Delightful Reveal #45

What we did:

• Finalized a role description for UX researcher / design strategist.
• Wrapped up some discovery research: Summarized research to date (not quite a report). Prioritized problems to solve by the level-of-effort we estimated it’d take to solve them. Began sketching and writing acceptance criteria.
• Finalized research questions, drafted discussion guide, and scheduled participants for a concept test. Led one test and decided to rework and finesse our prototype a bit (especially the microcopy).
• Consolidated research documentation/outputs over several cycles — especially our model of how people get things done in this domain — to clear the way for further hypothesis-driven development.
• Utilized the lighthouse developer tool and learned about CSP.
• Tricked a synchronously loaded turbo frame to reload async by giving it a src attribute. 
• Demoed our dev progress for Curators + mocks of our upcoming releases.
• Finalized consumer login.
• Got to connect with our client’s client a.k.a. Grandclients.
• Converted an import system from only running at the command line to something that can be run within the app in a background job, and with recorded results to view later.
• Created playing card box designs.
• Worked on playing card face designs.
• Created Madison+ Ruby social media assets and activities.
• Interviewed candidates for Senior Product Designer position.
• Building out a figma prototype for testing and teaching how figma works to a teammate. Building out some empathy for the win.

What we’re reading:

• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 
• Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami (started)
• The Human Division, by John Scalzi
• Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia
• Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
• The Bone Shard Emperor (book 2) by Andrea Stewart
• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
• Scaling the design ladder: Seeing like a designer by Pavel Samsonov
• The 7 Habits of Highly Stoic People, by Michael McGill
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi +1
• Days of Distraction by Alexandra Chang

What we’re watching:

• Culprits
• Slow Horses (S3)
• The Compassionate Spy
• Match Game 78
• 1670
• The Terror
• Call the Midwife
• A Court of Fey and Flowers
• My Dearest
• Mall Cop
• Orange Is the New Black
• Yvonne Orji: Momma, I Made It!
• Suburbia is Subsidized: Here’s the Math

• [The UX Research reckoning is here

  Judd Antin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6RKi9ZvkT4)

• History of The Graphical User Interface (GUI): A Wonderful Curse 
• Pokémon Concierge

What we’re listening to:

• Bulls on Parade Cover by Denzel Curry 
• Wherever u r by Umi (ft. V of BTS)
• Screentime by Epik High (ft. Hoshi)
• Standing Next to You by Jungkook (ft. Usher)
• GUTS - Olivia Rodrigo
• Old Man - Neil Young
• Hold Music by USPS 
• Via Chris Wilson - Rumors in the Night album by Prizm

What we’re interested in:

• Baking with Sourdough Starter
• Uplift Desk 
• Postgres Error Codes
• Vim Adventures

What we’re struggling with:

• Snow +2
• General winter lethargy
• Sick Pets
• A bad back
• Potential new-home inspection results
• Kitten energy
• Jet lag
• Schrödinger’s health insurance (one place says I’m covered, another says I’m not)
• Covid + resulting test in the middle of an interview
• Smashing face into chair back and splitting open forehead

What we’re buying:

• Finally replacing a 10-year-old bath mat
• Upgrading to a more powerful stand mixer to better handle bread dough
• A replacement bathroom sink faucet
• A heart rate monitor
• Garden seeds
• More N95s! 1 in 3 people in the US have COVID right now :C (jerks like me with our posi tests and not vibes)

What we’re celebrating:

• Supporting our friends at RailsConf with website designs and build-out.
• 1900s art movements in Vienna.
• The Columbo statue in Budapest.
• Plans to see friends marching in the first parade I’m attending this carnival season. Happy Carnival!
• Museums, just generally. How cool are they??
• New notebooks and journals—so fresh, so full of possibility.
• Being home with my cats.
• Snow.
• New cat adoption!
• King cake season is here.
• Gavin’s 19th birthday. (last teenage year, phew!)
• Plex Meta Manager setup.
• So many snow days this week for the kids to experience.
• Meeting so many wonderful people in the interview phase of hiring. New connections and people.
• Started a “one positive thing that happened to you” at home.
• A client printed sweatshirts with my design for a customer and I just got one!

If you’re looking for a team to help you discover the right thing to build and help you build it, get in touch.