In the late 1960s, a McDonald’s franchise location in the greater Pittsburgh area invented a burger that would change the course of the company. Jim Delligatti, owner of the McDonald’s on McKnight Road in the suburban Ross Township, created a hamburger with two beef patties. This wasn’t any ordinary double hamburger. Between the patties was a third hamburger sesame seed bun. The burger was so well received that McDonald’s needed to come up with a name for it. Of the three attempts, the first was The Aristocrat Burger, which was too hard for people to pronounce. The second was the Blue Ribbon Burger, easier to pronounce but not very memorable. The third time was a charm…the Big Mac. The name was invented by Esther Glickstein, who was a secretary at the corporate office.

“Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions — on a sesame seed bun.”

The Big Mac is one of the best examples of iconic design, with the third bun being the symbol of the flagship sandwich at McDonald’s. Fast forward to 1998, a British industrial designer named Jonathan Ive pitched a new computer design to Steve Jobs, who recently returned to Apple after being fired from the company he started. The man known as Jony introduced an all-in-one computer for the desktop called the iMac. As part of its industrial design decision, the iMac contained a surface area that looked like a chin of a face. In 2021, now without Jobs or Ive, Apple launched its new iMac with the powerful M1 chip. With hardware being smaller and easier to build, people questioned why Apple decided to leave the chin as part of the design. Whether you like it or not, the chin is iconic to the iMac’s design language, and it’s here to stay.

So what does it mean to be an iconic design? Is it something you can simply slap on your designs and deem iconic? No, it has to be earned, and what you create may not be iconic at the time. When I think about iconic design, it comes down to three elements: recognizable, influential, and memorable.

Iconic design is recognizable

If you remove the middle bun of the Big Mac, you get a double cheeseburger. If you remove the chin from the iMac, it’s an all-in-one desktop computer. Recognizable does not necessarily mean practical or functional. Iconic design might be a brand awareness decision over a product design decision. Apple recently launched new MacBook Pros that included the notch from the iPhone design language.

Whether you like it or not, it’s recognizable. Seeing the notch lets people know you have the latest and greatest MacBook Pro, not one of those crappy ones from a year ago that is still extremely functional and useful. That design choice is intentional. If you had bet on what the next iPads will look like, do you think it will have a notch?

If I asked, “name the most famous person with a mole” who would you say? The chances are you’d answer Cindy Crawford. In an interview, the legendary supermodel from the 90s talked a lot about the pressure she had to have the mole surgically removed. She hated it as a kid, and her mom advised against the surgery. Since her mole wasn’t flat, people would criticize her and say it looked like a gigantic pimple even the most powerful Stridex pad couldn’t get rid of. The decision to keep her natural mole became a trademark and countless fans were inspired by the confidence to be yourself. The mole has made Crawford’s career iconic and differentiating from others.

Examples of recognizable

• The shape of the Volkswagon Beatle
• The sound of the Netflix intro screen (you can hear this text)
• The curves of Zaha Hadid’s buildings
• The Wilhelm scream (related, the Howie Scream)

Iconic design is influential

As the famous painter Pablo Picasso once said, “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, it introduced a design language very few had seen before. Most mobile phones at the time had hardware keyboards and the operating systems acted like a computer. The iPhone introduced multi-touch, a revolutionary way to interact with a glass device with your fingers as a phone. Though Jony Ive will go down in legend as creating some of the most iconic designs in history, it would be a lie to say he didn’t borrow and steal. Most of his influence came from German industrial designer Dieter Rams decades before. Apple copies and steals as well. The aforementioned multi-touch was technology Apple acquired from a company unfortunately named FingerWorks.

Speaking of stealing, nobody does it better than Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. This week, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would now be Meta, a look into the next phase of the company focused on virtual and augmented reality. This was already known as the Metaverse externally in the community, and Zuck essentially copy/pasted it into his company. Nobody copies better than Facebook, especially at scale. It’s reported that the company now known as Snap rejected Facebook’s offer multiple times, including an official $3b offer. Snap popularized the Stories model social sharing — opting for ephemeral posts instead of the popular timeline post. Instagram (a Facebook company) would later identically introduce Stories. Stories would not only be copied by Facebook, but every major consumer app would do the same, including Twitter with the short-lived Twitter Fleets. LinkedIn experimented with the Stories model. Linked. In. Snap’s Stories is a prime example of how iconic design can be influential, replicated, and duplicated.

Examples of influential

• The anime Akira influenced the Cyberpunk Genre
• Dune-inspiring Star Wars and many other sci-fi genres
• Remix culture in hip hop, sampling with the Beastie Boys (RIP MCA)
• Figma has influenced the way people think about collaboration in design

Iconic design is memorable

Remember Chatbots in user interfaces? What about “Song 2” by Blur? Iconic design must be memorable and withstand the test of time. The Big Mac did not become iconic overnight. The iMac wasn’t seen as a popular design language when people first saw it. Cindy Crawford was criticized and pressured to get rid of her natural birthmark. Iconic design doesn’t only belong in museums but also live on in the legacy of people’s lives. Iconic design is a design that other designers and manufacturers follow, as it becomes a benchmark for other similar products. Furthermore, an iconic design stands up to the test of time, remaining a good design, despite the passing of years, decades and even centuries.

Examples of memorable

• Harley Davison’s transformation in a Tesla world
• Purple and Prince
• The colors and tiles in the streets of Lisbon, Portugal

Reflecting on iconic design

From the Big Mac to the iMac, it is only through the test of time we can truly make an iconic design. Creating something iconic comes through testing, experimentation, and hitting one of them. I’ve been reflecting a lot on what it means to be an iconic design team and strive to build this at work. There’s a lot to do and a ways to go, but I truly believe it’s feasible. All you need is that one shot. We don’t get to proclaim our work as iconic, but we have the opportunity in our lives to create something people deem as iconic.

The end of the Gregorian calendar gets people to be quite retrospective and reflective; the year’s end, the end of the quarter, and, ah yes, the bi-annual performance reviews at work. These reviews can be anxiety-inducing already, add on the tumultuous year that is 2020, and simply existing seems like enough of an accomplishment. That said, a look back can help you recall the impact and outcomes both professionally and personally. As someone who has done nearly 100, people are usually surprised by all of the positive impact they made because they are so concerned about areas of improvement or what they didn’t do well.

