them no in a way that is clear, hon­est, and respect­ful, and then let them react how­ever they react.” William Ury, The Power of a Pos­i­tive No

UX Researchers often take on too many projects, and say yes to help­ing too many peo­ple. We don’t know how to be upfront and hon­est about our heavy work­load, because we know that it will cause a neg­a­tive reac­tion to the per­son we are speak­ing with. Also, we worry and can’t bear to say no to a project, or say no to help­ing some­one because we are trained to “go with the flow” as facil­i­ta­tors. We are great at accom­mo­dat­ing par­tic­i­pants, and doing what­ever it takes to make them happy. How­ever, we need to learn to stick up for our­selves — the right way, and that we can­not con­trol how oth­ers will react. All we can do is do our best to be hon­est, clear, and respect­ful, and this means we are doing the best we can.

2. “Give respect not because of who they are but because of who you are.” William Ury, The Power of a Pos­i­tive No

Giv­ing respect is the best way to have stake­hold­ers and co-workers accept your “no.”  When you show stake­hold­ers and co-workers you respect where they are com­ing from, and under­stand the pain they are going through that would cause them to bring their request to you, it is much eas­ier for them to see that you are not reject­ing them per­son­ally when you say “no.” It is crit­i­cal to put your­self into other people’s shoes, and do what­ever it takes to under­stand what the moti­va­tions are behind their request, and show them that you under­stand where they are com­ing from. It might be painful or dif­fi­cult to show respect to stake­hold­ers or co-workers who dis­re­spect you. How­ever, the rea­son you need to show this respect, as the quote above sug­gests, is sim­ple:  give respect not because of who they are, but because of who you are.  UX Researchers have good inter­ests at heart. They work as advo­cates to improve the human expe­ri­ence of using Web sites, soft­ware, apps, and other tech­nolo­gies. This is very impor­tant to keep in mind when assert­ing your­self — be empa­thetic with your co-workers, and their needs, and it will take you far.

3. “You have done the essen­tial prepa­tory work. You are like an ath­lete who has trained hard. Now dur­ing the race it is time to reap the rewards of that hard work.” William Ury, The Power of a Pos­i­tive No

Before I get to how this quote applies to UX Researchers, I need to dis­cuss an anaolgy brought up in The Power of a Pos­i­tive No. UX Researchers can learn a lot to learn from trees, in terms of how to stand strong.  William Ury talks about how trees have deep roots in the ground that keep their trunks stand­ing strong.  He says, our “no” is the trunk of the tree.  Our “yes” is in what we are rooted in, and in what we pro­duce.  Our trunks how­ever must stand strong, because if they break, what we pro­duce dies.

UX Researchers need to do their essen­tial prepara­tory work:  deep­en­ing their roots in their “yes.” They need to spend time grow­ing in their knowl­edge and belief in advo­cat­ing for users, build­ing empa­thy for users, mak­ing action­able insights, and inspir­ing devel­op­ment teams with user empa­thy.  Spend­ing time “on the bal­cony,” as William Ury calls it, dis­cov­er­ing our deep core val­ues and inter­ests, enables us to have that strong trunk that grows out of them.  The deeper our roots, the harder it is for some­one to uproot us. Even if we are chopped down, if our roots are strong, they will always grow back.  The goal of course would be to have blos­som­ing branches of UX Research, pro­vid­ing use­ful cus­tomer feed­back, val­i­da­tion, and get the voice of the cus­tomer to be lived and breathed into the very prod­ucts we ship.