The Informed Life

Latest Episodes:

Erin Malone on Pattern Libraries Sep 11, 2022

Show notes

Erin Malone is the Chair of the Interaction Design BFA Program at the California College of the Arts. In this conversation, we focus on Erin’s long trajectory with design pattern libraries, including her recent work with the Anti-Defamation League developing tools and best practices to fight online hate.

Show notes

Erin Malone (LinkedIn)
@emalone (Twitter)
Interaction Design Program at the California College of the Arts
Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
ADL’s Social Pattern Library
Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improving the User Experience, Second Edition by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone
IA Conference
Yahoo! Design Pattern Library (archive.org)
Irene Au
Christina Wodtke
Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design, Third Edition by Jennifer Tidwell
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander
An Event Apart
Nathan Curtis
EightShapes
Brad Frost
Atomic Design by Brad Frost
Material Design
Dave Sifry
Creative Commons

Show notes include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

Natalie Marie Dunbar on Scaling Content Strategy Aug 28, 2022

Show notes

Natalie Marie Dunbar is a senior manager of content design at Walmart. She’s the author of From Solo to Scaled: Building a Sustainable Content Strategy Practice. In this conversation, we discuss content strategy, how it might differ from information architecture, and how to stand up a content strategy practice.

Natalie has asked me to let you know that rosenfeldmedia.com has a promo code for The Informed Life listeners. The code is INFORMEDLIFESTS, and it’s good for 20% off the purchase of any Rosenfeld Media book until December 31, 2022.

Show notes

Natalie Marie Dunbar (LinkedIn)
theliterati (Twitter)
theliterati (Instagram)
From Solo to Scaled: Building a Sustainable Content Strategy Practiceby Natalie Marie Dunbar
Walmart
Information Architecture: An Emerging 21st Century Profession, by Earl Morrogh
Louis Rosenfeld
Kristina Halvorson
Content Strategy for the Web, 2nd Edition by Kristina Halvorson
World IA Day
Why You Need Two Types of Content Strategist by Ann Rockley
Marie Kondo
OKR
Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture by Mario Salvadori
Barnali Banerji (LinkedIn)
The Web Content Strategist’s Bible: The Complete Guide To A New And Lucrative Career For Writers Of All Kinds by Richard Sheffield
Enterprise Content Strategy: A Project Guide by Kevin Nichols

Disclosure: I received Natalie’s book for free as a previous Rosenfeld Media/Two Waves author.

Show notes include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

Howard Rheingold on Tools for Thought Aug 14, 2022

Show notes

Howard Rheingold is an eminent author, maker, and educator. His work has explored and defined key aspects of digital culture, including the use of computers as tools for mind augmentation, virtual communities, and social media literacy.
In this conversation, we discuss computers as extensions for our minds, Douglas Engelbart’s unfinished revolution, basic literacies for interacting in information environments, and the resurgence of Tools for Thought.

Photo by Joi Ito (CC BY 2.0)

Show notes

Howard Rheingold (rheingold.com)
Howard’s Patreon
Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology by Howard Rheingold
The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier by Howard Rheingold
Net Smart: How to Thrive Online by Howard Rheingold
HotWired
Whole Earth Catalog
Institute for the Future
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
Steve Jobs
Bill Gates
Douglas Engelbart
John von Neumann
Alan Turing
George Boole
Charles Babbage
Alan Kay
Mother of All Demos (Wikipedia)
Stanford Research Institute
Sam Wineburg
Roam Research
Obsidian
DEVONthink
The Brain
Jerry Michalski
Jerry’s Brain
Render(); Tools for Thinking conference
Brian Eno
Scenius, or Communal Genius by Kevin Kelly

Show notes include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

Lorenzo Bernaschina on Gems Notes Jul 31, 2022

Show notes

Lorenzo Bernaschina is the developer of Gems Notes, a note-taking tool that uses artificial intelligence to find relationships between ideas. In this conversation, we talk about smart note-taking and how technology might be used to extend rather than replace human intelligence.
Update 2022-08-14: This episode was edited at the guest’s request.

Show notes

Show notes include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

Steve Portigal on Research Skills Jul 17, 2022

Show notes

Steve Portigal is a consultant who helps organizations build more mature user research practices. He’s the author of Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights and Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries: User Research War Stories. He’s also the host of the Dollar to Donuts podcast about research leadership. In this conversation, we discuss the skills required for conducting successful interviews with users.