I generally agree with the notion that you are responsible for your career development. However, it’s important to acknowledge that many do not have the same equity as represented people to make this claim. There is much sponsorship and advocacy that needs to happen for equity. With team members, I encourage them to journal as much as possible, noting their wins along the way to show their manager (this includes me).

Enter the Hype Doc

The Hype Doc is inspired by Jessica Ivins’ Career Management Document and is focused on micro-level accomplishments you want to remember. This single doc is a handy tool to journal and track progress while it is fresh on the mind. What often happens in performance reflections is people look back at their calendars to see what events or meetings were attended. This can help but doesn’t get to the root of your impact and outcomes. By keeping a dynamic Hype Doc, you’ll capture reflections and learning while they’re fresh.

Elements of a hype doc

I keep my Hype Doc relatively simple. First, I’ll break it into three phases:

• Now: The bulk of the Hype Doc, which comprises of achievements now and in the past
• Next: What I want to accomplish in the next horizon (usually a few quarters)
• Future: Long-term career aspirations to keep in mind

The doc can capture many different perspectives. I like to include:

• Impact: outcomes you directly or indirectly enabled. Add metrics or value around it
• Track learnings. Perhaps it’s something new you did at work or a new skill (Janine Sickmeyer had a great tweet about this recently)
• The impact you had on others. It’s called a Hype Doc, give yourself some credit
• Add screenshots and artifacts to share your story. I like to include links, tweets, or screenshots.

You can use any type of software to create the Hype Doc. The most important aspect is you frequently update it. I love Markdown files and use Obsidian so I can take them wherever I go. You’ll see tags in the doc that backlink topics or people mentioned in it as well. Eventually, I’ll put them on GitHub to version control it.

A few ideas of how you can track:

• Dropbox Paper
• Notion
• Google Docs
• Apple Notes

Keep journaling consistently

You can fall out of routine quickly with the hype doc if you don’t consistently update it. I have a 2013–2015 gap in my doc that I need to go back and retroactively document it. Build a routine to make sure you update it. Daily and weekly is too short of a cadence for me, so I put a calendar reminder at the end of each month for me to update the Hype Doc.

I run a Slack account that is only me (this could be a topic on its own) with a #hypedoc channel to log moments I want to look back at. In addition, I use IFTTT to automate reminder messages. This is highly effective for me because we use Slack at work, and having something one click away helps log content.

Give it a try

Whether you are starting from scratch or need to dust one off, I encourage you to maintain a Hype Doc! I have so much work to do on mine, trying to find moments to track over a 16-year career. It’s been a great road down Memory Lane for me to see how much I’ve grown, and how much growing I still have to do. Block some time out and you’ll have a great look back, perhaps for your career memoir in the future.

Dear Quartz Composer,

During this year’s virtual WWDC, you were officially deprecated. I never thought my heart would ache for the deprecation software. However, to be honest, I owe so much to you in my life, and it’s no exaggeration. Is this a love letter, or a farewell letter? Like many great loves that aren’t meant to last forever, it’s a bit of both.

We met many times, but you weren’t my first love. To say you were my first love would be a lie. Before we met, there was HyperCard and Dreamweaver. With visual programming tools like this in my life, I could do something I never thought I could…build what I imagine.

We encountered at times in college, where I remembered you as primarily a graphics app that my music friends loved using. It was a way to create trippy visualizations along with electronic music they produced. You weren’t the first visual programming language (VPL) tool I was introduced to but were there for the most formative times of my life and career.

I met you again later in my career. It was 2013 and HTC just announced their new phone, the HTC First, AKA the Facebook phone. People were talking about the chat heads interaction that appeared in the device. Julie Zhuo wrote about how the design team prototyped the interactions in QC.

This was at the cusp of my iOS design career. I remember having coffee with my friend Robert Eickmann at Caffe Vita in Capitol Hill. He showed me a video of a designer recreating the chat heads using QC. When I finally joined Black Pixel, one of my dream companies, I was responsible for doing a lot of prototyping work for client projects. I really relied on you to tell stories through inspiring interactions.

A while after, Facebook released Origami, a plugin built on your software. Like many designers, I was obsessed with building every interaction out using it. You once inspired me to give a talk at the Seattle Prototypers meetup, where I met Stephen Crowley, one of my good friends to-this-day.

You helped me ship the most impactful projects in my career and helped me build rapports with some of the engineers I worked with. You gave me the language, the rhetoric, and the conversation. You enabled me to become a curious explorer and prototyper. I have to be honest, you were the reason I felt I needed two Thunderbolt Displays to see my work. From prototyping a camera app for a social networking app people use daily to creating our first experience of video appointments at One Medical, you were there for all the big moments.

There were others similar to you that came, such as Form (what a great tool and Google did nothing with it) and Noodl. You will always remain the original to me, and the one that sent me on a path of curious prototyping, which really changed my career; the one that invoked endless possibilities.

Thank you, Quartz Composer. I owe so much to you, and as we embark on the next evolution of visual programming, you will not be forgotten and your place in history will forever be remembered.

Love,

David (forever known as “That designer who is obsessed with QC”)

February of this year commenced the third UX Design cohort I taught at General Assembly (GA). When I started my design education career, one of the reasons GA resonated with me was the approach to the learning curriculum; applied learning, experimental, and very hands-on. Instead of lengthy lectures, students are encouraged to collaborate in class together and give them the chance to practice. It’s one of the reasons the campus experience is so appealing for students.

This cohort would be uncontrollably different from the COVID-19 pandemic, which shelter-in took place during the third week of class (out of ten). Our amazing staff at General Assembly did such a great job transitioning the classes to remote.

However, one of the top reasons students sign up for these classes is due to the network they create with their cohorts and the hands-on experience with the instructor. Doing this remotely, though not impossible, would be a challenge.

Replicating the classroom and campus experience online

My remote work journey began in 2012 when I founded a digital product consultancy. In addition to that, Black Pixel, and now at Webflow, remote work is very familiar for me. However, for many students and instructors around the world, it can be completely new.

