About a year ago, my husband looked at me and suggested a somewhat insane idea.

“Hey, while we’re on maternity leave, why don’t we drive across the country. For two months. Like with the baby. And also maybe an Airstream.”

It was an insane idea for a number of reasons, mainly that our baby would be a mere 8 weeks old and we would still be in the middle of a giant hot mess home renovation.

But here’s the thing — while you may avoid outright craziness by vetoing insane ideas you’ll also very possibly miss out on a great adventure. (Also an 8 week old baby doesn’t move around much and sleeps through most things, so we said “let’s do this!”)

So on August 5, we set out on the unknown road, armed with a bit of naive optimism and a million diapers.

We journeyed across the U.S. pulling an Airstream, the required camper of millennial parents. Stops were divided between places we’ve always wanted to visit (like Yellowstone) and friends that we hadn’t seen in a while (in stops like the Delta, Mississippi). When mapped out, the route made a circle around the country.

28 states and 10,000 miles later, here are some of the things we learned along the road.

The road to building new skills usually sucks

Tummy time is this thing you’re required to do as a parent that your infant child will almost definitely hate. Until they can actually lift their heads up, putting them on their tummy seems to be a form of torture. But you have to do it (says every mom blog).

Why? Because it’s the best way for them to build up their head control. Eventually they’ll love tummy time because they’ll have developed the muscles to hold their head up and look around.

On the road, we would reluctantly pull over every two hours and put our kiddo on his stomach until he started to fuss (which wasn’t very long in the beginning).

When you think about it, tummy time and Finnley’s road to building head control is a lot like learning any new skill. It’s exceedingly frustrating and hard in the moment. You may only be able to handle doing it for a few minutes at a time.

But with consistency and a little sideline cheering, you’ll soon be able to hold your head up, look around and enjoy your new vantage point.

Anxiety travels with you

This was my least favorite lesson learned.

I’ve always battled anxiety but during and after pregnancy, it got significantly worse. Naively, I thought it would just stay in San Francisco.

Surely seeing family and friends and getting to be on the open road and would keep anxiety at bay. Right? Nope. Not at all.

It did not stay put. Instead, it traveled with me, from the dunes of Oregon to the deserts of West Texas. It was my constant companion.

So instead of getting to run away, I had to face it and fight.

The best moments to you might be the moments someone else sleeps through

Our road trip could have been called “Finnley sleeps through landmarks.” There were times when the noise was so loud and the environment so intense that I was flabbergasted he could sleep so peacefully.

It made me realize that you will inevitably have moments of awe. Moments that will take your breath away but to others, isn’t worth a glance (or wakeup).

That’s ok. Take in your moment and don’t let one person’s dismissive attitude invalidate your wonder.

Going home will likely break your heart in some fashion

A homecoming is a convoluted, messy thing. Sometimes it’s met with joy, other times with anger or sadness.

You can never truly go home but that knowledge hasn’t made it any easier over the years.

No matter how many times we say goodbye, we have yet to become hardened to the heartbreak.

Give things you underestimate a (real) chance

There are parts of our road trip that I wasn’t really looking forward to. Those things usually involved driving across a part of the country I had deemed uninteresting despite never having visited (sorry, Nebraska).

For example, I knew the drive from Yellowstone to Kentucky would be long, mostly full of corn and space.

Was there lots of corn? Hell, yes. So much corn. Was there a lot of nothingness? Admittedly, yes.

But….that nothingness was actually incredibly beautiful. It was peaceful in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

I had underestimated a good chunk of the country and it quietly showed me that I was wrong.

The best ideas aren’t always logical

It wasn’t logical (AT ALL) to take a two month road with an 8 week old. We could have spent those months finishing renovations (which, by the way, will soon be done and then you’re all invited over for drinks).

Logic played very little part in our decision to pack up and head across the country. Instead, we relied on something more instinctual that told us that the decision to go was the right one.

In the end, we got to spend two sweet months together as a little family and experience this messy, wonderful country in all its parts. Logic would have kept us from that.

