Teresa T.

The following exercise will help you state your intent and clarify your language with other people.

• First, choose a set of adjectives you want your users to use to describe what you’re making.


• Then, choose a set of adjectives that you’re okay with not being used to describe the same thing.

I find these rules helpful during this exercise:

• When put toget

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How is an ever-growing list of directions we could take while staying true to our reasons why.

To look at your options, ask yourself:

How could we communicate our message?

How much time and effort will it take?

How could the solution look and feel?

How will this be produced?

How will this be maintained?

How will this be measured?

How will we know if we’ve ... See more

When we jump into a task without thinking about what we’re trying to accomplish, we can end up with solutions to the wrong problem. We can waste energy that would be better spent determining which direction to take.

When deciding what you’re doing, ask yourself:

• What are you trying to change? What is your vision for the future? What is within your ab

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Having a strong why will get you further. Having a weak why won’t make it any easier to get up in the morning. Your why should be part of everything you do, not just your mission statement.

Why? Because without a clear reason for doing something, even the most committed and loyal person will eventually abandon the hope of finishing the task.

To start... See more

We need to consider our intended users. Sometimes they’re our customers or the public. Often times, they’re also stakeholders, colleagues, employees, partners, superiors, or clients. These are the people who use our process.

To determine who matters, ask these questions:

• Who’s most important to get agreement from?


• Who’s most important to serve?


• What wo

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Every decision you make should support what you’ve defined as good: from the words you choose to the tasks you enable, and everything in between.

When you’re making decisions, balance what your stakeholders and users expect of you, along with what they believe to be good.

What we intend to do determines how we define words like good and bad.

Users: Who are your intended users? What do you know about them? How can you get to know them better? How might they describe this mess?

Stakeholders: Who are your stakeholders? What are their expectations? What are their thoughts about this mess? How might they describe it?

Information: What interpretations are you dealing with? What information is ... See more

What if turning on the light reveals that the room is full of scary trolls? What if the light reveals the room is actually empty? Worse yet, what if turning on the light makes us realize we’ve been living in darkness?

The truth is that these are all potential realities, and understanding that is part of the journey. The only way to know what happens... See more

The belief or non-belief that there were other cookies on that plate is the information each viewer interprets from the way the cookies were arranged. When we rearrange the cookies with the intent to change how people interpret them, we’re architecting information.

While we can arrange things with the intent to communicate certain information, we ca... See more