It’s hard to say who is more obsessed with Lego bricks – my kids, or their parents!  My partner and I both feel that our childhoods were poorer for not having had our own Lego toys.  We’ve made up for it by having more Legos in the house than we could possibly ever play with!  The kids received small Lego kits for Christmas and Easter, and I am always stepping on some half constructed piece or part.  For Christmas the boys also received an annual pass to Legoland, which is not far from us.  I took my oldest during his Spring break (see picture taken in the lobby, above).  He was smitten from the moment he arrived!

In an era where computerized everything seems to prevail, Lego continues to achieve remarkable success.  In fact, an article in Businessweek explains how researchers on staff were able to transfer relevant insights from gaming:

Lego saw it had drawn the wrong lessons from computer games. Instead of focusing on their immediacy, the company now noticed how kids responded to the scoring, ranking, and levels of play—opportunities to demonstrate mastery.

All I know that those little bricks are magic … my kids are so focused and quiet when they are digging through bins and assembling their latest inventions.  I didn’t play with Lego toys much when I was a kid because they really seemed like toys for boys – and apparently I’m not the only one who felt that way.   Research has shown that both boys and girls play with Duplo (the larger blocks), but then something shifts.  The article in Businessweek described the role of researchers in shaping the future of Lego for girls.  The company realized that they were missing 50% of the market, and that they were going have to understand girls’ preferences before they could expect to get their attention.  It’s quite a long article, but here are some of my favorite excerpts:

Lego won’t say how much it spent on its anthropology, but research went on for months and shattered many of the assumptions that had led the company astray.

Encouraged by what it had learned about boys, Lego sent its team back out to scrutinize girls, starting in 2007. The company was surprised to learn that in their eyes, Lego suffered from an aesthetic deficit. “The greatest concern for girls really was beauty,” says Hanne Groth, Lego’s market research manager. Beauty, on the face of it, is an unsurprising virtue for a girl-friendly toy, but based on the ways girls played, Groth says, it came, as “mastery” had for boys, to stand for fairly specific needs: harmony (a pleasing, everything-in-its-right-place sense of order); friendlier colors; and a high level of detail.

The key difference between girls and the ladyfig and boys and the minifig was that many more girls projected themselves onto the ladyfig—she became an avatar. Boys tend to play with minifigs in the third person. “The girls needed a figure they could identify with, that looks like them,” says Rosario Costa, a Lego design director. The Lego team knew they were on to something when girls told them, “I want to shrink down and be there.”

The team did express some concern about reinforcing stereotypes about how girls play, color preferences, and so on.   But at the same time, Lego is confident enough in this new direction and the potential to make inroads into playtime with girls that they opted to wait until after the 2012 Christmas holiday to launch their new line.

More recently, there was an article in Fast Company Design about how General Motors is using LEGO bricks as a data visualization tool for their production problems.  And when I shared that article via Twitter, one of my former colleagues from SAP responded with another article about how one software developer keeps track of where his time is spent using LEGO bricks.  Nowhere near as fun as researching girls at play alongside other anthropologists … but still pretty cool that this highly tactile, visual way of looking at data has value in the work environment too!

And finally, as I was pulling the material for this post together, I came across another blog post referencing Lego.   The article is called Want To Be More Creative?  Get Bored.  The author conducted research for Lego in the 1990s, during a time when the company was concerned about the tendency of computerized toys to switch children into a “passive-interactive mode”.   During some observational exercises with children, the network broke down and the children engaged much more actively with the Lego bricks during the downtime, and even after the computer came back online.  The author cautions against our lack of downtime and boredom, because that lack of structure can provide the ideal conditions for imagination and creativity.

And finally, if you haven’t heard the buzz, there is a new kid on the block in this genre of toys.  They are called Nanoblocks, and they are in a tiny little niche that Lego hasn’t claimed.  Nanoblock are extremely tiny blocks, and they provide kits to reproduce famous landmarks and little animals.  I’ve been working on one for weeks at the office (the Neuschwanstein, which also comes in a deluxe 6000 piece version) – it requires a lot of concentration, and I just can’t find the uninterrupted time to get it done.  The pieces are small but well made, and the finished pieces  have a wonderful amount of detailing.  I know, because although mine is still mostly sitting in a ziplock, many of the guys on my floor have finished the different kits.  So if you haven’t already, check them out!