I’m betting that if you look back on your life experiences, some of the best ones you’ve had weren’t based in logic. They were decisions based more on gut. Something just told you to leap.

So we leapt.

*If you’d like to see more photos from our trip, check out the instagram account we made documenting our journey.

A Journey Of Hating My Body

This is an excerpt from a book I’m writing titled “Things The Desert Holds.” It’s about my time as a single woman living in the Middle East. This particular story focuses on a moment after returning from abroad. Everyone’s story is different. This is mine.

I had a breakdown in the middle of JCrew. It was a dress that caused it — a black and white cocktail number with a sweetheart neckline and wide black belt.

I tried it on because it was the only dress that wasn’t pink or blue or yellow or some other bright summer color that felt too much. Black was the only color I was truly comfortable in and so I thought black and white was progress. See? Here I am, learning how to live in this society again.

But I lost it. On a Thursday afternoon in the Lakeside Shopping Center, while standing in front of JCrew’s dressing room mirror, I broke down in tears.

The amount of skin that was visible from my neck to the dress neckline…it was too much. Too bare. I hated how the shape skimmed my figure, showing my waistline. I couldn’t stand the feeling of fabric brushing up against my body.

The sweet store attendant was understandably confused at my outburst and awkwardly complemented me in an effort to calm me down. But she didn’t know. She didn’t know how much I hated that my body was visible. I hated that you could tell I had shoulders and a waist and legs.

In that moment, I realized just how much I had come to hate my body. My shoulders and waist and legs. All of it. It was all wrong.

When I first moved to the Middle East, I was given a crash course in culture. While in the capital of the city I called home, with its active expat population, I didn’t have to wear the abaya. For most of the time, I was to dress “conservatively.” This translated into mainly loose fitting pants and long tunic tops with my hair pulled back. And since I often did business with men who had never worked with women before, this definition of conservative dress was the rule.

A few weeks into my new home, one of my clients proposed marriage. Actual marriage. I was told it was because I had left my hair down during one of our meetings. He had gotten the wrong impression. And so I began to hate my hair, because hair loose and flowing was wrong.

My mantra became: Be invisible. It’s better to be invisible.

If a man noticed me, it was because I had done something wrong. Hair down. Dress too fitted. Neckline too low. All my fault.

I felt this tension most often while walking down the street. Men congregated in large groups on the sidewalks. When a woman walked by, their eyes would follow, their arms sometimes reaching out and grabbing. Or, if the man was very conservative, they would jump back so that they did not risk touching the unclean woman.

Imagine walking down the street with a hundred eyes looking at you like you’re on display — starring in a play of their own personal lust. It will make you feel a filthy that you cannot wash off.

Once, while walking to the grocery store, I came to a narrow corner on a street. So narrow that if I continued walking, I would have brushed up against a man walking towards me. The man saw this and jumped into the middle of a busy street to avoid making bodily contact with me.

And so I learned that as a woman, I was to be avoided. Invisible and avoided.

Two months after moving to the Middle East, I had an abaya made for village field work. Unexpectedly, it became my salvation.

Here is the messy, complicated truth that I know must be hard to understand if you haven’t lived it — the abaya became my freedom. When slipping it on, I no longer had to brave the beady, hot stares from men. The garment was my own private space. Suddenly walking down the street didn’t seem so hellish because no one could see my shoulders and my waist and my legs.

While living in the Gulf, I attended what felt like a million weddings. For one wedding with a more liberal dress code, I chose a demure dress that fell just below the knees. I curled my hair and wore a smoky eye. Slipped on a pair of kitten heels, grabbed a shawl and departed for the InterContinental hotel.

I wanted to feel pretty. I wanted other people to look at me and think I was pretty. And then I walked out of my door.

No abaya to protect me, the men working on a road outside my home turned and stared. They stopped their work, stood still like statues, and watched me walk to my car.

I didn’t feel pretty. I felt dirty. I hated my curled hair and my smoky eye and my kitten heels and my dress and myself.