It was really important to me that the students had the most positive in-class experience, remote or not. We started the class with Zoom, a platform proven to provide the infrastructure for what seems like the entire world (likely in addition to Netflix). Our first week of remote lessons was before the interface design lessons (that would be taught in Figma). It was a challenge as most of the curriculum was optimized for an in-class experience. The breakout feature on Zoom is phenomenal, though we found something missing.

From there I decided to lean on Figma to be the core foundation of how we’d approach learning. I’ve used Figma to teach in all three of my classes, but this was the first time where it played a foundational role in the infrastructure of the classroom. I brought Figma to One Medical in 2016 and we were early adopters of the product.

The key elements to the foundation of a classroom experience which Figma needed to do:

• Being the primary visual representation of the classroom
• Be the all-in-one surface to teach, play, and learn
• The synchronous tool for students to do breakout sessions

We found a lot of interesting ways to use Figma and I’d love to share a few of them and would love to share it.

Multiplayer lessons

One of the greatest challenges of teaching a class remote is to keep people engaged. Even for the instructor, it can be a bit awkward to teach a class with everyone on mute. The beauty of having a physical classroom is the ability to move around and be more interactive.

I’ve been pretty inspired by Bret Victor’s Seeing Spaces. One nugget I took away from it is how visibility on the work is key to be effective. I believe this to be true for the classroom. As a visual arts major, many of my classes were conducted in a studio environment. Whether it be rows of easels or in a circle, it was very easy for the instructor to walk around. More importantly, the students could look at other people’s work. In a world where a lot of design iteration is done on laptops or over the internet, the ability to see what others are doing is key.

Since our curriculum was optimized for in-class, there were a lot of breakout sessions or independent time built in. The breakout feature in Zoom is wonderful and we found a lot of value. However, with Zoom exhaustion occurring to many people in the world with remote meetings, I needed to find a collaborative foundation to anchor on.

Having the students work side-by-side together allowed them to learn through being “next to each other”. We were fortunate to have Joey Banks from Figma join our class to do a very hands-on lesson for wireframing.

Here’s an example of a file I set up to start multiplayer lessons.

As you can imagine for students new to design (or any human), this was a bit scary at first. However, with this sort of open work environment, the students felt more comfortable and practiced together.

I suggest setting up a multiplayer lesson for content that is optimized for a walkthrough. This way it allows students to look at each other’s work with the instructor being able to debug and troubleshoot.

Pairing sessions

Pairing sessions are great for breakout activities when you need more of a 1:1 conversation with students. With being completely remote, I relied on the students to pair together to get a sense of interactivity. Those of you who have experienced Zoom exhausting know what it feels like to have someone aggressively presenting to you as everyone is on mute (except for that one person who is unaware). I wanted to foster a sense of closeness and had the students pair with each other.

We used the Moodboard community file created by the awesome team at Mixpanel. In one of our lessons on Brand and Design Language, the students paired to create a mood board together.

When pairing, the students were able to work in the same file together.

Some activities that are optimal for pairing:

• Brainstorming with digital post-it notes
• Learning a new feature in Figma together (ex: Autolayout)
• Idea generation (most students aren’t comfortable doing this in a larger group setting)

Critique and Feedback

Our instruction style replies a lot on quick feedback loops. Using Figma helped us find ways to add notes for people without being intrusive to the experience. We used a combination of the Comments feature and the Crit Notes file created by Rasmus at Figma.

Exploratory Playground Files

With such a dynamic workspace, I found myself often building out experimental Figma files for the students to play around with.

You can get the file here

Final presentations

The students are required to do a final presentation as part of passing the course. Guess what they used to create the slides? Figma.

Each student built out their final presentation in Figma. Thanks to Zach Grosser (a Figma alum and presentation designer in Amsterdam) for providing the excellent presentation templates.

Meet the students

Of course, I save the top highlight of teaching, the students. I’d love to share a bit about my cohort and the great work they did in our class. Some are seeking new opportunities, so if you’re hiring new designers, I highly recommend reaching out to them!

Paula Narvaez

A multi-diciplinary designer with a background in architecture and landscape architecture, Paula continues her design journey in UX bringing her unique perspective to create functional designs that enhance the engagement of users. Outside of work, Paula finds joy in attending music events, cultivating her indoor jungle (plant mom), and indulging with a bubble milk tea amongst other things.

• Website
• Twitter: @paulanarv
• Final project

Mikaela Couch

A trained graphic designer, Mikeala came into the class with a great arsenal of skills when it came to visual and graphic design. Previously at Gensler, Mikaela got to work on cool projects in the environmental space design field.

• Website
• Twitter: @MikaelaCouch
• Final project

Larry Reinhard Jr.

Larry is based in San Francisco and is passionate about the intersection of social good, design, and technological disruption. He is a PM at Facebook building tools that ensure the launch of responsible AI/ML within the Facebook suite of products. He took the class to help build his core UX design skills and to validate his desire to dive deep and pivot careers.

• Twitter: @LarryReinhardJr
• Final project

Samantha Stapleton

“Hi there, I’m Sam, a New Jersey native who has made a home for herself in Oakland, CA. I worked as a pharmacy technician for 13 years while on the side pursuing an array of artistic projects including photography and modeling. I knew I had a passion for design from a young age and wanted to incorporate this skill into my career. I decided to pursue a career change by enrolling in a UXD course with David Hoang. His course gave me the skills I need to excel in my new chosen career path as a UX designer. David’s course was super helpful and I’m glad to have worked with him along with my other classmates as well. With UX, I hope to create seamless projects that are both user friendly and captivating as I feel it’s through design we can create a more beautiful reality.”

• Twitter: @saintjamerican
• Final project

Karla de Guzman

Karla is based out of SF (shivering in the Inner Sunset) and has spent most of her career within the non-profit space, with an emphasis on community advocacy. She’s looking to pivot into the challenge of a UX research-focused path. When she’s not working on design and research, she loves climbing — mostly sport and bouldering (Bishop, Red Rock, NV, and Yosemite are favorites), her pup Potato, etc.

• Twitter: @sleepyfacek
• Final project

Next iterations

I’m hopeful things will return to “precedented times.” Regardless of when, Figma is now a primary infrastructure element for how I approach teaching, whether it is in class or not.

