fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The 10 most delicious books I ate up in 2020 🍜
By: Emma Van Emmerik
Tags: User Research, Endurance Training, Culture, Leadership, Product Management

The books that moved me forward as an endurance athlete and a User Research leader.

The pairing of a lovely book cover and a coffee is like artwork to me!

In 2020 I spent eleven months training for an Ironman, and started a new leadership role as User Research Team Lead at Takeaway.com. During my “off” time, the hours when it was quiet and my legs were not either spinning, kicking, or pounding the pavement, I was curled up on the couch, recovering and devouring books on leadership, business culture, human endurance, and product management.

I’ve always had a voracious appetite for knowledge, but have never been very good at following other people’s curriculum. In the past years I’ve been building my syllabus so to speak, seeking out written knowledge from experts across fields of business, psychology, technology and science. I apply this knowledge daily to my work and my training. The impact this self-steered education has on my both my athletic and leadership capability lends itself to increased hunger for new books, and then there’s another shelf of our bookcase filled!

I’ve always had a voracious appetite for knowledge, but have never been very good at following other people’s curriculum.

In this post I want to share with you my 10 favorite read books of 2020. These are not books that were necessarily published this year, but that I discovered, pretty much inhaled, and feel moved me forward as both an athlete, and a leader of a team in a product organization. Below you’ll find the list, along with a brief takeaway I closed each cover with!

(Note: these are not in any particular order!)
Les aventures de Captain User Research en phase de run
By: Jerome Benaud
Tags: User Research, UX, Business

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This might be a short article, but it is one of the most important aspects of product development…
By: Alex Despotovic
Tags: User Research, Product Management, User Experience

This might be a short article, but it is one of the most important aspects of product development, in my opinion. Thank you for sharing this with us, it is packed with valuable information. You could argue each paragraph is a separate article!
Réussir ses user interviews pour réussir sa startup
By: Gabriel De Vinzelles
Tags: User Research, Startup, Product Development, Thoughts, Product Management

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A little library for someone new to the field of user research — like Research Ops new hires and internal stakeholders
By: Kate Towsey
Tags: User Research, Researchops, User Research Resources

A little library for someone new to the field of user research — like Research Ops new hires and internal stakeholders Kate Towsey Follow Dec 18, 2020 · 3 min read

Last week, I welcomed someone new onto my Research Ops team at Atlassian. As is often the case, this person knows nothing about user research, instead, what she brings to both Research Ops and the Research & Insights team is valuable knowledge about procurement and finances. We’re already pretty good fiscal citizens, but we’re keen to get even better at it — tracking money and numbers can bring interesting insight and opportunity when you’re working at scale.

It’s not unusual for my team members to arrive with little to no knowledge of research — I hire that way intentionally — but, within six months and with guidance, learning opportunities and time (and a reading list), they know enough about the field so that both their sense of purpose is enriched and their work is more impactful and connected, too.

Finding myself in the fortunate position of welcoming another person onto the team, I thought it would be useful to develop a researcher-certified reading list for just this situation. So I turned to Twitter and here are the (light) results from the thread — added to and curated. I hope you’ll find it useful, feel free to help me finesse it.

This list may also be a useful reference to share with stakeholders — Procurement, Finance, Privacy, Legal, to name a few — in giving them essential context about our world. It’s a regular theme for Research Ops that, in being the ‘API’ that sits between researchers and non-research partners, we often need to educate our partners with just enough research knowledge to help them understand our needs. Looking at this list, though, I think we’d need a few more short-form articles added for that use!

I’ve not read all these books myself, though I have read all the blog posts, so I’ve got some reading to do. I’ve also curated and added to the recommendations so that they offer up broad as opposed to specialist knowledge and topics of interest, such as democratization, for non-research newcomers.

I hope that my in-the-making book, Research At Scale: The Research Operations Handbook, will join this lofty list one fine day in 2022, too!

Thank you, Jane Reid, Caroline Jarrett, Paul Smith, Paulo Peres, Bindu Upadhyay, Maike Klip, John Waterworth, Ben Unsworth, Caro Morgan and Jess for contributing.
Proving an idea in 10 days: How I used a prototype and a survey to (dis)prove demand
By: Robert Mion
Tags: User Research, Product Design, Interview, Prototyping, UX Design

I think this is an awesome idea. I this is a fantastic learning tool for beginners.

Looks like a fun and interesting way to learn javascript, html, css

This game is great for nailing down the fundamentals of JS, CSS, and HTML
Bad UX Bites #2: Swiggy+ PhonePe experience !
Tags: Us Strategy, User Research, Bad Ux, UX, Us Case Study

As a regular Swiggy user, I set out to make the payment for an order. I usually use PhonePe gateway, however, this time I had a new card which I wanted to enter details of. While entering the details, I realised every time i had to change fields, I had to enter back button to fill the parts of the debit card.

These are the inputs fields.