The black and white JCrew dress was also for a wedding, this one back in the states. I returned from living abroad on a Wednesday and went shopping on a Thursday for a Friday rehearsal dinner. It was too quick to process the jerk that comes from being hastily transported into a drastically different culture.

In retrospect, I should have seen the breakdown coming. Jetlagged and exhausted, coming home after a three year journey. But I needed a dress and I was too tired to continue shopping. So I paid for the dress and walked out of the store, feeling defeated.

During the rehearsal dinner, I smiled and laughed, greeting friends who welcomed me home. “You must be so happy to be back! How was your trip?” “You mean the last three years of my life?”

But in my JCrew dress, I felt naked. Exposed.

I had curled my hair, added a smoky eye and higher-than-kitten-heels. I wanted to feel pretty. Except that when a man would look at me, I was instantly transported to dusty desert roads and a culture of “you are responsible for the thoughts of men, so cover it all up.” Too much skin. Hair flowing. Legs exposed. I was wrong for capturing their attention.

The feeling that it was my fault, of course. The burden of “wrong” was on me.

It would be some time before fabric skimming my waistline and curled hair and exposed skin wouldn’t cause moments of hysteria. It would be some time before I learned that the burden was never on me. It was never my wrong.

It would be some time before I made peace with my body and stopped viewing it as the enemy. It would be some time before I regained what the desert took away.

We’re really lucky that we don’t have to go very far to get feedback from Medium users. People are very, very happy to tell us what they love and hate, want and couldn’t care less about.

Maybe you also get tons of user feedback on your product. That’s awesome! It’s a wonderful thing to have a constant loop of what works and what doesn’t.

Except….may I suggest something? Be careful when running into the arms of user-generated feedback. Approach self-reported feedback cautiously.

Don’t Just Listen To Your Users

(because they will lie to you and won’t even know they’re doing it)

Stay with me here…

User-generated feedback can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can offer valuable insights (more on that in a minute) but it can also create more noise.

Here’s when to be cautious with user-generated feedback:

• When a user says “I would like/love…”
• When a user gives you a wish list
• When a user says “yes/no I would use this…”

Let’s look at an example of a situation where user-generated feedback is least helpful.

Lovely user: Hi! If you created XYZ feature, I would absolutely use it. Definitely use it. All the time. And will be your biggest supporter.

Why should you proceed with caution when you receive a piece of feedback like this? Because we’re not the best at estimating whether or not we will use something. For example, if you would have asked me back in March if I would follow the Whole30 program consistently, my answer would have been a resounding “yes!” In actuality, I made it through one week of consistent use. We can say we will use/do something with the best of intentions but we’re just not good judges.

Even if you present your users with a design/concept that you’re working on and ask them whether or not they would use it, their answer should be taken with a grain of salt. (For that matter, try to avoid asking them whether or not they would use something.)

As Jakob Nielsen points out, “users are pragmatic and concrete. They typically have no idea how they might use a new technology based on a description alone. Users are not designers, and being able to envision something that doesn’t exist is a rare skill.”

A more helpful way to gauge whether or not they will use whatever you’re building is to look at past behavior. For example, if I am creating a storage system for pictures, I might ask the following:

• Do you ever upload photos to your computer’s desktop?
• Do you ever upload them to other places online? Tell me about the tools that you use.
• Tell me about XYZ service. Why do you use XYZ service to upload your pictures?

Another reason to approach user-generated feedback cautiously is because certain people are more prone to voluntarily provide feedback. Often times this means the loudest voices come through, which can put you at risk of missing valuable feedback from the more quiet voices.

For example, some users muddle through a bad experience and don’t share their feedback. They acclimate, perhaps even blaming themselves for the less than stellar experience. Getting constant feedback doesn’t mean you’re getting all the feedback or even the most helpful pieces of feedback.

But Still Listen To Your Users

(because they can help show you what’s working for them)

There are two things that user-generated feedback is great for:

1. A jumping off point into deeper issues
2. Identifying usability pain points

Jumping off into deeper waters

Instead of taking your user’s “wish list” at face value, dig into why they say XYZ feature would be helpful.

