“The world is in need of better design, and Kozma’s book shows us how to get there.”
Last year Robert Kozma published "Make the World a Better Place: Design with Passion, Purpose, and Values".
The book has been well received and presents an insightful and hands-on discussion of design as a profoundly human activity and challenges us all to use design to transform the world for the better. The book explains how and why the design industry lost its way, and how to re-ignite the idealism that once made it a force for good.
Robert Kozma is a San Francisco-based author, researcher, and consultant with over 40 years of experience in technology, education, and social development. As an emeritus principal scientist at SRI International, he has collaborated with ministries of education, national agencies, multinational organizations, and high tech companies on how to use information and communication technology to transform education and support economic and social development
Make the World a Better Place describes a set of moral principles, based on our shared humanity, that can be used to create “good” designs: designs that reduce harm, increase well-being, advance knowledge, promote equality, address injustice, and build supportive, compassionate relationships and communities.
Read more"By standing together, we can build a better version of the tech industry."
Ethan Marcotte published a new book back in August and it's all about improving the industry that many of us work in.
Ethan is a web designer, speaker, and author. He’s perhaps best known for creating responsive web design, which helped the industry discover a new way of designing for the ever-changing web.
In his new book - You Deserve a Tech Union - he shares a how-to guide, a history lesson, and a manifesto all in one.
In a recent member’s call Ethan joined an talked more about the resurgent labor movement in the tech industry, why unions matter and why you—yes, you—deserve a tech union.
Read moreHow do online businesses exploit consumers through carefully designed tricks and traps? Regulations are changing rapidly, and we're seeing a big rise in legal enforcement. But is it enough to protect consumers?
Our former Boye Aarhus conference keynote speaker Harry Brignull published his first book back in August titled: “Deceptive patterns - exposing the tricks tech companies use to control you”
Based on over a decade of work on deceptive design (also known as dark patterns), the book takes you into the shadowy world of deceptive design.
Harry holds a PhD in cognitive science and works as Head of Innovation at UK-based pensions firm Smart. We recently did a member’s call with Harry as an informal book launch to our community.
Read moreThere's a new book on email coming and it’s written by two of our friends who really believe in good emails:
Ashley Budd, Director of Advancement Marketing at Cornell University and also a speaker at last year's HE Connect 22
Dayana Kibilds, Strategist at Ologie
They have seen what a good email program can do. But, unfortunately, they are also reminded daily what a terrible experience combing through your email inbox can be.
Powerful email programs can get people to do stuff–for better or worse. And lucky for them, they get to see email do good every day.
In a member's call back in the summer, we heard more about the emerging book, while the authors shared some of their key insights. We also looked at bad emails and most importantly, supported them on their new writing journey.
Read moreMagic @ Work is here! Inner secrets from Christian Vandsø Andersen, a magician who is also VP at the LEGO Group.
The new book ‘Magic @ Work’ is a journey into the extraordinary and in a recent member's call, Christian told us more about the book, shared his perspective on combining magic and management, and even used a card trick to illustrate his point.
The book dives into the mesmerizing world of magic and teaches the reader how its principles can elevate your leadership, whether you're leading teams, projects, or even yourself. You can also discover the enigmatic techniques that magicians use to captivate audiences and apply them to leadership, innovation, and influence.
There’s more in the book, incl. the first publicly available documentation of the leadership model at the LEGO Group. The book is also written on a sad personal backstory, and we’ll get to that, but in the call, we started with Christian telling us about the idea behind the book, so let’s begin there.
Read more“Change is inevitable. Resistance to change is just as predictable.
How do you motivate teams to willingly get on board?”
This is the premise from the recently published book called Change Fatigue by Jenny Magic and Melissa Breker. Released in May, the book focuses on what the authors call ‘flipping teams from burnout to buy-in’ and it addresses the foundational psychological safety domains that drive willingness to change, alongside practical change facilitation techniques you can use today, regardless of where your team is starting from.
In a recent member’s call we were joined by the two authors who in an informal conversation took us through what’s in the change facilitation book, and they also shared a few insights on how your team can lead, plan, deliver, and sustain change.
Read moreFarther, Faster, and Far Less Drama offers a simple but powerful set of leadership behaviors to align teams and accelerate progress.
From team leaders to consultants to stay-at-home parents, everyone wishes life could be less complex, but that often feels impossible.
In this new book that came out in April, Janice and Jason Fraser introduce the Four Leadership Motions, a method they have been using for decades to help all kinds of teams make fast, meaningful progress—including Navy SEALs, startup CEOs, and Fortune 100 executives.
Read more“A productive work environment doesn’t have to be stressful.”