Last but not least, I came across a fun post the other day entitled Famous Cartoon Characters in Minimalist LEGO Form.  Since I’m not all that knowledgeable about popular culture, some of these elude me.  But since I am raising two young boys at the moment, this one hit me over the head, and I thought you might enjoy it too:

Amazing, isn’t it?!

In our journey to understand how my oldest son Auden experiences the world, I’ve read extensively in the past year or so.  There are a some books and articles that influenced my understanding or my way of looking at Auden’s future, and I wanted to share a few of them with you here.  The pieces that most resonate with me are the ones that recognize that normal is all a matter of perspective.  As a follow up to my Autism Awareness Month post, Neurotypical, I thought I would give the new Nat’s Nibbles format a try again.  The Jennifer Berman shirt depicted below right was given to me by my sister, and it still makes me laugh whenever I wear it.  I don’t know anyone who thinks their parents are completely normal.  What makes you think you’re any different?!

Easy reads

The autobiographical book Look Me In the Eye by John Elder Robinson is a terrific read by a man who only became aware of his Aspbergers in his early 40s.  The book chronicles his early life and challenges as he tries to make sense of a world where he doesn’t easily fit in.  It’s well written, funny, and poignant.

Jodi Picoult’s bestseller House Rules is a novel whose main character is a boy with Aspbergers.  Each chapter is written from the point of view of a different character, and it was really well done.  I felt I had a much better understanding of an Aspie view of the world, and some good reminders about how parents need to care for the siblings in the case where one child demands  more than the others.

I am currently in the midst of reading Jess Saperstein’s Atypical: Life with Aspberger’s in 20 chapters.  The author is still in his early 20s, and he describes his experience of coping with some of his ways of thinking and behaving while living in a neurotypical world.  His level of candor causes me some worry and discomfort when I think about my own son’s future, but it’s still better to understand than not …

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the news

1:38

Last year I read an interesting NPR article about autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) about a prevalence study that was conducted in South Korea.  In the US, the way that that the prevalence of these disorders is estimated is based on medical records.  In other words, it constructs an estimation based on individuals that have already been diagnosed or are seeking some sort of medical intervention.  But in South Korea everyone attends public school, and using the standard diagnostic criteria of the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) they were able to evaluate all the children across multiple school districts.  The study finds that 1 in 38 children are on the autism spectrum.  What’s really astounding to me about that is it means (if true) that two-thirds of the kids with ASDs in the US are not being diagnosed.

Some of the Q&A (much of it parents calling in) was great too.  One of the questions was about the vaccination schedule in South Korea, which is the same as the one we use in the US.  Many parents spoke about the challenges for young children not having good social reciprocity, and the bullying and other challenges that they face with their peers as they move into early adulthood.  It’s a tough story, but definitely worth it,  Here is the abstract of the complete article in the American Journal of Psychiatry if you’re interested.

Social neuroscience

There is an emergent field called social neuroscience, which is working to make the connect between our growing understanding of the brain and what we have learned about human behavior from in the social sciences.  One of my favorite bloggers is Jonah Lehrer, who writes at the intersection of these fields.  In a recent blog post called Thinking Smarter About People Who Think Differently, he posted an interview with Steve Silberman, which really resonated with me:

Lehrer has also written a few other posts on this topic, including a recent piece called The Upside of Autism on the Wall Street Journal site.

Over-diagnosis

There is a growing concern that ASDs are being over diagnosed, and also some strong indication that the American Psychiatric Association is going to revise the diagnostic manual (DSM) as it regards ASDs.

Steve Silberman (blogger at Neurotribes) endeavored to tackle this question in an article in Wired magazine entitled The Geek Syndrome, about the growing prevalence of ASD-related diagnoses in Silicon Valley.

Well-known people on the Autism Spectrum

There are numerous sites which explore the question of which famous people may have had Aspbergers Syndrome, including this one.  Some of the names that come up repeatedly are Albert Einstein and Bill Gates, among others.  But what is more interesting to me is people who are known to be on the Spectrum, and who are writing and speaking in the public domain about their experiences, most notably John Elder Robison and Temple Grandin.