Here’s an example, based on a concept known as the 5 Whys:

Lovely user: Hi! If you created XYZ feature, I would absolutely use it. Definitely use it. All the time. And will be your biggest supporter.

You: Tell me more.*

*They respond and then you ask “why” until you get to the root cause — what their need is and why they believe XYZ feature will meet that need.

Identifying usability pain points

User-generated feedback is also great when it comes to usability. For example, pubs are quick to tell us about formatting and migration issues, Letters not being properly sent and so on.

You can learn more about their feedback by following up and watching them navigate through the flow or by having them share screen shots of the issue.

Here are some other places where user-generated feedback is also useful:

• Following a launch and in relation to usability issues
• Prior to a product brainstorm and throughout the discovery process in product development to check against what you currently understand are issues and use cases

The takeaway here — user-generated feedback can be a great thing when used in the correct way. At Medium, we regard the feedback you give us as highly valuable — a fantastic resource. The key to making sure that feedback leads to creating an impactful experience: approach feedback cautiously and understand when and how to incorporate it.

Feedback, feedback everywhere! was originally published in Medium.design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The story of design at Weight Watchers

My sister is 14 years older than me. Memories of growing up with her involved mainly blue eyeshadow, tapes of Bryan Adams and amazingly teased hair. Also, Weight Watchers. I remember my sister going to Weight Watchers meetings, coming home with boxes of food and trying to battle the weight that can make one’s teen years even more horrible than they usually are.

Flash forward some years later. An opportunity came about to join Weight Watchers as their first User Researcher. My only experience of Weight Watchers was through my sister in the early 90’s and at first glance, it wasn’t exactly a company that screamed innovation. But here was the opportunity — to help design a product that millions of people consider their lifeline. My manager had recently joined from an acquisition and he came from the world of design thinking.

Megan Mitchell on Twitter

There is the design. ...and then there's the user's experience. Know your end user! #designthinkingpic.twitter.com/yeYuBMFFs8

He got it. He knew what Weight Watchers needed to create a meaningful product and understood the value of user research.

“One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that ‘you are not the user.’ If you work on a development project, you’re atypical by definition. Design to optimize the user experience for outsiders, not insiders.” — Jakob Nielsen

I joined a very new and young team at Weight Watchers. We knew the Weight Watchers that our moms and aunts had used and we knew the current health tech landscape full of wearables like FitBit and apps like MyFitnessPal.

But even though we were (are!) young, we were inspired — and believed that we first had to understand the challenges, needs and goals of our members before we could design for them. For us to understand the needs members are unaware of and behaviors they are not conscious of, we decided to create personas. And in order to do this, we met our members where they were — in their home.

We traveled across the U.S., talking to members, watching how they use our products and diving into their underlining goals. In the end, we created a primary and secondary persona that helped to drive our product decisions and create an experience that maps to actual member needs and behaviors.

After creating personas, a natural next step would have been to create a journey map but Weight Watchers is a complex product, with many different points of entry. The first two weeks of a new member’s journey are critical. So instead of a journey map, after we identified the jobs to be done, we decided to create a service blueprint.

If you’ve never heard of a service blueprint before, it’s a map that illustrates the flow of something. It’s great for identifying the most meaningful member touchpoints and turn them into opportunities. For our team, it helped to provide a framework to work out details of interactions and for us to understand how to measure success.

We focused on a flow that 35% of our members experience — going to our site as a visitor, searching for a meeting, purchasing a plan, downloading the app and attending their first meeting. Instead of trying to tackle the whole journey of the very complex experience, we focused on one flow at a time and on creating the optimal ideal experience.

Every step was turned into a touchpoint, like a mini project brief that we could then go and conquer. For some of the steps, it meant designing a new experience. For others, it meant iteration on a current experience. But more than that, it meant we had a tactical plan to address the most common pain points in our members’ first few days of Weight Watchers — pain points that we believed would drive engagement and ultimately help them better meet their goals (which are usually more than just lose weight).

Our team operates from the ‘why’ and ‘what.”

Why do members feel this way?

Why does engagement drop after two weeks?

What is their real goal, beyond losing weight?

What happens once they reach their goal?

If they need support and accountability, what is going to provide that?

But these questions aren’t only answered through a persona or jobs to be done or service blueprint, as lovely as they are.

They’re answered through a myriad of methods. Usability testing, an exploratory design workshop, quick paper prototyping. It’s like a dance and to make it work, it has to be with people who know the dance and anticipate the steps.

Never ask the user what they like. Instead, look at what they do.

In one year, the design team at Weight Watchers has taken a desire (for a better user experience) and turned the design culture into one that is more deeply rooted in design thinking than I’ve ever had the privilege of working with before.

In the design world, a young team can often be underestimated. But with the right initiative, understanding of users and goals, a young team can create a significant change in a short amount of time. And that’s what I believe we’ve done this past year.

The word ‘innovative’ is often overused and almost meaningless. But its definition, to “introduce new ideas, methods, ways of thinking,” is something I’ve had the privilege of seeing lived out this past year. I’m immensely proud of our work to be a voice for our members.

Glen Messier on Twitter

Left: 2015 @ Jockey's Ridge; Right: Taken tonight. Down 127 pounds between the two of us & counting! #WeightWatcherspic.twitter.com/lyG3PJ1x2o

Christian Saylor has said, “Design creates stories, and stories create memorable experiences, and great experiences have this innate ability to change the way in which we view our world.”

As I look back on this past year, I think of my sister and her time on Weight Watchers— would this experience have changed her world? Would it have been memorable? Engaging? Personal? Have we created an experience that changes the way in which our members view their world? In the end, that’s how we know we’ve made progress. That’s UX.

“I’ll show you the inside of my fridge but you can’t judge me.” was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What Uber’s early investor says it takes for success in on-demand

This post is part of a series from the On-Demand Conference, organized by Pascal Levy-Garboua, Semil Shah, and Tradecraft. For a full list of posts, click here.

Shervin Pishevar grew up in a taxi. As the son of a taxi driver, Shervin’s childhood was shaped by the yellow cab that was his family’s car. It was this experience that drew him to recognize Uber’s potential early on. Perhaps it was also this experience that gave him an edge as a rookie VC to become one of Uber’s earliest investors and champions.

At the recent OnDemand Conference, Shervin had a lot to say — not just on Uber and how he came up with the 290 million dollar evaluation but on what it takes to found and thrive in the on-demand economy.

Life Hacks

“Most of the greatest products are born out of frustration, not joy. They should create joy once the product is created.” -Tweet This

As a 25 year-old single dad, Shervin was forced to hack life to find more time. “I tried to find efficiencies and that became my own operating system of life because I personally needed these things.” The life hacks of today — Munchery for dinner, Instacart for groceries and so on — struck a familiar vein with Shervin. They’re composed of things that people need several times a day: food and transportation. This certainly has contributed to their success as becoming needful things in people’s lives. For Shervin, he recognized them as the things he to hack as a young dad. This familiarity has served him well, as he’s become a cheerleader of the on-demand space and its founders.

The Common Thread

“The commonality between on-demand founders? They have true grit.” -Tweet This

Shervin started investing in 2008 with TaskRabbit. “They [investors] didn’t get it but I made them take a step back.” he shared. Shervin credits TaskRabbit founder Leah Busque with seeing the potential in the on-demand economy long before it became Silicon Valley’s popular kid.

Tuan Pham on Twitter

1/2 Great fireside chat with @shervin @semil to kick off #ODC2015. Backing "on-demand founders need true grit" pic.twitter.com/hyd96rlhOv

He argues that on-demand founders like Travis Kalanick (Uber), Leah Busque (TaskRabbit), Bastian Lehmann (PostMates) and Tri Tran (Munchery) have a similar trait that gives them an innate empathy with people and a sense of survival. “They all have the ability to be a street fighter.”

