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Business, collaboration, competition, Feedback, Human-Computer Interaction, learning, life, politics, psychology, science, teamwork, UX
As we celebrate in America, let’s not forget that many people fought long and hard to gain our independence and then to keep it. Let’s honor them by making sure we keep our independence. It would be a shame to lose it on the battlefield…and even more of a shame to lose it to greed.
It would also be a good time to recall that America is not alone in the struggle against tyranny. Many other countries had to fight and win their independence – and in other cases, people are still fighting for their freedom.
As I mentioned before, I am temporarily suspending additions to the Pattern Language of ‘best practices’ in collaboration and teamwork and shifting to a different genre for a time. I’m still quite interested in collaboration and teamwork; I am interested in working together to learn from each other how to do that better. As I’ve tried to point out, while competition certainly has a place, both in nature and in human civilization, in human civilization, it needs to be done within an agreed upon framework. Otherwise, competition spins out of control into anarchy and violence. Of course, this has happened before in human history. This time, when our very lives depend on a global network of interconnectedness, anarchy will be worse than ever before. For now, however, I’ve listed most of the major Patterns I’ve run into. I will continue to elicit and look for additional relevant Patterns. If you think of one, please comment on the summary/index or email me at: truthtable@aol.com
Meanwhile, I’ve decided to share a number of experiences from my career as a researcher and practitioner in psychology, AI, and the field of human-computer interaction/user experience. I will relate these as honestly and completely as I think useful. In some cases, I may use pseudonyms to avoid embarrassing anyone. Clearly, stories are told from my perspective, and others might remember things differently, if at all.
The reasons for recounting these stories is basically threefold. First, studying a field such as psychology, or human-computer interaction is related to actually working in the field but not so much as you might think. For the most part, the errors I’ve made and the lessons that I’ve learned in the course of a long career are not primarily technical. The main lessons are socio-technical. Hopefully, people considering a career in a related field may learn from my mistakes. But aside from pointing out mistakes made, I hope to give a flavor for what it’s really like to work in the field.
petersironwood 