Interview with John Elder Robison, author of Look Me in the Eye (one of the books I recommended above).

Temple Grandin was the subject of Oliver Sack’s essay An Anthropologist on Mars.  She has since written numerous books of her own, and been the subject of a movie.

An expert overview

Dr. James Coplan is the pediatric neurodevelopmental psychologist that evaluated Auden for us.  I found his book extremely helpful in understanding the autism spectrum and what we could expect with / for Auden over time, the reason for the growing number of diagnoses, and the kinds of things we could to do help Auden be successful.

Other moms

The blog post that most influenced my desire to write a blog post about our experiences is not a regular blogger about autism.  Sandy blogs about beadwork and her family, and I just happen to follow her in my RSS reader.  Her post about ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) on the eve of World Autism Day resonated with me and inspired me to write as well.  The Neurotribes blog post linked above provides links to numerous others who blog regularly on the topic, including:

• http://autistichoya.blogspot.com/
• http://www.Squidalicious.com/
• http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/
• http://www.journeyswithautism.com/
• http://www.wrongplanet.net/
• http://juststimming.wordpress.com

I am sure there are many more that I have not yet come across.  I’d love to hear about your recommended reading (including favorite blogs) in the comments!

I remember the first time I heard the term Aspbergers in relation to my older son.   It was about a year ago, and my partner had just started a new job so I went by myself to his Parent / Teacher Conference.  I had postponed the meetings a few times for various reasons, so I was surprised when I showed up at the school and both the Executive Director and the Director of Education were there to meet with me.  They expressed their concerns about my son’s development.  They focused in particular on his social skills, but they also raised concerns about a variety of other developmental delays.  I remember blithely dismissing their feedback on his social skills, at first, but they persisted.  Many of the things they were describing didn’t seem that strange to me.  I grew up on ten acres in rural Connecticut, so for me playing by myself for hours at a time didn’t seem that unusual – it was, in fact, expected.  And my dad is a physicist and engineer who enjoys technology and takes his time building relationships with people.  At the same time, some of what I was being told resonated with me deeply, especially Auden’s difficulty in interacting with his peers.  An hour later I left the daycare in tears, desperately fearful for my son’s future.

In the days and weeks following that meeting, I did all kinds of research and reading, and cried some more.  Although the daycare staff had their concerns about Auden, mine were somewhat different.  I was worried that he bit his nails down to the quick – what could a three year old be so anxious about?  At Christmastime, he seemed to appreciate the predictability of the Advent calendar, and I realized how much he preferred routine and predictability.  But life, as we all know, is not orderly and predictable (as much as we try to provide that for our small children).  How could I help our beautiful, perfect little boy be successful in a world that was inherently stressful to him?

After a discussion with our pediatrician, I began to call specialists to get some more guidance, and finally selected Dr. James Coplan to evaluate Auden.  I read Dr. Coplan’s book Making Sense of Autistic Spectrum Disorders, and prepared our family for a half day visit to his office.  That visit afforded us the chance to see our son’s behavior through the eyes of an expert, and get some very structured feedback about the social challenges Auden was facing.  It turns out he’s on the Spectrum … but just barely.  The diagnosis of PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Delays – Not Otherwise Specified) ensured that Auden could receive a wide variety of social services.

As it turns out, we are quite lucky to have a teacher that was so attentive, because she recognized the signs well before many kids are diagnosed (around kindergarten or first grade).   In retrospect, I can say that I’m happy that Auden was diagnosed when he was.  It allowed us to secure all kinds of specialized services for him in the past year, and he is headed to mainstream kindergarten in the Fall.  But I am still frustrated about the definition of normal.  I’ve come full circle now, and I still think Auden is perfect in every way.  He’s just not like everyone else.  He is smart and extremely focused – when he’s deeply engaged in something, other parents often watch him with wonder saying “I wish my kid was focused like that”.  He enjoys playing by himself or near us, but doesn’t need to be constantly engaged to be content.  He does have some food preferences, but what four year old doesn’t?!  He does like a certain amount of predictability and routine (as do I), and we struggle to find the balance between telling him about changes that are coming, and not wanting him to get too stressed out ahead of time.