The Future Of On-Demand

“On-demand is one of the most human places to be as an investor.” -Tweet This

Everything seems to be on-demand now. But Shervin does caution that as the market matures, founders looking for the next Uber for X, should avoiding copy-pasting consumer on-demand. “It’s probably not a good idea to have an on-demand shoe shine business.” Instead, he advises to focus on an area where on-demand has yet to really sink in, like healthcare. “There’s no other place that has more pain and frustration than the healthcare space.” Shervin betting his VC firm, SherpaVentures, on the belief that healthcare will be on-demand’s next big revolution.

A Message To On-Demand Dreamers

“Are you doing something that’s self-sustaining or are you just chasing a fad?” -Tweet This

For those looking to found the next hot startup, Shervin shared a few words of caution.

• Be wary if it looks too easy. Success isn’t going to be easy and painless.
• The biggest check is not always the right way to go.
• Struggle can teach you way more.
• Do something that is unique to you and not because someone else’s journey is mirroring it.

It’s this last nugget that is perhaps the most important. Individuality can be scary, especially when the road ahead has not been paved. Especially when you’re the paver.

But that’s where true grit comes in.

This post was written by Paige Bennett. Paige is a former journalist turned UX Designer & User Researcher. You can find the full list of posts about the On-Demand Conference here.

True Grit was originally published in On Demand on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Post college, as a news reporter, my writings were short, concise and rarely emotional. Like many writers, with each writing season came a different means of inspiration. As a child it was my backyard, which seemed magical in my imagination. As a teenager, it was usually some angsty song (ahem, “Tearing Up My Heart”). And in the newsroom, inspiration came in the natural background noise of everyone freaking out.

About a year ago, I began to write a novel based on my time living in the Middle East and the most fascinating discovery has been the tool that’s helped inspire me this time around. It wasn’t an angsty song or magical backyard. It was Pinterest.

As a User Researcher, I’m fascinated with how people use Pinterest in unique ways. Like this account, reuniting owners in Oklahoma with cats they lost during tornados.

Or the Mountain View Police Department’s creative way to reunite people with their lost objects.

Pinterest aims to inspire people to create from their pins. Sometimes the creativity comes in how they use the platform. In my case, I turned to Pinterest to create a visual inspiration board for the characters in my novel.

Before Pinterest, when I created a character, I would draft a rough sketch of the character’s backstory. It worked fine but remained one dimensional.

While the novel I’m writing is inspired by my life, the characters are fiction. They don’t cook the same recipes I love, decorate their homes the same way I decorate mine, or find inspiration in the same places I do.

Any writer creating fictional characters can tell you that removing them from your own self can be a challenge. So I turned to Pinterest out of a desire to create a visual backstory for my characters. I wanted to create a world I could look at and become inspired from…a world that looked quite different from my own.

I decided to create a board for one of the main characters in my book, Kate Mullins. Pinning as Kate pushed me to get into her mindset. “Kate would probably make this crockpot chicken recipe because she doesn’t have time. She’s also distracted with [minor plot in book], so she would just throw something together.”

I began to imagine the meals she would cook, what vacations she would plan, the paint color she would choose for her bathroom renovation.

Over time, my character evolved from a list of traits on paper. The more I pinned, the more I created a colorful and alive world. And the more I created this world, the more inspired I become in my writings.

A writer’s process can sometimes only make sense to them but the inspiration vehicle Pinterest became for me made so much sense.

I still pin (a lot) as Paige but Pinterest has evolved for me into a creative tool as essential to my writing as my Mac.

I have made boards for other characters and plan on using Pinterest to fuel future pen-to-paper inspiration.

So how has Pinterest inspired you? Tweet me and let me know!

For the next few months, I am taking part in #womenslives, a campaign partnering Public Radio International and SheKnows Media. This passionate community of women are giving voices to issues concerning health, rights and education. Join me on this journey.

I had been in the Middle East for about three weeks when I first experienced it. Standing in a crowded supermarket, looking for peanut butter (which I would come to learn would only be available at certain times of the year).

Standing there, tired, still getting used to the oppressive heat, the being so far away from family, the being so lonely and so out of place. Standing there and I feel it — the length of a man pressed up against my back and the hand gripping at my waist. As quickly as it happened, the man disappeared, walking quickly into the throngs of people and leaving me to confusion, bewilderment and disgust.