Show notes

Steve Portigal (portigal.com)
Steve Portigal (linkedin.com)
Portigal Consulting
Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights by Steve Portigal
Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries: User Research War Stories by Steve Portigal
Dollars to Donuts podcast
Dale Carnegie
Dunning-Kruger effect

Show notes include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

Daniel Stillman on Conversation Design Jul 03, 2022

Show notes

Daniel Stillman is a conversation designer and coach. He’s the host of The Conversation Factory podcast and author of Good Talk: How to Design Conversations That Matter.

This is a special episode of The Informed Life: it’s the first recorded in person, while Daniel and I attended and taught at UX Lisbon in May of 2022. Fittingly, it’s an experiment: a freeform, less produced conversation about how we converse. In some cases, this results in less context than you may expect. In particular, you’ll hear references to the names of other speakers at the conference. I’ve included links to their profiles in the show notes.

Show notes

Daniel Stillman
The Conversation Factory podcast
Good Talk: How to Design Conversations That Matter by Daniel Stillman
The Nine Elements of Transformative Facilitation by Daniel Stillman (includes a diagram of Daniel’s conversation operating system)
UX Lisbon conference
Bernadette Irizarry (UX Lisbon)
Matt LeMay (UX Lisbon)
Natalie Nixon (UX Lisbon)
Katie Swindler (UX Lisbon)
Scott Kubie (UX Lisbon)
One Page/One Hour
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Abby Covert
Dave Gray
Philip McKenzie
Leland Maschmeyer
What is the Negotiation Institute? (harvard.edu)
Ladies Get Paid
Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? by Aaron Dignan
Carl Collins
Swissmiss (Tina Roth Eisenberg)
Daniel Mezick
Richard Saul Wurman
Andy Polaine
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Viktor Frankl
Joe Rogan

Show notes include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

Mike Rohde on Sketchnote Thinking Jun 19, 2022

Show notes

Mike Rohde is a designer, teacher, and illustrator — but you’re more likely familiar with his work in sketchnoting. Mike is the author of The Sketchnote Handbook, which popularized the practice, and the founder of the Sketchnote Army, a showcase of sketchnoters and their work. He’s been described as “one of the leaders of the visual thinking revolution.” In this conversation, we discuss how Mike’s approach to visual note-taking has influenced his work.

Show notes

Mike Rohde
rohdesign.com
The Rohdesign Dispatch (Mike’s newsletter)
Mike Rohde on LinkedIn
@rohdesign on Instagram
@rohdesign on Twitter
The Sketchnote Handbook: The Illustrated Guide to Visual Note Takingby Mike Rohde
The Sketchnote Workbook: Advanced Techniques for Taking Visual Notes You Can Use Anywhere by Mike Rohde
The Sketchnote Army
The Sketchnote Army podcast
Adobe PageMill
Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think by Dave Gray
Bullet Journal
Ryder Carroll
Ulysses
Markdown
Zettelkasten
The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking by Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer (PDF)

Show notes include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

Kat King on Notes for Learning Jun 05, 2022

Show notes

Kat King is an information architect who’s “interested in information and how we figure things out.” She replied to one of my Twitter threads about note-taking, and I was intrigued by her approach. I recently saw Kat give a thoughtful presentation at the IA Conference and wanted to find out how she uses notes to learn and teach. So, this conversation focuses on note-taking as a means of learning.

Show notes

Show notes include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

Sam Ladner on Managing Research Knowledge May 22, 2022

Show notes

Sam Ladner is a sociologist, UX researcher, and student of productivity and the nature of work. She’s been a researcher at Amazon and Microsoft, and is currently Senior Principal Researcher at Workday. Sam is the author of two books on research, Practical Ethnography and Mixed Methods. In this conversation, we discuss sociology and ethnography in the context of organizations and how to manage the knowledge generated by research.

Show notes

Sam Ladner
Sam Ladner on LinkedIn
Workday
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighborhood by David Simon and Edward Burns
Mixed Methods: A short guide to applied mixed methods research by Sam Ladner
Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector by Sam Ladner
Ethnographic Practice and Industry Conference (EPIC)
Pierre Bourdieu
Clifford Geertz
Mise en place
Amazon Kindle
Overdrive
Libby
Notion
Mendeley
Pocket
Readwise
Satisficing
Herbert Simon
Thick description

Show notes include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

Austin Govella on the IA of Note-taking May 08, 2022

Show notes

Austin Govella is a user experience design lead at Avanade, a global professional services company. He’s the author of Collaborative Product Design and co-author of the second edition of Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web. In this conversation, we focus on Austin’s note-taking system and its relation to his work in UX design and information architecture.

Show notes