So besides helping him understand the realities of life, the thing that I’m the most worried about is how is peers perceive and treat him.  I have watched him struggling to engage kids his own age, not understanding why he can’t connect.  As he gets older, I fear that he may be lonely or bullied.  In fact, the guidance we received from Dr. Coplan is that the most important thing we can do for Auden at the moment is to preserve and cultivate his self-esteem.  It will give him courage to continue to learn, to try to bridge the differences between his world and the neurotypical one of most of his peers.  I can only hope that – as public awareness grows – they will meet him halfway, and without judgement.

As community members, as parents, as neurotypicals (if you happen to believe you’re normal!), we shape the perceptions of people around us, and particularly our children. I can only hope that we focus a little less energy on finding the genetic or biological basis for autism, and focus more on raising awareness of the wide range of social and neurological ways of experiencing the world.  And that we make room for them all.   In closing, a small example.  Before we moved from Pennsylvania, one of Auden’s teachers saw him as a behavioral problem in class, due to his apparent hyperactivity and difficulty in interacting appropriately with his peers (Aspbergers is often misdiagnosed as hyperactivity).  We were lucky that he was moved to a new room, and with a new teacher that recognized his Aspie tendencies.  In our new school system, his teachers saw that he was struggling to sit still in circle time.  They tried to put him in a chair that would (in effect) create the necessary physical space between him and his peers.  But he was squirmy and uncomfortable, so they tried a rocking chair.  Lo and behold, the kid can rock during circle time, so he’s able to get that little bit of repetitive movement that he needs to be focused and attentive.  A small thing, but hugely important both for the classroom dynamic and his sense of self-worth.  It rocks.  As simple as that.

As a result of our library adventures, we have read some fun new books in the past few weeks, including one called Oh, Ducky!: A Chocolate Calamity by David Slomin.  It is cute, and there are a few of the illustrations that are just terrific! I am still enjoying my new job – but if I had to get new job, it might look something like this:

Quality control for a chocolate factory, seriously?!  And, by the way, Pauline is not as frumpy as she might appear – her hobby is playing the timpani drums.

As the story progresses, Johnny’s rubber ducky gets stuck in the factory equipment, causing everything to come to a screeching halt.  Mr. Peters (the inventor and factory owner) scubas through the vats and tubing to discover the cause of the clog.  Instead of being mad that his factory and his chocolate is wrecked by a pet rubber ducky, he is inspired:

Who wouldn’t love to work in a job where chocolatey disasters are the cause for inspiration?!

• Steve Portigal’s blog called All This ChittahChattah.  From my vantage point, it seems as though Steve been writing consistently for years.  I first got to know him through his newsletter Fresh Meat, later through his contributions to a list that I manage called anthrodesign, and through his blog.  He’s now also working on a book.  If there is someone I could learn from in terms of writing habits, it’s Steve!  He periodically posts ChittahChatttah Quickies like this one, which is one of the inspirations for this new type of post I’m trying today.

• Dina Mehta has had a couple of different incarnations on her websites and blogs over the years.  Her latest site is called Conversations with Dina.  She frequently posts Reading Bytes like this one which I find interesting and easy to consume.

• Adaptive Path keeps a nice blog, maintained by members of their staff.  They have a blog post format called Signpost for the Week Ending … which they use to capture some of the interesting material they’ve come across.

I’m using these as a model for what I’m trying to do here …  it should be interesting to see how it goes!  So here are some of the highlights from my reading and browsing this week, grouped into a few themes:

Applied anthropologists in the news:

• A thoughtful and emotion-laden post by Mark Dawson entitled Why I Chose Not to Get a PhD.
• An article about the work of Dan Russell, an anthropologist focusing on the user experience of search at Google.

Amazon’s eBook strategy:

• An article by Charlie Stross about Amazon and their eBook strategy.  I learned some new vocabulary words in this one!  He says that “the peculiar evil genius of Amazon is that Amazon seems to be trying to simultaneously establish a wholesale monopsony and a retail monopoly in the ebook sector”.