A week later I sat in my office, getting ready to meet a new client. I nervously ran through all of the cultural etiquette lessons I had been learning: no eye contact, appropriate distance, don’t shake their hand unless they offer it first, on and on. I was in the middle of thinking about “appropriate distance” when he walked in. My first client.

He looked at me. Polite greetings and tidbits about family, the weather, the upcoming holiday. And then he says, so dismissively, “I have never worked with a woman. You are married?” I was not married. But in the course of living in the Middle East, I was proposed to eight times — four of them in a business setting.

It took me the better part of my time abroad to work through the guilt I would feel when men stared, grabbed, asked inappropriate questions or proposed. I would wonder what I did wrong until I finally realized it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t my fault.

I often think back to the woman I was pre-Middle East. The woman I was in the Middle East. The woman I became. My strength was tested (and found), value questioned, confidence leveled and built back up again.

It made me strong and so now, I offer my voice for others that are voiceless.

Give your voice to someone who wants desperately to speak up. -Tweet this

I was fortunate to live in a Middle Eastern country considered progressive. Women could go to college, drive, work and vote. I met and became dear friends with women who are among the first to enter the workforce and thrive. But even that progressive country tightly held the reins that control freedom. Even that progressive country has women who are voiceless.

When we are strong, we empower those who cannot be. When we are strong, we are powerful. So today, offer your strength for #womenslives everywhere. Give your voice to someone who wants desperately to speak up. When we are strong, things happen.

Co-founder Taught Me

The Tradecraft Teach Chronicles

Each week, Tradecraft welcomes experts and inspiring entrepreneurs to share their insights with us during what we call a “Tradecraft teach.” A couple of weeks ago, we were elated to welcome Biz Stone.

If you’re not familiar with Biz, he’s the co-founder of Twitter and Jelly, which recently released a fun new app called Super. What I find inspiring about Biz’s journey to tech and ultimate success is how optimistic his philosophy on career has remained.

As a fellow optimist, it’s refreshing to meet a leader that is unapologetically empathetic and positive. It’s this outlook that promoted me to invite Biz to Tradecraft, knowing that what he had to share would particularly resonate in a room full of driven people looking to change a little bit of the world.

Success isn’t guaranteed but failure is certain if you aren’t emotionally invested in your work. -Biz, Things A Little Bird Told Me

At Tradecraft, we say that we’re like chefs in a kitchen, responsible for creating our own our success. Or as Biz puts it, “opportunity is manufactured.”

If something’s fun, a lot of people will use it. If a lot of people use it, then it can be important. -Biz

One of the most impactful things Biz shared was on the subject of fun. As a designer, I want to create products that bring users joy. Beauty, simplicity and refreshment are all things I hope users would find within the products I build but Biz reminded me that fun should be touted right along with these attributes. There is an importance to having fun — both in the creation of your product and in the product’s function.

If you’ve played around with Super, you’ll notice that it’s primary function isn’t serious — it’s just fun. When it launched, someone wrote that the app looked like the offspring of Andy Warhol and Dr. Seuss. It’s true. Super is delightfully different.

And perhaps that’s the key to creating things that resonate with users. Don’t worry about what everyone else is creating. Be fun, be creative and love what you build.

I have not yet made a social network where someone hasn’t put a tattoo of the logo on their body. -Biz

What Biz reiterates, to have fun and build things you genuinely like, is of course sometimes easier said than done but it’s a challenge that should be worth pursuing.

We enter Tradecraft because we want to change things and create companies, products and features that really make a difference to people. In the journey of ever “disrupting” an industry to create change, it’s important to not lose sight of your passion — for the product and the people you are creating it for. And to make the things you build actually fun to use. I think Biz would agree.

I code. It looks weird to see that written out. Maybe that’s because it’s a rather new adventure in my life. Or maybe it’s because for years, I saw coding as swathed in a veil of mystery. Websites and apps just happened. Sure, there was someone on the other side making it happen but for the most part, it just seemed like magic.

