NaNoWriMo learnings 2020 – Part 3 – Writing

Time to read: 6 minutes The tagline of NaNoWriMo is “50’000 words in 30 days”. It’s a quantity over quality challenge, but even if you don’t care how bad what you write is, you still need to have a theme or story you can keep writing about. I’ve tried all sorts of topics In 2010, I “won” NaNo. I finished […] continue reading »

Bullet Journal layout prototyping and planning

Time to read: 2 minutes I have been journaling since I could hold a pen, and doing some variant of Bullet Journaling since discovering it maybe five or six years ago. I even started a Bullet Journal Addicts meetup in London (https://www.meetup.com/bujo-addicts/) so I could share what I am doing with like-minded people and see how they worked too. At […] continue reading »

13 lessons from 15 years of NaNoWriMo

Time to read: 3 minutes 2017 marks the 15th year (probably) that I attempted National November (or Novel) Writing Month. Under the premise of “50’000 words in 30 days”, people write like mad within a month, spurring writing sessions in pubs, lively conversations online, and millions of lines written globally. I’ve tried to do it at least a dozen times. […] continue reading »

Sketchbook Mondays: Cup sleeve and card holder

Time to read: 2 minutes One of the problems I’ve always had is that I my hands are hyper-sensitive to heat. In itself this is small, but in 2017, I decided to stop having milky coffees. I’ve never digested milk very well, and it was time to stop it again. So it would be mostly americanos for me in 2017! […] continue reading »

A diagram of the UX Architecture / Design process 

Time to read: 3 minutes Some months ago, I was working at a lovely software development place that specialises in the hospitality industry. Over there, I was part of a development team that worked on a series of mobile-first web-based task-centred apps. And I was the only person who “did” UX… This is a short-ish story of why I now […] continue reading »

Should developers think for themselves?

Time to read: 3 minutes I just had a weird conversation with a colleague in our standup meeting. We have a new developer who joined recently and is specialised in working on a particular platform. My colleague argues that if we send the dev my UX wireframes for the improvements, which are made in the sketchy style of balsamiq, he […] continue reading »

“an Agile user story is ready when…” definitions (comic strip version!)

Time to read: 4 minutes In my most recent job, we are working in Agile. This is something I am unfamiliar with and am having fun learning about. Possibly too much fun. Today, we had people stopping on their way to places just to look at our team’s definitions of “ready”. The chipmunk (I attempted a kitten) asking for comments […] continue reading »