A few things I’m looking to do moving forward

• Building out our class slides in Figma so they can play around with prototypes and do the breakout sessions in the lesson
• Course tracker of students in Figma

You can find files I’ve created on Figma Community where my handle is @davidhoang. Also, check out our class projects with the #ga_sf.

Creating a collaborative classroom remotely with Figma was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Originally posted on davidhoang.com

I don’t like feeling busy; a feeling that doesn’t make me feel great, like I am not in control. I do, however, love to do many things. To mitigate being busy, I believe design, experimentation, and focus can enable you to be effective by having things be productive for you.

Though I continue to explore many digital tools, Notion is one that remains part of my daily workflow. As many of us have been sheltering in, mini-conversations have sparked a lot of interest in how I use Notion and figured I should write something up about it.

This is my second stint with using Notion and it stuck this time for me. The primary reason the first time wasn’t successful is I didn’t use it the right way that worked for me (the key concept is it working for you). My usage of the all-in-one workspace was more of a note-taking app, which it’s not great at.

In a quest for a replacement, I tried different digital products, such as Airtable, Apple Notes, Mindnode, and GitHub (yes, GitHub).

After a conversation with one of my most trusted former designers, she inadvertently convinced me to give Notion a second try; highlighting that watching how other people use it will help. I went to YouTube to learn how other people set it up. The YouTube videos of Ali Abdaal, Marie Poulin, and Thomas Frank inspired me to think differently about how I configured my digital workspace. One of the biggest learning from those studies was for me to use Notion as the hub to enable work to get done instead of trying to do all my work in it.

Before I show you how I use it, you must know why and for what
I need things to be visual and relational The length of the workflow chain is not what’s important to me. What’s important is that it’s the workflows.

How I use Notion

My workflow with Notion essential can be boiled down to 5 R’s: resonate, relate, recall, research, and release. Flow and momentum are the most important aspects for me when it comes to my personal effectiveness and productivity. Yes, I’m one of those people who asks you politely not to re-arrange or organize my pile of paper, because though not visually aesthetically pleasing, I know exactly where everything is. Let’s break down each step.

Resonate

Not everything you consume is worth remembering. There is such a cognitive overload of information. Much of it is not useful. The resonate stage forces me to think about what is worth remembering.

There is no greater person than Ali Abdaal to explain the resonance calendar. It’s so simple that it’s genius. As you capture ideas, take quick notes on why it’s something worth remembering and how you connect with it.

Example: I recently added this article about Figma’s fundraise because the concept of “The decade of design” resonated with me. That’s the important part, not that a16z wrote it.

Relate

I’m a very lateral thinker and appreciate relations and association with everything. Notion is great to connect the dots with many concepts and entities.

Example: I have aspirations in the distant future to go into angel investing (not for a while). I am building an opportunity backlog to help me connect to current relevant skills I can build now to make progress.

Recall

This is where I do my notetaking and study. Here I have a combination of handwritten notes scanned in and written notes. As you’ll see later in the article, I link items that resonate in research and ideas I work on.

Example: I’ve been re-reading “Play Bigger” and use the Cornell Notes System to help me recall key moments

Research

This is for more jumbo-sized projects. Research projects for me are often an aggregation of other links in Notion and structuring handwritten notes. If it’s any time dimension indicator, I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish any research projects in the course of my life.

Example: I am doing research on “The History of Visual Programming” and adding links from my resonance calendar to include in the Sources Cited section.

Release

Ultimately, the goal is to ship and get inspired ideas to become real.

For me personally, I optimize my chain of work by having a clear understanding of what stage things are in as opposed to everything in it.

Example: I have a backlog of ideas that I prioritize after it gets through the previous R’s. this is an example of a blog post I’m working on to that includes links relations to other databases.

Here’s what the entire workflow chain looks like with an example of how I create a blog post:

1. Read every morning before work
2. Add articles to pocket that merit reading
3. If there are thoughts worth retaining in the article, I add it to my resonance calendar
4. As ideas start shaping up, I create an idea in Notion and link it to the resonance links
5. I likely will work on the project outside of Notion, such as Figma, Webflow, Xcode, and Word Processing
6. Once complete, I’ll mark it as complete in the idea

On the surface level, six steps may seem inefficient. However, I have more defined understanding of the value of an idea based on what stage it’s in and helps me prioritize which ideas are worth pursuing.

Using Notion

Enough with the Why and What, let’s dive into the How. The way one views and interact with content is crucial. When I get started with tools, I often like to jump right in instead of using templates. Here are some things I’ve learned that’s helped.

For me, I’ve never been a folder structure person so navigation through a tree of folders never worked well. I’m a very lateral and associative thinker and such thinking cannot be bound in folders!

Search

If it’s any indication from how I organize my iPhone apps, I heavily rely on search.

The mobile app is decent for searching. I don’t use the mobile apps very much; only for reference. Currently the mobile apps have very poor performance and difficult for me to use. I have the utmost confidence that the team at Notion are well-aware of this and working hard on it.

Start with a scratchpad or inbox

Create an inbox or a scratchpad where your unstructured links and notes can go. You can use this to triage and organize where things need to go.

Leverage databases from the start

If you have content that seems to be taking up shape as a structure, create a database. Do not be intimated by a database. It’s fancy talk for “a place to put your stuff.”

A quick tip for people getting started with Notion. There are five types of databases (Table, Board, List, Calendar, Gallery) and they are actually different views of one type of database. If you choose a table, you can make it a board or list later.

I try to create everything in Notion with the following categorizations

People: Humans I’ve encountered, would like to meet, and notable ones I’ll likely never meet.

Places: I classify these as physical locations, though I’ve considered digital places. We’ll see how this scales!

Things: This one is a bit more sophisticated than people and places as there are many subclasses of this. In “Things” I’ll include elements from books, concepts, to physical objects

Actions: I created this fourth one so I could use it as a global status that applies to the first three

I honestly considered a fifth element (!!!) and ultimately opted not to do it, which was a Tags database where I could roll up every tag into it. The beauty is I could always back and do it. I kind of wish there was a way to use an object (like multi-select) and inject data into that property type. Right now, tags for three essential categories should work right now (I hope).

