The Six Elements of Focus to Improve Your Craft

How can focus help our business, our teams, ourselves? This presentation disassembles the difficulty we have in achieving various kinds of focus (vision, goal, users, pragmatism, attention, calm) and gives practical tips on how to approach and improve each of them.

This talk was originally prepared for ThemeConf (themeconf.com) and From the Front (2015.fromthefront.it).

Transcript

1. THE SIX ELEMENTS OF FOCUS Davide ‘Folletto’ Casali
2. UX Redirector Advisor NIGHT.EU
3. Manifesto Ibridi F E L L O W
4. @Folletto
5. WHAT IS FOCUS? PART I
6. We know what we’re doing I haven’t done much today
7. Focus can be the difference between knowing your destination and being lost
8. Focus can be the difference between done and not done
9. The gravitational 
 point toward which everything converges.
10. CENTER Clarity FORCES Action TIME Patience
11. Clarity Focus
12. Why is it so hard to keep focus?
13. FEAR The comfort of non-confrontational assumptions
14. FRUSTRATION AVOIDANCE CONFLICT AVOIDANCE Toward Self Toward Others
15. FOCUS AS VISION CLARITY PART II
16. Simon Sinek Start With Why
17. What How Model by Simon Sinek Why
18. “ ” Simon Sinek Dr. King gave the "I have a dream" speech, not the "I have a plan" speech.
19. Do you know your why? Does your client know its why?
20. Clarify with everyone involved. Find the why.
21. FOCUS AS GOAL CLARITY PART III
22. Issue 1 MULTI-FOCUS
23. Issue 2 IMPLIED FOCUS
24. Set one goal with metrics
25. Communicate
26. Set goal. Communicate. Repeat.
27. FOCUS AS USERS PART IV
28. user
29. user user
30. user user user
31. Behaviour Goal Why
32. “ ” Alan Cooper The best way to successfully accommodate a variety of users is to design for specific types of individuals with specific needs.
33. “Focus” on many people
34. Focus on one person
35. Identify your user: behaviour, goal, why.
36. FOCUS AS PRAGMATISM PART V
37. “ ” Steve Jobs Focus means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.
38. It’s possible to build without focus.
39. Hey! _________ solves that already! Scrum Kanban XP
40. Do they?
41. MILESTONE One major user-valuable feature A set of minor fixes and features
42. Unpack and apply your favourite technique
43. Each milestone is a Minimum Viable Feature
45. Set milestones, keep them fluid.
46. FOCUS AS ATTENTION PART VI
47. CHALLENGE SKILLS Anxiety Boredom Flow Mihaly Czisentmihaily
48. kotaku.com/where-pro-street-fighter-players-look-1701167840 kotaku.com/where-pro-street-fighter-players-look-1701167840
49. “ ” R. Sawaki, S.J. Luck An attend-to-me signal can be overridden by an active suppression process to prevent the actual capture of attention. R. Sawaki & S. J. Luck (2010) Capture versus suppression of attention by salient singletons
51. Increase motivation. Reduce interruptions.
52. FOCUS AS INNER CALM PART VII
55. hey!
56. This moment is a skill you can train
57. “ ” John Cleese The creative architects had this tolerance for this discomfort we all feel when we leave things unresolved.
59. “ ” Baird, Smallwood, Mrazek, Kam, Franklin, Schooler Engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving. Baird, Smallwood, Mrazek, Kam, Franklin, Schooler (2011) Inspired by Distraction Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation
60. Learn breaking the train of thought. Find true free space.
61. SUMMARY PART VIII
63. SYNC DESIGN BE goal vision users pragmatism attention calm
64. “ ” Bruno Munari To complicate is easy, to simplify is hard. To complicate, just add, everyone is able to complicate. Few are able to simplify.
65. Thanks. @Folletto INTENSEMINIMALISM.COM