Back in April, Texas-based Maura Thomas released her most recent book on individual and corporate productivity titled "Everyone Wants to Work Here: Attract the Best Talent, Energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market".
Maura is an award-winning international speaker and trainer and saw a gap in the skills being developed in leaders and the ever-increasing demands of work. She’s spent decades working in the trenches with tens of thousands of leaders. This research has led to proven solutions for how leaders can solve the problems eating away at productivity, and help their teams succeed in today’s fluid, fast-paced work environments.
In a recent member’s call we held an informal book launch for the new book, where Maura told us more about the book and shared a few actionable steps to plug your productivity gaps and energise your team.
Read moreHow do you lead and deliver successful services, sustainably?
All organizations are becoming service organizations. But most weren’t built to deliver services successfully end-to-end, and the human, operational and financial impacts are abundantly clear.
In the digital era the stakes are even higher, given how rapidly services change. Yet default working practices (governance, planning, funding, leadership, reporting, programme and team structures) inside large organizations haven't changed. Rather than modernize just one service at a time, it's the underlying organizational conditions that need to be transformed — anything less is futile.
Kate Tarling has written the must-read guide: The Service Organization, which came out in February 2023. In a recent member call, Kate introduced the book and we also talked about the future of service organizations.
Below you’ll find my highlights from the call and at the end you can lean back and enjoy the recording.
Read moreHistory shows that hard times can lead to the greatest opportunities for renewal. The Purpose Upgrade, the latest book by UK-based Paul Skinner, supports readers in leading enterprises that thrive by solving our most important problems.
It shows how businesses can create more compelling benefits for customers, build meaningful livelihoods for colleagues, and unlock superior returns for investors by 'repurposing' and revitalising the activities they engage in.
The Purpose Upgrade is his second book. It builds on Collaborative Advantage: How collaboration beats competition as a strategy for success, which argued that we have now reached a turning point in history from which creating Competitive Advantage may no longer be in the best interests of an organisation.
Read moreThe conversation around digital leadership tends to go from somewhere between tech fascination and pretending that the rules of gravity don’t apply.
I’ve often wondered, why after all these years of doing digital, with many books covering each individual aspect of what that means, we haven’t had a handbook for leaders leading digital teams.
This is what Christian Vandsø Andersen, VP Digital at the LEGO Group, set out to write and in a recent member call he talked about his new book appropriately titled Wonderful digital leadership.
Read moreHow do you identify and remove the barriers to strong, effective content work?
This is the focus of Rachel McConnell’s recent book 'Leading Content Design', which shares how to create common standards, improve collaboration, iron out wrinkles in the design process, and build advocacy—so you can lead your team with impact.
Rachel works as Head of UX content at Flo, a women’s health app and was previously in various content roles at BT. In a recent member call, she shared her thinking behind the work and introduced us to her work on content operations.
Read moreIf you want to validate an idea or wondering how something works, it is almost always a good idea to ask the customer, but response rates are generally down on all surveys. Bad surveys can both stress your customers and alienate them.
In her recent book 'Surveys That Work', UK-based forms expert Caroline Jarrett explains a seven-step process for designing, running, and reporting on a survey that gets accurate results. In a no-nonsense style with plenty of examples about real-world compromises, the book focuses on reducing the errors that make up Total Survey Error—a key concept in survey methodology.
Read moreEmergencies—landing a malfunctioning plane, resuscitating a heart attack victim, or avoiding a head-on car crash—all require split-second decisions that can mean life or death. Fortunately, designers of life-saving products have leveraged research and brain science to help users reduce panic and harness their best instincts. In her new book called Life and Death Design, Katie Swindler brings these techniques to everyday designers who want to help their users think clearly and act safely.
Katie works as is Innovation Design Strategist, Sr. Manager at insurance firm Allstate in Chicago, IL and recently hosted a member call introducing her book. She included some of the many insightful stories featured in the book and told us more about what she learned while researching on the topic. Below you’ll find my notes with some of the highlights from the call.
She opened with a true story on how famous astronaut Neil Armstrong once had a life and death experience and turned to reading the manual.
Read moreBuilding and managing a web project is a big, complex process — one that branches far beyond the phases directly in front of us.
On one hand, there’s the multi-disciplinary nuts and bolts work of creating the site itself. But beyond that, there’s the connective points — the ideas, the strategy, the decision making, and the upkeep. Even if you’re an expert in your field, it can still be a struggle to find context across the entire project landscape.
With The Web Project Guide, Corey Vilhauer and Deane Barker teamed up to bridge those gaps to help understand how each stage of the website process fits in with the next.
Read more