#18. Making troubles, Twitter sadness
plus Nigella's trifle, Stone Blind, I Hate Suzie Too and Pre-History Podcast
Hello!
Is it too late to say Happy New Year? I don’t think so. Happy New Year!
More like unhappy flu year for me though as I’m writing this lying in bed trying to recover from wave three of being ill since mid-December. It ruined my end of year work party, my Christmas dinner, and now my first week back at work. I hope you managed to avoid it.
Of course I intend to write more this year. As always. So here’s the first writing of 2023.
Making troubles
One of the recurring themes of my career since switching to be a designer in 2011 has been trying to get closer to making things. I started at design agencies but felt a gnawing unease about doing theoretical work that was handed over to other teams to build. I moved to work in multidisciplinary teams but ended up spending lots of energy coping with being in large organisations that were often dysfunctional.
So in 2018 I made two moves to get closer to making things.
On the one hand, I moved roles to be a product manager rather than a designer. This was borne out of frustration at the dynamics within teams where the product manager held the power about what to make rather than the designers. Because in the end the product manager - at least in the places I worked - was the person who set direction and made prioritisation decisions. If you can’t beat them join them etc.
On the other hand, I moved to work at startups - first Local Welcome in 2018 and now CastRooms in 2022. This was borne out of frustration at the dynamics within large organisations where random stakeholders held the power about what to make (and what not to make). Projects would get started, stopped, or changed as part of the organisational weather. Frustrating and crushing at times.
I have definitely got closer to making things as a result! But it’s brought new angsts.
One worry is whether I’m actually good enough to make good things in the first place. The thing about getting this close to making things is that there’s nowhere to hide any more! No other team members to blame for prioritising the wrong things. No other stakeholders to get annoyed at for shifting the landscape. So rather than being frustrated at not getting to make things, these days I live in a world of constantly second-guessing whether we are making the right things. It’s an improvement from where I was but it’s not the promised land I imagined.
Another worry is that I’m losing my credentials in the world of larger organisations and more formalised separation of disciplines. One huge part of the discourse on blogs, twitter and at conferences is about how to get work done in large organisations. Another huge part is about how to grow and protect the influence of your own chosen discipline amongst the patchwork of disciplines that make up our teams. I am no longer part of these conversations and even though this is a result of my own choices it still feels….isolating. And there’s a fear that I won’t be employable back in those organisations if I ever decide to go back…which in a tech downturn is a little worrying.
But I do love being this close to making things. I love the immediacy of the loop between decision and action and the learning that comes from this. I love the freedom to be designer one day, data analyst the next, customer support the day after that - whatever it takes to make the thing and get it into the world.
I guess I always thought - in a ‘grass is greener’ way - that my relationship with work would change and I’d be less stressed and more satisfied after these changes. More fool me! Maybe these things were always more down to me than to the work I do…
Twitter sadness
I’ve resisted commenting much on the Twitter saga of the last few months because there has been plenty commentary to go around.
But I am sad about the slow loss of Twitter’s central place in my professional life.
I think there are two things that make me sad about it.
First, Twitter is a words format, and I’m a words person. Reading what other people have to say has always meant more to me than seeing other people’s pictures, let alone watching other people’s videos. As trusted and valued people leave Twitter I feel like I’m losing part of my expanded worldview and it feels like a genuine loss.
Secondly, Twitter was always about following people for me. Not following topics, and definitely not following what was ‘popular’. The beauty of Twitter was that I might follow someone for something interesting they said about information architecture but end up learning about the migratory patterns of North American birds. Because people are more than one topic obvs. Of course, this often meant that some people were unfollowable in the long term because their interests, or even just their post frequency, was too jarring for me. But over time that stabilised into following a set of people that had the right kind of posting pattern for me. And that was beautiful.
I think the changes that have been making me sad about Twitter were set in motion long before the recent acquisition. My heart sank when “Top Posts” became the default sort order for the stream rather than “Latest Posts”. It made it inevitable that Twitter was going to morph into another algorithm that would game its users into feeding it what it deemed ‘popular’. And so much of the recent stuff - like putting “Views” on tweets - is just reinforcing that original mis-step. Yes, I can still follow “Latest Posts” but if the system shifts to incentivise different content at the point of posting that changes what shows up there as well.
Yes, I’m aware that the thing I loved might not have been commercially viable. But I still loved it. And although I’m still using Twitter the diminishing makes me sad.
Eating
My contribution to Christmas dinner this year was making Nigella’s boozy Christmas trifle. I’d never made proper custard before but it turned out well. Although not being able to eat my own epic festive trifle because flu was a low point of 2022 for me…
Reading
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. I’ve been saving this for many months. I love it obvs. And gives me the chance to repost one of my favourite images…
Watching
I Hate Suzie Too! Loved the original, loved the second season, loved Dance Crazee. But why oh why was it only three episodes long?!
Listening
I realised I didn’t know anything about human history before the Egyptians, Romans and Greeks so I went hunting for a podcast about prehistoric humans and found the Pre-History Podcast. Loads of interesting things I had no idea about. Lots of stone tools, pottery sherds and house layouts. Basically a window into archaeology that I know embarrassingly little about. Narrated by a woman too, which is a bonus.
OK. That’s a wrap for the first writing of 2023.
I’d love suggestions of people to follow on Twitter. If you read this newsletter then you have some idea of the kinds of things I like. Anyone that you suggest I’ll follow for a bit and then quietly unfollow if they’re not right for me, no harm done.
I hope you’re doing OK with all the bugs going around. And, as always, say hello by hitting reply! I love a bit of personal connection - especially in the bleak midwinter of remote working :)
Will