I am not a good coder (yet). I am not an experienced coder. But I’m excited to learn.

I decided to learn how to code for a myriad of reasons. One — as a UX designer, I wanted to understand the infrastructure, how something is built, rather than just acknowledging its existence. Perhaps understanding code could help me more effectively communicate with the engineers I work with.

Another reason why I decided to learn how to code was for pure efficiency. I wanted the ability to create, build & ship. To better understand whether the things I create could actually be implemented.

Have the courage to work fast and commit it for the world to see. -Tweet this

Coding as a UX Designer is a contentious topic. There are good arguments on both sides. (If you want to dive into the discussion, start with this great article.) For me, the reasons above were enough to start coding my portfolio site.

If I take a step back, I realize that my small time coding has taught me a lot about fear (and courage). Because here’s the thing I’ve learned so far about coding: it’s about pushing something out for all to see and being ok with it.

I’ve been a writer for years but there’s a vulnerability with building and shipping things that I didn’t expect. Don’t make your project too precious. Just push it already.

“You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.” ― Tina Fey, Bossypants

As a UX Designer, coding has given me a new perspective on the things I create. In the ideal world, designers and engineers work hand-in-hand to create a product. In the real world, this doesn’t always happen. Instead, they can be siloed entities, sometimes to the detriment of the product.

Coding has given me an appreciation for my fellow engineers. They are builders and if they’re building my product, shouldn’t I at least be able to understand their language?

So here’s to a new adventure— one made up HTML, CSS, JavaScript and well, that’s where I’m starting for right now. Here’s to endurance — to having code break, figuring out why and moving on. Here’s to courage — to pushing out code for the world to see. Here’s to better design — by understanding the foundation that will bring that design to life. Here’s to coding.

What if paying for your meal could be effortless, fluid and simple? Just one click on your phone and boom — bill paid, out the door and onto the next adventure. This was the question that OpenTable’s design team dived into. The end result of their discovery is a feature that allows you to view and pay your check through the OpenTable app.

Recently, Seth Andrezejewski, a User Experience Researcher for OpenTable, spoke at Tradecraft and shared a glimpse into the journey his team took to create this new feature. (Pause for a moment: if you haven’t tried this feature out yet- GO DO IT THIS WEEK).

During his talk, Seth highlighted three points that came out of their journey developing this feature. These are nuggets of wisdom that UX designers (and really anyone building a product) can take into their practice:

• Honor the Invisible Script
• Make it Worth the Detour
• Support the Key Actors

Honor the Invisible Script

After looking into the problem of payments, they explored what the ideal payments experience might look like. But before arriving at this answer, they made sure to, as Seth put it, “honor the invisible script.” In other words, there’s often a process that users are familiar with. The waiter does not disappear because of the feature. They’re still present, with a role to play. OpenTable recognized and honored the dining experience that customers are already familiar with instead of designing a feature that would dismiss the process.

Make it Worth the Detour

In OpenTable’s case, users add their credit card information to the app and chose to pay through it. Though it makes a clunky experience more fluid, it still asks users to take a detour in order to experience it. The key is to create an experience that is worth the detour. The feature makes you want to take the extra step of connecting your card to the app because of what you gain from using it— a simpler and faster payment experience. And a simpler, faster payment experiences mean no longer waiting for the check. That alone is worth the detour.

Support the Key Actors

It was important for OpenTable to understand what diners and restaurants think and feel at each point in the meal story. To do so, they sat down with diners and asked them what they were feeling each step of the way.

They found that the waiters wanted to know both sides of the story because they essentially were the first line of support for OpenTable. If guests were having trouble with the feature, they would turn to the waiter for help. In this sense, it became extremely important to support the key players — waiters, restaurant management and, of course, guests.

They developed a diner-focused page, with a helpful video and a restaurant page that highlighted the value-proposition of the feature.

Seth’s talk not only shed light on the behind-the-scenes work of a feature that interests me as a designer, it provided golden nuggets that I can apply right now to my work.

And you know what? Life really is too short to wait for the check.