Relations to databases are your friend

Based on the four essential databases mentioned in the previous section, I use relations and links to thread my relations together. This allows me to connect all people, places, and things in my life.

Here’s an example of how I connected The Northstar Playbook (a thing) and John Cutler (person who write it) that easily allows me to reference either the thing or person.

Link everything relevant

Not everything is going to roll up into a database, and that’s where links are very helpful. I am a firm believer that the hyperlink is one of the greatest inventions in the world.

It’s key to link information that’s most relevant for me. For example, I’m not going to try to replicate what’s on Wikipedia about the Czech Republic. Instead, I’ll add relational information that is most relevant to me: who I know there, memorizes from there, notable aspects of the country that is most important to me. Otherwise, I’d simply use Wikipedia.

Whether they are internal or external, copy links and connect them to other areas in the app

Filters

Here’s an example of how I filter my Actions database on a page about my San Francisco life to include only relevant tasks.

As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a way to create a filter template so you have to do this manually on every page.

Distinguish structure vs. unstructured

One of the beauties of Notion is you can be as structured or unstructured as you’d like. My advice to people getting started is you want to be clear what areas are intended to be loose in structure and where you’d like some rigor.

What I do not use Notion for

You can almost do everything in Notion. However, for me, it’s not necessary. Here’s where I don’t use it to later convey what I do use it for.:

• Personal calendar (I use Google Calendar): I have nearly a half-a-dozen calendars and keeping it in a different place makes it much easier to maintain for me
• Portfolio or Website (I use Webflow): I’ve seen people use Notion essentially as a website. Though you can and it’s very practical, I like the feel of a personal website (note: I work at Webflow)
• Sketching and Notetaking (I use Notability): Notability before Notion.
• Writing (I use iA Writer): I find the blocks a bit constraining when it comes to more freeform writing.
• Project management (I use what others are using): I’m a firm believer that the best project management tool is the one people are actually using. I’ll use GitHub projects or an equivalent and try not to bring people into my workflow unless the project calls for itMore quick tips

Here are some other quick tips and tricks I learned along that way that made it more joyful to use.

Bookmarks: I really love using the bookmark features to make links more visual and it doesn’t take as much room as embedding

Favorites: If you are a folder structure person, the favorites feature is nice to not be overwhelmed by the expansiveness of notion.

Where to go from here

A quick recap of some of the concepts in this article:

• There is no wrong way to use Notion. Optimize how you approach thinking and doing
• Put what you need in there and allow extensibility to let itself in
• Use the power of Notion to keep things freeform and structured, though have a good sense of how it’s organized.

I’m not sure if this article will inspire or intimidate you. Though you may feel like it, you don’t have to start over if you don’t structure Notion! If you have any questions or other ideas to add, I’d love to hear from you.

You can also signup for my newsletter where I’ll occasionally do quick tips and tricks around productivity and management.

P.S. Special thanks to Bonnie Kate Wolf, Greyson MacAlpine, Effy Zhang, Ryan Morrison, and Parker Henderson for doing a live walk-through of my workspace.

Originally posted on davidhoang.com

I studied Art History in college and find the liberal arts to be one of the biggest influences in my design career. One of my favorite eras to study is Baroque art. It often brought high contrast, strong asymmetry, aestheticized violence, and remixed symbolism in its works. It’s the Tarantino era of art history. One of the artist who first caught my attention at an early age was Michaelangelo Mersi, better known as Caravaggio.

The Catholic Church at the time were huge patrons of the arts and commissioned artist to create paintings of famous scenes during the counter-reformation. Caravaggio, is what you wouldn’t necessarily call a religious man, which made his works so fascinating to me; an amoral man and sinner in the views of the church, being commissioned by the church. He often left a lot of room for interpretation in his paintings. One of the famous ones is that of “The Calling of St. Matthew”.

The 10.5x11’ oil painting in Rome depicts the moment when Jesus Christ inspires Matthew to follow him and become an apostle. In the painting, it’s not clear which one is St. Matthew. Is it the young man hunched over the coins? What about the main pointing at himself to ask “me?” Art historians have often said Caravaggio left it open ended for the viewer to interpret that the calling can be for anyone.

I use this piece of art not as religious evangelism but perhaps career evangelism. This painting often reminds me of how people get called into management, and how ambiguous it can be where great future managers come from. Perhaps it’s the 10x engineer who points at himself and clearly assumes it’s him. But what if it’s the average senior designer who has a great emotional intelligence (EQ), organized, and really cares about people?

The current state of management

Since it’s what I have the most experience and observation in, the purview I’m going to share is primarily design management, though I believe this applies to many other functions and disciplines as well.

The industry sets up wrong incentives for people to become managers

The candid truth is that there are a lot of managers in positions who shouldn’t be. It’s not to point fingers as they come in many forms and they come in many forms. Perhaps it is someone at an early startup and fell into management as the company grew. Some pursue management positions for personal gains and have more perceived influence. As we ponder who would make good managers, we also must ensure that people who have a desire to thrive as individual contributors and leaders have incentives to do so.

The system often incentivizes people to go into management for the wrong reasons. There’s often a pay bump in becoming a manager. I believe that’s the wrong incentive, but that’s a different blog post.

At Webflow, we have individual contributor (IC) designer tracks that have parity with manager tracks, both in pay and influence. Leadership is a trait both managers and individual contributors have. If we’re going to fix the management pipeline, then we need to ensure individual contributors have clear and equal tracks. Buffer has a great article about their individual contributor career track.

Lack of a succession pipeline and development process

“There is no success without a successor.” — Peter Drucker

The core problem I view is that there is a substantial gap in the management pipeline for new managers. As experienced managers and leaders in the industry retire (and they will at some point) there needs to be a clear investment for new managers to take the mantle.

A lot of managers transition into lateral positions at different companies. Roughly put, the same people are getting the management jobs, and not all of them are good managers. At this state, these managers will continue to fail up if there isn’t any dilution of the talent pool.

While this is happening, some of the best potential managers may be neglected from pursuing management, both by external forces and perhaps themselves. The biggest problem I see is the lack of encouragement from others for them to pursue management. In a land of bad-to-middling managers, sometimes people who would be great managers don’t see themselves in management positions because the people they do have as models aren’t who they want to be.

The industry needs good managers, which is not necessarily managers who have been doing it for a long time. The management pipeline needs to be refreshed from time-to-time with new people to take on the responsibility.

Companies are looking at historical data to de-risk

Hiring is important to get right at a company. Make the right move and you might find the person who is going to shift your team and elevate them. Make the wrong hire and it can be costly and dire. The impact is felt even higher for management and leadership roles. It’s no surprise then that companies are seeking methods to de-risk the hire.

The desire for more “influence”

I’ve often heard in many conversations with people considering management state that they want to pursue it to mentor and have more influence. It’s understandable how people might feel this way, however, it’s not good motivation to enter management. When you are in a higher leadership position, your role is more motivation and coaching than influence.

The calling of ICs

I firmly believe that some of the best new managers are currently individual contributors who have not considered management or shied away from it.

If you would have asked me a decade ago about people managers, I would have laughed. Never would I have imagined taking on a role as an introvert where the majority of the responsibility is dealing with people. My motivation then was to strive to be the best individual designer.

What makes a good manager?

Though this clearly varies based on company and industry, I’ll try to boil it down to the essentials based on experiences I’ve had and observed. At the core, a good manager is someone where their highest impact is focused on developing people, processes, and systems that provide farther value than what they can achieve as an individual. Your focus transitions from heads down to heads up.

Your focus shifts to the success of others

Clearly individual contributors also care about other people, however, the success of others is one of the core performance indicators in management. If you find joy working with people to enable them to be better at their job, management is a great place to do that.

The turning point for me was when I realized that focusing on spending time with other designers to help them get better brought me so much more joy than heads down time to explore a new project or prototyping tool, which I was very much in love with. Seeing where people started and witness their development became what I cared most about.

People-centric approach, team-oriented outcomes

You care about people but your mission is that of the team. The team is your metaphorical product and you’re responsible to strategize, unblock, and scale. Empathy and advocacy for your people is the natural start of being a manager. However, to be a strong manager, you will have to thoughtfully balance the needs between every human and the team.

Enabling people and systems

As a manager, you are now a builder and maintainer of people and systems. The responsibility of a manager is not to be good at everything, but to ensure the team is effective at everything.

The greatest system design challenge in the history of humanity is getting people to work together effectively.

I’m interested. So how do I get in?

If I’ve peaked your interest, here are some things to think about to prepare for the calling. The trick is to distribute your impact and influence as you’re a high performer to transition into a higher scale role. There is no shortcut to management. Be sure you’re a consistent and high performer at an IC level. The trick is to convey that your time can be maximized as a force multiplier.

Remember, if you don’t like management, you can always go back to being an IC in your career. There is nothing wrong with that. There are different layers of management, and you don’t have to keep climbing the ladder. Find the purview that gives you the most joy. If you enjoy first-line management, you don’t have to climb all the way up to executive. They have different roles and responsibilities.

Even if you have never thought about it, I encourage you to dip your toe and get some taste of management. You may find it be the calling you never expected.

It’s often said “the best ability is availability.” In order for people to champion your management track, you must make it known to people you’re considering it. This sounds obvious, but crucial. If you never speak up, people might assume you prefer to be an IC. Here are some ways to dip your toe into management.

Start taking on process projects

The hardest gap to fill is to show people you would make a good manager when your resume has only been as an individual contributor. Identify a gap and volunteer to take it on with an action plan. An example of a process project could be a proposal to improve a design review process during critique or drafting a standard operating procedure for the team (SOP). As you take on process and team tasks capture impact metrics on the return on the time invested in you working on such things.

Advocate for junior people and do it consistently

Note that I didn’t say mentor. If you don’t have any, mentor ones externally. There is no shortage of new designers looking for a great mentor and sponsor.

If you want to get a taste of management, then you have to do it consistently and be involved. Mentorship is great, but it’s a different type of focus. To get a taste of day-to-day management, coach someone more junior for them to take action, follow up and keep track of progress.

If you don’t have junior people on your team or company, work with people externally. I assure you people will be thrilled for the time you offer up.

Prepare for the calling, give yourself time

It’s not too soon to start thinking about a management track in your career. However, give yourself time for the opportunities to form for you. Your career is a marathon, not a sprint. Start prepping for the opportunity and it’s not too soon to commence.

Ask the question and perhaps answer the call

What does your heart and intuition tell you? If you sense a signal, dip your toe into management. Reach out to leaders to get their advice. If you’re interested in talking about it I’m happy to discuss personally or connect you with an advocate.

Remember, you don’t have to make a decision right away, though I encourage you to start exploring those capabilities. Accrue evidence as you begin the management dialog.

Take a moment and ask yourself, “What if the future cohort of great managers and leaders includes me?”

Notes

Special thanks to Julia Ferraioli for editing.

If you ever want to discuss management, shoot me an email and I’d be happy to discuss with you or connect you with another experienced manager.

Sources Cited

• http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-paintings/calling-of-saint-matthew.htm
• https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67050/15-things-you-should-know-about-caravaggios-calling-st-matthew

Design is a core part of the human-centered mission at One Medical. We are able to be deliberate in using an Evidence-Based Design approach influenced by the creative process and apply a rigorous clarity to how we design. One of the unique aspects of working at One Medical is the opportunity to own the entire experience stack, from our healthcare services to digital products. We are able to be deliberate and intentional about our design decisions, whether it enables labs to be done in our offices or creating a calming office that can put people at ease as they receive care.

Over the past three years, I’ve had the privilege of seeing design at One Medical grow exponentially. We’ve combined a diverse team with the best minds in healthcare to create the best product experience possible. I’d like to share a bit about the identity of our team, our approach, and why we feel what we do is special. From a small team of two, the team has grown to 10 team members who have joined us from companies such as Apple, Capital One, Dropbox, Hipmunk, IDEO, Trunk Club, and their own startups.

Here are five themes of product design we’re proud of at One Medical.

1. Design for Real Impact

Real impact is continuous delivery of high value products and features to our users: our members who receive care and our care team that provides care. Prioritizing both user groups enables us to release features that people can use immediately and put the human relationship at the forefront.

Our engineering manager Tom once said, “We use technology to facilitate human interaction, not replace it.” Our blend of technology-enabled healthcare allows us to put the most important thing in the forefront…human relationships between members and the people who provide quality care. Less computer time, more face time with humans.

2. Use an Evidence-based Approach

Evidence-based practice and medicine have revolutionized the healthcare industry by supporting decisions with well-designed and well-conducted research. We bring that into our design process.

When design becomes people sitting in meetings arguing about font choices and button radii, the focus on user needs becomes lost. Our product designers start with a hypothesis, which we test by gathering evidence (or counter-evidence) in the field.

One Medical uses lean management approach: deliver value from your customer’s perspective, eliminate waste (things that don’t bring value to the end product), and continuous improvement. Projects start at the gemba (a japanese term meaning “the real place”), a term for visiting the place where work is done. New teammates start off with this and spend hours at the clinic shadowing the team and members. This isn’t just designers and researchers but the entire team, including product managers, QA, engineers, and leadership. We believe that the best way to motivate someone on the features they’re working on is to have a connection to the impact they’re contributing to.

The working relationship with our users is unlike any place I’ve been. Our members are active participants in research interviews and gladly give us meaningful feedback because they care about the service and product. At any moment, I can ping an office and walk over to get real feedback from our clinics. We rely on the amazing providers and admin team who welcome shadowing and questions. They always have the best ideas for how to improve the product

Our research team leads a program called Product Rounds — a cross-functional trip consisting fo anyone on the Technology team who travel to one of our nine markets to visit our local teams to build relationships with our team members in the field.

3. Designing, for Now, Next, and the Future

Focusing too narrow and you can accrue design debt and come up with something that doesn’t scale. We work in a dynamic way that focuses on three core states to consider:

Now: This is Integrated UX and working directly with our product teams. Designing for now focuses in on our sprint cadence. We ask what the current state of the product experience is and find opportunities to improve it.

Next: This is the Discovery track in dual track scrum. The focus here is opportunities on the horizon. I often refer to this as high tactical when it pertains to the product strategy. This work doesn’t fit in sprints but informs it. In this state, the team does a lot of user research and prototyping to help de-risk and align the Now work.

Future: The state we aspire to be. This work is strategic and guides both Next and Now. In the Future work, the team focuses on creating a tangible vision that serves as a North Star.

Working in various time streams is a daunting ask, but the team is up for the challenge.

4. Nimble Learning & Innovation

Lean Processes

The health industry is known for compliance and administrative work but the key to being truly innovative is to take a learning approach to learn things.

Continuous Delivery and Improvement

The healthcare industry often suffers from slow technological development and innovations. In order to transform the industry, we must continuously deliver in a thoughtful way. In an industry where you are responsible for the lives and health of others, you don’t want any unintended consequences. We leverage pilot and beta programs with our users to get real feedback to ensure we have the utmost confidence that our features are ready to ship.

Rapid Prototyping and Usability Testing

Whether it’s prototype on paper, Figma, Framer, Xcode, or HTML/CSS, we aspire to learn early and often with the people who use our products. The team’s philosophy is to reduce the iteration cycle by creating prototypes to get meaningful feedback. The more we create and test, the more opportunities we have to learn. Our clinical providers and office admins love participating as it empowers them to be a stakeholder in the product.

5. Create space for design at the table

One of the top frustrations designers have is lack of control of the product’s destiny. The top question I get from candidate interviews is whether design is valued and if product design and research have a seat at the table. I would say that at One Medical not only do we have a seat of the table, but we are valued throughout the entire company. From our CEO, VPs, and other team members of the organization, there is no question the value and role design plays at the company. Leadership walks the walk by dedicating time in the local offices to observe and participate in research and shadowing.

Because we have the trust and confidence of the team, we can focus down on doing our jobs as designers instead of fighting to get a seat. No one questions the need to do deep dives of design or research because our mission is provider human-centered care. Our teams are eager to join us in sketching sessions, design crits, and research trips.

Design and research are critical to the success of any product team. I hope by reading this you’ve learned a few of ingredients of what makes a great design process.

Join Us

If this is a design culture that resognates with you, join us! We are hiring multiple product design roles and almost every technology role. Consider joining us on the journey to transform healthcare.

Notes: Thank you to Dylan Wilbanks, Kyle Munkittrick, Wes Donohoe, and Xin Xin for editing.

Product Design & Research Culture at One Medical was originally published in One Medical Technology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Happy New Year! It’s now January and I’m feeling recovered and rested after a holiday with friends, family, and loved ones. As people start easing into their routine in 2019, I thought I’d share a few areas of focus for me this year. I don’t do resolutions as I often feel priorities and goals can change. Instead, I think of Gregorian calendar year milestones as a time to set focus areas.

Be as predictable as possible

My life has some complexity to it. I work in San Francisco, my girlfriend is in Los Angeles, and have life-long friends in Seattle, Europe, and New York City. The first talk I ever gave was at Ignite about how to live in two cities.Though I’ll try to simplify this, I feel my life is wired this way. My counterbalance is to be as predictable as possible. This means being predictable to friends, family, coworkers, and yes, myself. My goal is to create a routine and foundation that people can anticipate and know what I’m going to do. I’ll mix it up to have fun as well, but predictability is the foundation.

Better posture

The new year is preceded by my birthday, which is a great reminder that I am getting older. My friend Jess Estrada and I often talk about the idea of getting older. I used to be terrified about it, but now I embrace it. I’d like to work professionally as long as possible (see Vince Carter scoring 20 points as a 41-year-old). In order to work at a high level, health is crucial. I’m focusing on better ergonomics in the office to make sure my back, neck, and joints are in good health.

Do fewer things at a higher level

I am passionate and interested in many things. There is this infinite energy I have when it comes to collaboration, creation, and generating ideas. Often ideas can tie if you don’t tend to it. My solution to this is to do fewer things and at a higher level. It sucks to say “no” to things, especially ones that really interest you. However, I see this as a good forcing function to get things done in order to move onto things equally as interesting.

