Time to read: 7 minutes Last week, two days after an HR screening, I received a canned rejection note from the person I had spoken with. Very impersonal and dehumanizing. She asked me to tell her about my management experience, which I did. Small teams, one to five people, complex projects, in demanding environments, where we all collaborated hands-on. I […] continue reading »
Category: Controversial topics
Things that most people don’t talk about, actively avoid talking about, are considered taboo, or carry a heavy stigma if they’re ever mentioned. I’m not a troublemaker. I just am of Greek descent and we like to question things, discuss them and argue over them for fun (think Socrates), and generally make messes. If Socrates’ death, the illusion of democracy and the state of the Greek economy aren’t enough to convince you, come talk to me about something controversial.
The mental health forest
Time to read: 7 minutes The forest I built a little forest. Or so I call it. My corridor has a bend. It makes a right angle to the right, that you can’t see from the entrance. So in that part of the hidden corridor, a part I only transit through – like all corridors – I hid a forest. […] continue reading »
What makes for a good meetup?
Time to read: 4 minutes In January, I went to a meetup in Athens, Greece, for the first time ever, and I thought it was kind of bad… And it made me wonder, what makes meetups good? For those who don’t know me, I have lived in London, UK, since 2006 (explains the bias of my meetup experiences), am of […] continue reading »
How I applied for permanent residence as an EU citizen living in the UK
Time to read: 7 minutes So the first thing I did, a few months after “WTF, did Brexit really just happen?” settled into my brain, was to google like mad about permanent residency. (If you don’t want to read the whole story, you can always skip to the checklist at the end.) Research And… I ended up on a few […] continue reading »
How to win at UX
Time to read: 5 minutes UX is trendy, and we should all rejoice… Except UXers often work to unrealistic expectations, (“make this product user-friendly in 8 weeks”) try to solve non-existent problems (“build that team a dashboard with metrics XYZ”), and are seldom allowed time to do real research or work as a team (“we don’t have time for that, […] continue reading »
Why are UX take home tasks so crap?
Time to read: 9 minutes The UX industry suffers from a delusion: that the take-home task is a good way to understand what each candidate for a job is capable of. This isn’t 100% wrong, but it sure as hell is flawed!! I’ve written about why I think this is flawed, included some examples of – REAL – good and […] continue reading »
How BA failed at maths, humanity, and service design
Time to read: 5 minutes I’ve been on FOUR BA flights since 27th December 2016. This only matters because the last one was a VERY different experience from the first three. The first two were First Class (we used avios, sit back down), and awesome. On my last and fourth one, however, I discovered BA’s new policy of not serving […] continue reading »
Two heads are better than one
Time to read: 6 minutes I’ve been working with someone. This is note-worthy, because I have mostly worked alone. Most companies today think that one UX Architect is enough to fix All The Things going wrong in a project. We are UX co-leads on a Big Fat Software Rewrite project. On our first day, a Monday, we were told that […] continue reading »
why asking “where are you from” is getting old. And periods.
Time to read: < 1 minute [View the story “why “where are you from” is the worse question to ask me.” on Storify] […] continue reading »
13 things I have done since 1st January 2015
Time to read: 4 minutes There have been no recent blog updates, and that is because I’ve had a very busy – and preoccupied – start to 2015! When I say “busy”: since January 1st I have: Flown to Athens for a weekend to celebrate my dad’s 80th Birthday. We had a great time, with coffee by the seaside in […] continue reading »