For the last 15 years, I’ve captured my thoughts on Design, Technology, and Culture in this blog. In this post, I’m going to reflect on what was on my mind by looking back on some stats of my posts in 2022.
The Most Popular Posts
It looks like Design Strategy and Jobs-to-be-Done were hot this year. Here are the top 3 most popular posts on my blog in 2022:
Bringing Business Impact and User Needs together with Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)
Learn how Jobs to be Done (JTBD) work as an “exchange” currency between designers, business stakeholders, and technology people.
Becoming a Design Strategist
Let’s raise awareness about how unprepared designers are to understand and influence strategy, advocate for a new role called Design Strategist, and propose a minimum set of skills required for becoming a Design Strategist.
Problem Framing for Strategic Design
Let’s talk about problem framing techniques that can help you get team alignment by creating clarity of what problems they are trying to solve.
The Most Commented Posts
It looks like my readers are curious about ways to help teams paddle in the same direction. Here are the top 3 most commented posts on my blog in 2022:
Strategy and Stakeholder Management
Let’s talk about Stakeholder Management skills that help you identify people, groups, or organizations that could impact or be impacted by projects.
Strategy and the Need for Facilitation
I’ll argue for the Need for Facilitation as strategists guide individuals and groups to make business decisions through effective facilitation processes.
Strategy and the Importance of Vision
Let’s talk about the importance of vision for creating a shared understanding of why we are bringing a product to market in the first place.
The Ones We Lost
Here are figures that have influenced me, which we lost in the past 12 months
Life In Germany
By the end of 2022, I’d been living for ten years in Germany. Here are some of the things I found curious about life here:
Living in Germany: Toughest Country to Handle the Basics of Expat Life
A new survey shows that internationals who move to Germany are happy in the workplace but have delivered a crushing verdict on how hard it is to find a home and settle into the society around them.
Economy in Germany: Skilled Worker shortages costing 86 billion euros per year
According to calculations by the management consultancy Boston Consulting, Germany loses 86 billion euros in economic output annually due to a lack of manpower. According to the authors, the losses of the German economy are thus the second highest internationally after the USA compared to the strongest economic nations.
Internet in Germany: 3,8 million Germans have never used the internet
Life without the internet is completely unimaginable for many of us, but for a surprising number of people in Germany, it’s a daily reality. New figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) have revealed that 3,8 million people have never surfed the web.
Most Popular Topics
Dealing with the dynamics of teamwork is popular with my blog readers. Here are the top 5 most popular categories in my blog in 2022:
Speaking Engagements
I had the opportunity of speaking at a few events in 2022:
“Importance of Psychological Safety” on Mobile UX London 2022
In this talk at Mobile UX London 2022, I discussed how psychological safety is a prerequisite for creating shared understanding. I also shared some tools for building the trust required to create a psychologically safe team climate.
“Bringing Business Impact and User Needs Together with Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)” at Web Directions 2022
At Web Directions Summit 2022, I made the case that Jobs to be Done work as a great “exchange” currency to facilitate strategy discussions around value between designers, business stakeholders, and technology people. I also shared some lessons I’ve learned on how to use Jobs to be Done to engage the stakeholders and influence business decisions that drive product vision forward.
On Social Media
2022 was really bumpy in the Social Media realm: between Elon Musk turning Twitter into a dumpster fire and all mistrust on Facebook, most of my friends started migrating to Mastodon.
Towards the end of the year, Artificial Intelligence took the creative industry by storm with ChatGPT, MidJourney, and DALL-E2. Here are some of my most popular sharing on social feeds:
