Who here owns an electric vehicle? Can I ask you some questions?

One of the things I started doing is sending folks gifts at random times. Today I sent a friend who had been the first engineer on my last team a Japanese knife. I’d been thinking about it for awhile bc we both bond over cooking and I like sending useful gifts. But it makes me happy.

All you need to know about our design org at Ford is that we have a Creative Tech team. This team ideates, invents, dabbles in emergent tech, and builds “works like” prototypes. This is leveraging the technical imagination of engineers.

The cool thing about the definition of XD (Experience Design) at Ford is that it encompasses strategy, research, R&D, Creative Tech, service design, digital, industrial design, and running pilots. Every tool for ideation at your disposal. Systems thinking is table stakes.

At the onboarding meeting today my boss advertised that I have a prolific Twitter account and I had to tell her that I’m weaning off of it due to EM.

The main difference between building consumer experiences vs B2B SaaS products is that for physical consumer products and experiences, desireability is the key to UX and brand strategy so we can chase after emotional design. With SaaS, it’s very difficult to design for desirability when the sales model encourages adding more to the kitchen sink.

It’s been a long time since I heard about desirability in the design process.

Someone referred to the display in the car as an HMI. I looked it up and it stands for “Human Machine Interface.” Really? It’s like calling the Web, “The Information Super Highway.” #experiencedesign #UX #HCI

I’m finally starting to map how Ford is organized. Ford has several large business verticals. Some skill teams are specific to a business and some run across them all. What we call a product in software, is often just a service at Ford. The main product is the car.

Remote work has allowed me to make leaps & bounds in my career. I’d already worked remote before the pandemic. I’d already set up remote rituals and understood how to communicate and get things done without office politics. The pandemic unlocked so many new opportunities that wasn’t there before.