Welcome to the second year of Finding Out! This year, I'll be publishing essays on the third Thursday of each month. I’m looking forward to learning along with you.
At the first PAX East, a conference for video game enthusiasts, I stood in a crowd vibrating with enthusiasm as Johnathan Coleman prepared to play his next song. He lifted the shoulder strap of the trapezoidal drum pad over his head and experimentally tapped a few buttons. Warmup complete, Coleman introduced the song, saying that he originally wrote it during his thing-a-week project.
“I did [the project] for an entire year. A little quick math, that’s 52 songs. I had about four ideas,” he said, laughing to himself. “I used them up in the first four weeks, and then it got very strange and difficult every week.”
“I would frequently have to write a song that I thought was pretty stupid,” he continued, “and this is one of those songs. I only bring the best to you people here at PAX East.” We all laughed along with him, even as his self-deprecation parted long enough for him to admit that he had rather begun to like the song.
Watching a video of this performance with my toddler, I thought of Finding Out, now nearing its first year of existence. I took a few weeks off in that time of writing weekly essays, but what Coleman said rang true to me. At such a rapid publishing pace, I sometimes found myself writing a piece that I wasn't sure I believed in at the time, and then later realized it was not so bad. Keeping up the pace not only helped me work through writer's block, but also led me to discover positions I might not have otherwise.
A few days after watching the video, I listened to author Roxane Gay interview designer and podcast host Debbie Millman. While Gay has on occasion interviewed people or moderated panels in her work as a writer, Millman has been interviewing creatives for her podcast, Design Matters, for over 15 years.
In response to Gay's questions, Millman talked about how the subject of the podcast has expanded past its initial scope of design. “The sort of brand consultant is still alive in [my mind], and I think, ‘Design Matters is not really a great name.’ Because it’s not really about just designers any more. I’ve reengineered it.”
She laughed to herself and then impersonated an announcer's voice, saying, “It’s about ‘how the world’s most creative people design the arc of their lives.’ And, you know, design matters!” Then she laughed again, making a buzzer sound and saying “eye roll” aloud for the benefit of the listeners.
The significance of this portion of the interview didn’t resonate with me until Gay came back to it with a last question. “If you could rename the show, what would you call it?”
Millman answered decisively. “What Matters.”
“Ooh. Wow.”
“It’s a little egotistical,” confessed Millman.
Gay, for her part, neither agreed nor disagreed, instead seeing Millman’s desired podcast name as the powerful conclusion to the interview it was. “Well, I think, on that note— Deborah Millman, everyone.”
While I don't know Millman enough to say whether renaming her podcast What Matters would be egotistical, a podcast about design expanding to be a podcast about, essentially, finding meaning, feels akin to my purpose in writing this newsletter.
Starting to work on the launch of Finding Out a little over a year ago, I knew it wasn’t only going to be about topics that were clearly within the bounds of user experience research advice. What I'm starting to understand now is that Finding Out is just as much about sharing my experience with UX research as it is about understanding for myself why I pursued UX and UX research as a career. I am trying to sort out how I can feel simultaneously so passionate and yet so disillusioned.
I've been honored to hear from some of you that these newsletters have sometimes expressed something that you had struggled to express or understand. That’s how I felt hearing Coleman and Millman’s reflections. I am grateful for the confidence and discoveries that an accelerated writing pace has given me in my enthusiasm for this craft, and I notice that this writing has been an exploration of meaning.
I have also noticed, however, that to keep up the weekly pace, I have avoided writing about some of the UX research topics that mean the most to me. Whenever I considered choosing one as my writing cycle started anew, I’d realize that I didn’t have the mental space to figure it out, and would pick a different topic that I expected I could finish on deadline.
So as 2022 gets started and we enter the second year of Finding Out, my next iteration of this newsletter is to send it monthly instead of weekly. I plan to publish an essay on the third Thursday of each calendar month (and have done so!).
I expect that sometimes I’ll use the extra time to tackle the subjects I’ve been avoiding, and other times I’ll use it for other parts of my writing or, hey, life generally. How often will I do which? We’ll just have to find out.
Mentioned in this issue: “Mr. Fancy Pants” by Johnathan Coleman, as performed at PAX East 2010;* and the Design Matters podcast episode, “The Table is Turned: Roxane Gay Interviews Debbie Millman.”
* While I adore most of Coleman’s performance in this video (and especially the improvised bit at the end), please note that between 3:51 and 3:55, he makes an audio joke about guns that felt less strange at a video game conference in 2010 than does in any context today. I advise skipping ahead or at least hugging a pillow and reflecting on how much (and admittedly, how little) we’ve learned since then.
Wishing for more Finding Out before the next issue? You can check us (me, it’s just me!) out on Instagram at @howwefindout, especially in our “stories.”