Kent State UXD Program- UXD in Practice Reflective Journaling Week 1

I am in the learning and development industry and one of the skills that has been getting some press is something called performance consulting.  It is really the act of making sure creating an online course (most common example) is really the solution needed to address a performance/business problem.  Since taking the UX courses at Kent State I've realized that a performance consultant is a kind of designer.  A performance consultant thinks about the experience of the audience in a very similar way that a UX professional does.  A performance consultant looks at the areas of motivation just as a UX professional leverages empathy in the same way to understand a specific problem or opportunity.  In fact, there are more similarities than differences.  A performance consultant is in a manner of speaking a UX professional that focuses on the design of business performance.  The biggest difference is that a performance consultant is more aligned with the business than a standard UX professional because that is the lane where performance consultants and learning professionals work so to speak.   The client in the case of a performance consultant is always the business.  While this doesn't create a lot of variety, the principals of UX can help ensure there is always an alignment to the business by using principals in visual design and techniques such as creating prototypes.

Kent State UXD Program:Reflective Journaling Week 7

This week I wanted to highlight a book I just completed listening to (using audible) for the second time called Mindful Leadership.  The concept of Mindful Leadership has a place for every person but specifically for designers of any industry.


Last week I mentioned that as a designer when you start to ask good questions you start to earn the trust of your client/customer.  But as a individual in our hectic day of life it can be hard to find the space to ask good questions.  When this happens it becomes less about creativity and more about getting the job done.  Janice Marturano in her book "Finding the Space to Lead: A Practical Guide to Mindful Leadership" offers a practical guide to mindful leadership and one of the core principals is Creativity.  Creativity, Compassion, Focus, and Clarity form the foundation and as she describes in her book all of them are needed to be mindful in a leadership setting.


I strongly recommend the book to anyone who has found themselves doing things almost automatically without thinking about it.  If you find yourself asking why you are doing one thing in particular and cannot clearly answer that question this is a great book to steer yourself back to the path you are destined for.




I prefer the audible edition because she also includes several meditation practices on it.


Here is the Kindle version link


http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Space-Lead-Practical-Leadership-ebook/dp/B00EB80Y9Y/ref=pd_sim_351_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=417DT56KnzL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=08DJBSF1M2GEEVXP32ZZ