In case you didn’t know what a monopsony is (I didn’t!), Stross defines it as:

a market form in which only one buyer faces many sellers. It is an example of imperfect competition, similar to a monopoly, in which only one seller faces many buyers. As the only or majority purchaser of a good or service, the “monopsonist” may dictate terms to its suppliers in the same manner that a monopolist controls the market for its buyers.

• I also found this article about Amazon and Best Buy of interest.  The other graph in this article demonstrates without question that Amazon’s growth trajectory is clearly related to the introduction of One-Click, Amazon Prime, and (most recently) their focus on the ebook market.  I’ve been interested in the happenings at Best Buy since I read about their foray into a Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE), as written about by Dan Pink and referenced in one of my earlier blog posts about improving employee satisfaction.  In spite of their interesting work on HR practices, I’m not surprising to see them struggling against the efficacy that is afforded to busy people by rapid ordering and shipping through online retailers.

I have been waffling for months now about whether to make my electronic book purchases via the iTunes Store (where I buy all my other media, and prices and selection are good), or Amazon (where I have purchased most of my books for years).  There are pros and cons to the user experience of both the iBook and the Kindle app for my iPad, but the killer feature on the Kindle Reader for me is unequivocably the ability to read books both on my iPad and in a browser.  There are a few heated threads on this topic in the Apple forums, which Apple continues to ignore.  But I know they are listening, because I posted to the thread and my post content was edited!  Anyhow, I’m still experimenting with both, so this perspective on the Amazon as retailer was of interest.

The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to work trend:

• The first article from Gigaom is about the need for IT functions to effectively enable mobile access to enterprise applications via improved API management.

• As a rabid Apple fan, I couldn’t help but enjoy the flurry of blog posts around Forrester’s recent report about Apple products in the workplace.  Here is one from the CNN Technology column and from Engadget - whose graphic appears below:

In 2008, Forrester encouraged IT departments to eschew supporting Apple products.  So it’s even more compelling that they are now making the connection between the employees they call HEROs (Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives) and the need to support a more flexible approach to enterprise IT. A quote from the report via the CNN article:

“Most of the Macs today,” writes Johnson, “are being freewheeled into the office by executives, top sales reps, and other workaholics. Forrester believes this is the same demographic that we’re now calling the “power laptop user,” and according to the latest Workforce Technology And Engagement Survey, power laptop users make 44% more money, use more collaboration apps, and carry an average of three devices wherever they go.”

And Forrester goes even further to suggest that enterprise IT will see a 50% uptick in spending on Apple products this year.

In closing:

Ok, well, that was more like a seven course meal than a nibble!  But hopefully that will not be the case once I’ve cleared some of the backlog.  I’ve read lots of other great stuff in the past few weeks, which I hope to share them in upcoming posts.  In the meantime, I’d be interested to know what you think of this first attempt to deliver Nat’s Nibbles!

When I try to distill what the changes have meant for me on the work front, what I keep coming back to is the pleasure of being picked.  I chose my boss and he chose me, so there is plenty of mutual appreciation and respect.  I spent most of my career at SAP as a hand-me-down, and it’s just not the same as a mutual selection process where both people are appreciative and highly cognizant of the fact that there were other choices.  And I really enjoy being valued!  I think sometimes when you’ve been in one place for so long, people do take you, your energy, your talents for granted.  As much as I enjoyed working at SAP and I loved the team I left behind, I don’t think I was really valued and appreciated in the same way that I am now.

I have made about half of my new hires for the year, and I’m enjoying the process of building a team.  At the same time I remain super aware of what it is like for all the people working for me that I inherited.  I don’t pretend to know them well, or to understand what makes them tick … or to presume that they enjoy working for me.  I know all too well what’s it’s like to be a misunderstood hand-me-down.  The mutual appreciation and respect will (hopefully) emerge over time.  In the meantime, I am doing my best to make sure that members of my team don’t feel alienated by my arrival.

So, the change is good, but it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination!  The transition for my family  (into a new house, new neighborhood, new schools) is one thing.  And the new job is interesting and good.  But what continues to amaze me is how different the work culture is.  I frequently joke that I’m spending as much time unlearning as I am learning …

• The two founders (Andy and Prabha) started ZS as an extension of their research and consulting work at Northwestern.  There is a strong spirit of intellectual curiosity, appreciation for the exchange of ideas, while at the same time a strong orientation to our clients (mostly pharmaceutical and medical device companies).

