Career Development – Summer Learning

It’s the first Monday of summer. With the warmer weather, it’s tempting to just relax and lounge on the beach, at the park, go on vacation, etc. but summer can be a good time for some career development.

Here are our career development/learning plans for this summer:

Lisa – Taking a project management risk and change management course

Sandra – Conducting my first web usability study. Refreshing my HTML & CSS skills so that I can make improvements to website once usability study is complete.

 

Review of Lynda.com Course – User Experience Fundamentals for Web Design

As summer nears, I am looking into several professional development courses to prevent “brain drain”.  In perusing the offerings of MOOCs (massive open online course), I was greatly disappointed by the lack of UX focused material.  I found courses to be either overly generic or heavy on the programmer/designer /technology side.  Nothing really appropriate for a librarian interested in UX stuff.

However, I recently came across Sarah Hawk’s review of a UX course offered by Lynda.com. Hawk’s gives a detailed and honest review of the User Experience Fundamentals for Web Design course including a list of pros/cons.

Pros

• Videos are short and concise, in digestible chunks.
• Information is well backed up with explanations, studies, and examples.
• The karaoke-like transcript highlighting makes following along and taking notes easy.

Cons

• There is no variation in the slides, which becomes monotonous after a while.
• At times things feel a bit rushed, as if Chris is trying to fit too much content into a limited length video.
• So much information is given that it is hard to retain and remember key points.

To read the rest of Hawk’s review, visit the UX Mastery site.

APALA Library Leader Interview with Lisa Chow

Earlier this week, APALA (Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association) posted Dawn Wing’s interview with People Interact’s own Lisa Chow. Headlined as an advocate and visionary re-shaping the library landscape,

Lisa is widely recognized in the library world for her advocacy as a Special Libraries Association (SLA) Rising Star, Library Journal (LJ) Mover & Shaker, American Library Association (ALA) Emerging Leader, and Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Diversity Scholar. In this interview, Lisa provides refreshing insights for information professionals of all stages in their careers and dares us to think outside the box.

Read the entire interview at http://www.apalaweb.org/apa-library-leader-interview-lisa-chow-new-york

Monthly Method Spotlight: Shadowing

Shadowing

When/why: Shadowing is a way to see how a product/service/process might affect people’s behavior.

How: Shadow/tag along with people to observe and understand their actions, behaviors, routines, and interactions.

Tips: Get permission to shadow or tag along with someone. Ask/tell them to act like they usually do, as if you were not there.

Interested in using/applying these methods in your work? Contact us for more info.