It’s February. Time for a New Year change!

I have been blogging as The Human Element for three years now, posting reasonably
regularly if not all that frequently.    Over the last few months, I’ve been thinking hard about what I want to do with my online presence here, and indeed with my future business. And it’s time for a change, dammit.

The conventional wisdom is to focus intensely on a particular niche.

I find it hard to focus.  My work is spread across different subjects, all of which I love immoderately.

I began my career as a baby academic.
Then I worked as a market researcher who loved qualitative methods and advanced statistics
Then I got fascinated by how scientists communicate risk
After I started freelancing, I studied human-computer interaction
And organisational behaviour.
And in all that time, I was an unofficial expert on internet behaviour.

So really I work as a kind of academic-y applied researcher and user experience organisational consultant with special interests in communicating science. Online.

This is not even slightly catchy.

No wonder I behave like a rabbit in the headlights at networking events.

None of those things really describes what I do.

I need a better way.

After I thought and sketched and talked and planned, I realised that the same thread runs through everything I do: an interest in designing and facilitating genuinely great conversations between people as users and people as organisations.  And when I say ‘conversation’, I mean these kinds of things:

• Informative, deep research conversations (whether questionnaires or focus groups)
• Productive online discussions
• Honest dialogue and deliberation
• Websites that do not suck in the slightest, but instead lead their users by the hand down a sun-dappled path of mutual enjoyment
• Teaching and learning that genuinely work and are enjoyable

Conversation strategy.

So that’s what I’m going to talk about here: how to make these interactions happen.   And yes, I know that ‘conversation’ is a horribly cheesy, overused term.  It’s still the best description of the connections that I want to help people make.

Plus! I’m making things.

I have been a researcher and usability consultant for some time now, and one of the things that frustrates me is that they are essentially reactive: you are constantly critiquing and advising rather than creating.   I will critique till I die, I’m sure (I’m still learning to shut up when I see honking great usability problems on friends’ websites), but I am going to do less ranting/commentary and far more writing and designing.

So here’s how it goes…

I have wild plans. At the moment, I’m writing a course on creating digital workshops.   I’m also putting the finishing touches to a website review service, for organisations who want some feedback and guidance but can do a lot themselves.   See my Web Clinic Page for an early outline.

In short this will be less of a backroom salon and more a kind of artisanal bakery cafe.  There will be things to read and stuff to buy.  There may even be things to watch. Oh yes.

Finally, the February challenge.

And for the rest of this month, I’m going to commit to writing a blog post each weekday.  Let the experiments begin – and let me know what you think.  If you’ve read my stuff before, I hope you’ll stay and tell me what you think.