• ZS headquarters are in Evanston, and our offices are in a building that belongs to the University.  Evanston is a city of 70K, but the area right around the university is very pretty, walkable, and lively.  There are lots of good places to eat, and the people watching is good too.  It was unseasonably warm a few weeks ago, and when I sent a spontaneous note to everyone in our team, I was able to get about 15 people to grab lunch and go sit on the shore of Lake Michigan for lunch. It was beautiful and fun!  SAP’s U.S. headquarters were on a beautiful, 350-acre campus, and in the Spring and Summer people often walked or ran on the trails around campus.  But we had to carpool to have an offsite lunch, which just isn’t the same!

• The organization is a democracy.  The most critical company decisions are made by a select group of individuals who have earned partnership status in the firm due to their tenure and their contributions.  The Managing Director is elected by the employees.  The profits are re-invested and/or shared with employees, and when money is tight, the most senior people take  bigger financial hit, because they recognize the leadership and management is their responsibility.  I knew that being privately held would make a difference, but it’s been super interesting to see how it plays out in practice.  The only real downside I can see is that there is sometimes the need for a lot of lateral alignment before things can get done, and for someone new to the organization, it can be hard to discern who the actual decision-maker is (or if there even is one!).

• My boss is a Principal and the Chief Technology Officer.  I can’t say enough what a pleasure it is to work for someone who is senior, seasoned, calm and understands the value and discipline of User Experience.  Oftentimes when I describe a problem, he’s able to use his experience to deduce what the root cause might be … which in most cases is consistent with my assumptions as well.  His experience at both Intuit (where he ran the Turbo Tax division) and Claris (which is/was the software division of Apple) have given him exposure best practices that we’re trying to bring to ZS.

• The company is about 2000 employees, and there are about 120 of us in the Software Development (SD) group.  I really enjoy being around developers!   The individuals I’ve worked with so far are logical, calm, thoughtful, practical, easy to work with.  The men on my paternal side were engineers and scientists, so maybe it’s just familiar and comfortable … who knows!    I do know that (with the exception of situations where we have productive systems down) there are very few fire-drills.  I am sure that is not quite the same on the consulting side, but at least in SD we have a sense of urgency but very few emergencies.  As our product management organization gets more mature, I think it will become even more that way, since we’ll have a long-term, shared understanding of our goals and plenty of time to get prepared and manage expectations.

• At least in part, that predictability comes from our growing commitment to work in an Agile way.  We have four main solution areas, and those development teams are at varying degrees of maturity around their use of Agile methods and processes.  The teams that are fully committed to it are doing well – both in terms of team spirit and their achievements.  And the other teams are trying.  Although there some challenges in bringing User Experience and Agile together (more about that in another post), in general I feel like Agile creates a healthy, positive climate for the developers (who represent the majority of the organization).

• The composition of my team is also different.   When I arrived, I was given responsibility for managing several designers and front-end developers.  There were no researchers on staff (those are the positions I’m hiring for now).  At different points in my career at SAP, I managed an operations staff in Bangalore and in our U.S. offices, Solution Architects and Technical Analysts, Program Managers, and User Experience professionals.  I really miss having experienced program and project managers on staff!  But what I am getting into and enjoying is the management of experienced front-end developers, and in particular how it’s deepening my understanding of what it takes to make good user experience real.  In the end, that was one of my hopes in taking this job, so I’m really enjoying that aspect of my new role.

• The layout of the office is very different.  We have a kitchenette (which we share with other departments on the same floor), including a refrigerator, microwaves, dishwasher, dishes and silverware.  The company supplies hot and cold cereal, milk, coffee, and an assortment of Snapple.  There is no cafeteria but there is such a nice selection of places to eat in Evanston that it’s just not necessary.  The main part of our floor is an open area with windows along one wall, where the developers sit in pods.  There are also a couple of tables and small seating areas where people sit together at lunchtime to talk, play Magic the Gathering, or board games.  There is a fair amount of interaction, but when they are deep in their own work, many of them work with headsets on, staring intently at their three (yes, three) monitors.   As people get more senior, they earn spots closer to the windows, shared offices, and eventually private offices.  A very few people (myself included) have private offices with windows.  I love love love having an office!  It’s the first time in my career, and I feel extremely lucky to have this beautiful space with three windows, a giant whiteboard (to the left off the frame in the photo below), and the ability to close my door when I don’t want to be interrupted.