Less screen time

I’m no longer interested in the latest smartphones. My iPhone from a few years ago serves its purpose at a high level. Screen time seems to be a huge area of focus for a lot of people; the attempt to reduce the amount of app addiction and scrolling. As someone who works in digital, this is a tough balance as screen time also is a professional focus. I’m trying a few things to combat screen time:

• Having a Braun analog clock as an alarm and leaving my phone in the living room when I go to sleep
• Spend the majority of design time on paper and whiteboards before creating in front of a screen; to see how far you can get
• Using Siri and voice command more as a way to get things done
• RSS. Curating my own feed of content instead of having to go on Instagram

Being mindful of my data

It is very difficult to fully own all of your data in this day and age, so my goal is to be mindful about it. Last year I deleted my Facebook account and feel so much healthier from an information perspective. This year I am going to continue this trend:

• Deleting unused accounts
• Hosting more content on my own domain
• 3rd party hygiene. Spend time to groom apps like Twitter to make sure the 3rd parties that have access are still relevant
• Frequently changing passwords (I recommend 1Password)

Creation

Before all titles, I consider myself a Maker. I like to build, create, and make, whether it is digital or physical. Last year I found some patches of time to paint again (I am a visual arts major). As 2019 progresses I’d like to continue that trend with drawing, painting, and photography. Perhaps I’ll have enough content to do a show again. I haven’t done an art show since 2008.

Write daily

It started with this post! My 2019 is focused more on writing and less on speaking. Though I’ll consider doing one or two conference talks, I am really looking forward to sharing ideas in written format. Daily writing can be a blog post or a simple post on my micro.blog.

How about you? I’d love to hear some things you’re focusing on, and wishing you a healthy 2019.

Originally posted on davidhoang.com

Krissy Brierre-Davis on Twitter

How come you guys never told me this iPhone trick? I feel duped.

This feature has been available for 3D Touch-enabled devices since the iPhone 6. However, the release of the iPhone XR probably re-surfaced this discovery.

This sparked a lot of criticism by people on social media. Some were upset that Apple was not explicit about this to users and just rolled it out as a feature. I’m writing to challenge the criticism and say that it is not bad UX for Apple to roll out a feature like this without clear instructions. No, it’s not because of company allegiance or fanaticism, but on principle.

Let’s start by being clear that I’m not in the business of blaming the user. Is it wrong that users don’t know this? No. Should users have to watch an Apple Keynote to know how interactions work? No.

This interaction is an accelerator gesture, which is a supplementary way to achieve something. The beauty of multitouch interactions is that there are multiple pathways to achieve something. I believe the primary interaction has to be intuitive and clear. However, for secondary interactions, it does not have to stand out like the primary one. In this case, the primary interaction is tapping on the area you want to edit.

When Android rolled out this feature (prior to Apple) there was a similar sense of discovery with about the same level of onboarding and education.

Primary interactions need to be clear and obvious. However, secondary interactions and accelerators can often be something more broadly accessible, and can be a moment of delightful discovery.

The “No NUX” (New User Experience) rule does not seem to apply to Apple as much these days. There is a dedicated app for Tips and now onboarding has been introduced to iOS devices. That being said, here are a few reasons in defense that this design decision is not bad UX.

Interaction Accelerator

Multi-touch often also means multiple ways to use it. A few more examples of interactions like this on iOS:

• Tab and hold to bring tabs you recently closed in Safari
• Tap and drag to select photos
• Tap and hold to archive emails instead of deleting
• Swipe to delete digits in Calculator
• Hold the compose button in Mail to see drafts
• Interaction accelerators do not necessarily need to be discoverable as long as the primary interaction is clear.

Shortcuts that can be discovered and mastered

A mentor of mine once taught me the idea of interactions that can be mastered. He used the example of a light switch. It’s so simple that after interacting with it, it can be mastered. His point was that if you installed a light switch backwards, it’d be moments for someone to learn how it works. Multitouch gestures behave in a similar way. The more you use it, the more one understands how the ecosystem works.

The user should always feel empowered, and Apple has an opportunity to raise awareness of features without expecting people to sit through a Keynote event.

However, to call this “Bad UX” is a bit of a stretch.

Notes:

• Originally posted on my website
• P.S. Thank you Rosa McGee for edits and feedback.

The studio was my social space and educational space. I spent countless hours there. Our curriculum required us to take a foundation class of every focus area, but oil painting was my favorite. What I love about oil paint is that you could paint alla prima (wet on wet). This means you can just manipulate the paint to essentially do whatever you want. I loved it because it provided full control.

Watercolor, on the other hand, felt like the opposite. I took one watercolor class in college and struggled with it. I have not been known for my patience, and having to build up layers of washes to create form was really frustrating for me. It was the only watercolor class I took during my four years there (though my professor is awesome).

After graduating with a BFA, I took a year to really focus on my artwork. My intent was to get into graduate school to pursue my MFA. I ended up getting into the California College of the Arts (CCA), but deferred. During that time a certain device came out that pivoted my career to focus on design. It was called the iPhone.

Years later I find myself occasionally getting a spark of inspiration to make art again. Living in San Francisco, I have a much more condensed space so I don’t have a studio where I can have my giant oil paintings anymore. I ended up at the Blick Art Supply store one day after a great dinner at the House of Prime Rib. I thought to myself, “why not? and picked up some water colors and walnut ink (a medium I adore). My life is now constrained where I compose pieces that are walnut ink and watercolor on paper.

To my surprise, I really enjoyed watercolors now. What changed after more than a decade to make me like watercolors? My life.

The things that used to frustrate me about watercolors now became something I took advantage of. Instead of complaining about the slow dry times and inability to control, I let the watercolors control me and let it guide me. It helped me uncover a lot of directions I wouldn’t have approached, such as layering watercolor over the dry walnut ink.

My role in design is a lot different than when the iPhone came out. I am now a leader of designers and don’t do much actual design work myself, but rather get the opportunity to see my team do great work and grow. The change from an individual contributor designer to leader was very much like my oil to watercolor process. In order to be successful with my team, I have to be patient, trust where the process is going, respond to it, and make brush strokes with deliberate intention.

Here is a work in progress (WIP) piece I’m doing. Be deliberate, trust the process, and be patient.

If you want to follow the progress I’ll be posting it on my Microblog.