The OffBeat #3: Your Life UX
Optimizing your personal information architecture
User experience, or UX, refers to how a user interacts with a digital product. UX designers think about users’ impressions of factors like:
Value: Does this product give me value?
Function: Does it work?
Usability: Is it easy to use?
Overall impression: Do I like using it?
There are several core elements of UX design, like information architecture (the structure and organization of the information within a digital product) and navigation design (how the various parts of the interface facilitate movement through the information architecture).
We can apply this thinking to our lives. The quality of the tools you use, and the system you fashion to leverage those tools, have a direct bearing on the experience of your day-to-day life.
To illustrate, here’s a non-exhaustive review of what’s been working for me the last few years, in my work life UX and personal life UX:
[KEY: Tool | System]
TO-DO TRACKING
Personal:
Things app | Tasks are categorized into “daily practices,” “projects”, and categories for each major area of life (my son, our house, errands, etc.)
Work:
Google Keep | Tasks are categorized into 10 notes for each of the 10 colleagues with whom I work most closely, color-coded by category; and a primary note for person-agnostic to-do’s
NOTE-TAKING
Personal:
Apple Notes | Notes and lists I need quick access to
Google Docs | Longer-form notes and lists, or multi-pronged topics I want to organize into Google Drive folders
Work:
Google Keep | Evergreen notes and stats I need to reference
Physical notebook | Helps me focus during meetings; I make an open checkbox next to any to-do’s that arise, then check the box when transferred to Google Keep or completed
PHYSICAL HEALTH
Plant Nanny | Water tracking, with built-in reminders
Melissa Wood Health | Movement — prompted by a “daily practices” Things task
BRAIN HEALTH
Personal:
Calm | Mindfulness — prompted by a “daily practices” Things task
GoodReads | Book cataloguing — including an annual reading challenge + daily nighttime reading ritual
DuoLingo | Daily Hebrew micro-lessons — prompted by a “daily practices” Things task
Work:
Google Sheets | Crowdsourced team learning & development agenda and plan, and personal SMART goals by year and quarter
Apple Podcasts and (mostly) Substack | Podcasts and newsletters on a range of inspiring and informative topics (recent favorite podcasts: Under the Influence, Pivot; recent favorite newsletters: Mollie Says, Zine, Culture Study, A Thing or Two)
Google Calendar | Daily workday focus time — minimum 60 minutes — every morning to plan and prioritize for the day and make progress on strategic work that requires the most brain juice
You get the idea.
Try doing an audit of your personal and work toolboxes through the lens of the UX elements above (value, function, usability, overall impression) with a keen eye to the systems — purposeful or involuntary — you have in place to leverage those tools.
Good UX in business leads to stronger customer satisfaction, higher lifetime value, lower cost of acquisition. All the good things. So if you think about the equivalent in your life, optimizing your personal UX is a worthwhile exercise.
Have a great week,
Allison