• One of the other things that is so different for me is having almost everyone I need to work with within a short walk of my office.  I will eventually have more members of my team in Pune, India, but for now everyone that works for me is based in Evanston, and we all come into the office five days a week.  Because there is just a little less craziness than in my old job, I have breaks in my schedule that enable me to walk around, stop in and talk to team members, and interact with many other members of the team.  That is so different fro my last team at SAP, where the majority of the organization was in Germany and/or India.  The U.S. team was a satellite team, and people worked remotely to varying degrees (somewhere between three and five days a week).  I did my share of complaining about the cubicles, and since a lot of my time in the office was spent in one-on-ones or team meetings, I spent almost all my time in the office in a conference room.  The upside of that was almost everyone that worked for me was in the office on the same cubicle row.  It was easy to check in with people in the morning, to spontaneously exchange ideas or see who wanted to grab a coffee or lunch.  So, I did see the benefits of that layout and I miss it to some degree because there is virtually no unplanned interaction with members of my team.  And, in reality the offices are not that quiet.  There is a fair amount of activity in the hallways and nearby conference rooms, and the walls are thin enough that if you really want to tune out the noise you have to listen to music.  Which I have been doing a fair amount at work, and I’m really enjoying it!

• One of the side effects of both the pace and the co-location is that I have almost completely stopped using my Blackberry. I do use it to monitor email if I’m away from my desk for a few hours or out of the office for some reason, but it almost never rings for work, and I’m not chained to it the way I was before.  In fact, sometimes I forget to charge it because I have so little need for it!  In the past it was ringing all the time, and I had to keep abreast of email.  I also used it while I was in transit to handle issues with India and Germany (during my commute in) and with California (during my commute home).  As I and my team interact more with the consulting organization and with our end-user community, I’m sure that will change.  And of course as my team grows I’ll likely get busier and busier.

In the meantime, I am really enjoying my new role and the organization.  I also really appreciate the fact that it leaves me with energy and enthusiasm for my life outside of work, including my family and my hobbies.  At the office I’m working on new challenges with interesting people, and at a pace that allows me to be thoughtful and thorough about solving the problems in front of me.  I am looking forward to sharing more with you about my work and our current projects going forward!

I started a mommy blog in 2006, but once I had kids, it became difficult to blend my tweets and posts about poopy diapers with my life in the business world.  So in 2008 I split the family blog into another domain.  I was posting the equivalent of once every three days on the mommy blog, but the professional blog continues to suffer some neglect by comparison …

However, in my new job I am focused full time on building and running a User Experience team, and it’s impossible to not get attuned to current trends in web design!  When I first started blogging in 2006, people had a website and a separate blog.  There were two sites to maintain, and the integration was never great with the tools I had at my disposal.  Today, WordPress has such robust content management capabilities that it’s possible to have both together on one platform, as I’ve done here.

Perhaps even more importantly, the look-and-feel today is much more open and airy (perhaps in part inspired by the visual space and tactile affordance that tablets require).  And of course, screen resolutions are higher quality so the standard width of pages is significantly larger now.  There are a bunch of other things I could point out, but those are the glaring ones that should make sense to most everyone.  Here are screenshots of my former sites:

The transition was forced by the fact that Apple appears to have lost interest in continuing development of their iWeb solution, so I had no good way to maintain my website.  As I was evaluating how to proceed, I came across the Elegant Themes website, which offered a bunch of beautiful and contemporary designs that I could implement in WordPress.  I selected the Chameleon theme as the foundation for the redesign, and before I knew it, I was up to my eyeballs in designing and rebuilding my website and blog at the same time!  For those of you that know me, that will probably not come as a surprise.  :)

The site you’re viewing now remains pretty true to that original template, but I made some small navigational improvements throughout, so Chameleon had a child named Froggy – which is why I am introducing Froggy today.  (In case you’re wondering, the cute little frog appearing in my header is from a company called Stuck On You that provides kids labels for daycare and school.  The little frog is from their Classic Labels line, and it’s the image I chose for my own labels.  Juvenile, I know. But cute, right?!)

To celebrate the launch of this Chameleon-based site, I thought I would share some pictures that I came across online.  Igor Siwanowicz is a photographer that does a lot of work with insects and reptiles – I think his work is amazing!  The close up of the tail (above) has such extraordinary light and texture – it looks like beads to me (read the About page to learn more about my obsession with beads and beading).  And looking at these other two pictures gave me a whole new appreciation for what chameleons actually do.

I look forward to sharing continued improvements of this site with you, and to being inspired by a beautiful new look-and-feel to write more about what I’m working on and reading about these days.  In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy exploring the site as a work-in-progress.  The Photography area displays images from two of my three trips to Asia – China (1991) and Bali (1993).  I hope to post the pictures from Japan (2010) in the next few weeks.

Please come back soon to see how the site is continuing to take shape!

What is so wonderful about it – to me at least – is that it brings together the math which produces the curves in the pasta, the technical reproduction of the pasta shape (which looks like a stipple contour drawing!), and then photographs, a brief origin / history of the shape, and even recommendations on how to eat it!

You can browse the interactive site on the New York Times website.

And a shout-out to one of my favorite bloggers Nathan Yau at FlowingData, for his brief post and link to the original work.

So when one of my ZS colleagues posted on an internal community about 3 Tiny Habits research that was discussed on NPR, my curiosity was piqued.   The project is being conducted by Stanford professor and industry consultant BJ Fogg, and on one of the Slideshare.net presentations he developed with his students, the first of the top ten mistakes in behavioral change is “relying on willpower for long-term change”.  In an article on QUEST (a multimedia science series and website), Dr. Fogg says that we are much better off trying to make small changes rather than sweeping adjustments in our lives.  Part of the reason appears to be that making small changes forces us to be more specific both about what we are trying to do and how we need to adjust our behavior.  The example that Fogg provides in the article is that he plays a specific chord sequence on his ukelele.  He leaves the instrument in a place that is visible and accessible to him so that he is reminded of the behavioral change he is trying to achieve.

This perspective is consistent with other things I’ve heard in the past:

• The first is by my favorite blogger Jonah Lehrer, who researches and writes at the intersection of neuroscience and social sciences.  His most recent post is called The Willpower Trick, and he says that “willpower is really about properly directing the spotlight of attention, learning how to control that short list of thoughts in working memory”, which is a different perspective but nonetheless consistent with the 3 Tiny Habits approach.   He provides the example of the infamous Marshmallow Study, which showed that kids who were most effective in resisting the temptation to eat a marshmallow (in favor of two later), were those who actually tried to do or think about something else during the testing window.  If you’re interested in a quick summary of his book How We Decide, you can read a summary of the webinar I attended.

• Michael Idinopulos is a social media strategist whose work I was exposed to a few years ago.  He argues that people are more likely to engage with technologies that fit ‘in the flow’ of how they work.  It seems to me that the idea of having the ukelele close at hand takes that approach to some degree.

One person pointed out that personal changes are not unlike corporate Change Management initiatives, and I would agree – have a clear plan, get people on board, measure what you manage, and provide specific, direct guidance to keep people on the trajectory you’ve established.  Since corporations are essentially comprised of people, it’s not terribly surprising that we struggle with change management much as we struggle to keep New Year’s resolutions.

But one option appears to be starting a Tiny Habit or three.  Not sure yet if I can commit myself 100% to the approach, since I’m not sure what incremental adjustments I can make.  Fogg talks about the act of flossing one tooth, which you can incorporate into the flow of your bathroom routine, and over time, you floss more and more until  you’ve established a new habit which includes all your teeth (hopefully you still have some by the time you get there).  So … should I commit to putting on workout clothes 3-5 times a week, even if I never make it to the treadmill?  Not sure yet!  But if you think that the 3 Tiny Habits program could be for you, here is a page to get you started with his program.

Happy flossing!

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.