The problem was the keypad would come on top of the input fields and I could not see what i was typing.The solution to this would be — Whenever a user is entering details in input form, the keypad should appear just below. This means add some scrolls if possible to let the position of input fields be always be above the keypad so that user could see what he is typing. I am sure there will be many customers who would be abondoning the choice of payment gateway because of this. This should have been given due consideration at this stage when PhonePe is setting out to establish itself.
Should we do user research during Covid-19?
By: Kashif Hameed
Tags: Covid 19, User Research, Product Discovery, Product Management

We, as product teams, ask questions daily that should we do user research during Covid-19? Is customer behavior is consistent, and results will be valid post-covid-19? Can we make product decisions based on current insights? When will the covid-19 effect over will the customer behavior reverse it back?

Can we make product decisions based on current insights? When will the covid-19 effect over will the customer behavior reverse it back?

My answer is Yes!

We should even do more research during Covid-19. Here are two main reasons for that,

Humanity is laid bare

People’s most urgent needs are closer to the surface right now. They are more in touch with their needs & more willing to share.

Those needs are not changing dramatically after becoming normal.

The kind of things I learn today make and break a business.

Covid-19 erupts new business models & modified almost every business model.

In Covid-19, I learned people share personal information at a level I’ve never experienced before.

Consistency of Need

After research, people respond that based on a change of behavior during Covid-19, they will fundamentally doing the same. Like,

— Shifting to eCommerce

— New opportunities in Marketplaces for everything

— Shifting towards digital payments adoption etc.

An example is a zoom; I noticed people don’t like to be interrupted during their audio/video calls, and every new join is first heading towards the waiting room.

Wrap Up
How to talk to your customer either your Product is a good idea?
By: Kashif Hameed
Tags: User Research, Product Discovery, User Interviews

Talking to your customers is really important. It helps to understand their problems, how significant the problem is, and how they are suffering. It also helps to find either your product in desired, either they could pay for this product or not.

But, usually, we do it wrong! Yes!

In his book “The Mom Test, " Rob Fitzpatrick has highlighted some fundamental mistakes product teams make during interviews.

1- Talk about the Customer’s Life but not about your product/idea.

Yes, we are tempted to talk about our idea. But the GOAL of this interview is to extract information, pain points, and circumstances that will help you solve this problem!

Let’s not try to SELL the product!

2- Talk about Specifics, Not Hypothesis.

Try to ask questions around the problem area you are solving and talk about specifics that already occurred in users’ lives. What was the path that encountered this problem?

This will give the data & knowledge that can be used later in product development.

Let’s not ask about your FEATURE SET!

3- Listen, Don’t Talk!

We all get into this trap, as we always communicate, talk, pitch to investors, teams. We tend to talk. It is about users, so listen to them, take notes, record audio (if a user allows).

Let’s understand the whole scenarios of users.

Here is a set of 5 Great Questions you should always ask users in your interviews!

1- What is the hardest part of doing [this thing]?

It will help to understand,

- How people are currently working,

- What are their pinpoints

- Whole context of the problem

This question can confirm the problem you are working on is a real pain point for users & they are actively looking to solve this problem.

2- Tell us about the last time you encountered [this problem]?

It will help to understand,

- Understand the circumstance around when the user encountered this problem.

- Understand how often this problem comes.

Data collected will be substantial evidence while you will solve this problem & you can overlay circumstances where the problem occurs and how you are solving it.

3- Why was this hard?

It will help to understand,

- Understand specifics of the problem, precisely what in the process they feel the real pain.

It helps to understand how to market this product and explain to new potential users the value propositions.

4- What, if anything, have you done to try to solve this problem?

It will help to understand,

- Understand, If users are not trying to find solutions to this problem, then the issue is not burning worth enough to solve, or customers will not consider paying for this service.

5- What don’t you love the solution you have already tried?

It will help to understand,

- Understand what features are you potentially build for a better solution.

- It will help what problems the existing solution has and how you can try to avoid that.
Research analysis as a team
By: Sophie Rankin
Tags: Research Analysis, User Research, Research Methods, Community Of Practice, Team Collaboration

One thing I’ve been struggling with recently is how to involve our whole team in the analysis of research findings. I’d like to learn more about how we can do this better.

In government, we say ‘user research is a team sport’ but there is little sharing about how we make that happen in practice. I’ve been working in UX research for 6 years and still don’t feel confident that I know how to nail a team research analysis session.

Recently, have you ran a research analysis session effectively with your team? One that involves the team at the right points, doesn’t add to the researcher’s workload and results in high quality insights? If you have an approach that’s worked well, or not so well, let’s start sharing them.
UX-Araştırma | Kullanıcı deneyimi araştırması hakkında her şey:2
By: Kerem Can Demirtaş
Tags: User Research, Kullanıcı Deneyimi, UX, User Experience, Kullanıcı Araştırması

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Product Sprint 1: Pivoting Pacts
By: Angela Chen
Tags: User Research, Product Design, Product Creation, Computer Science, Product Management

We wanted to understand how college friend groups usually plan to hang out, the difficulties of planning these events, and how COVID has affected this process. Through speaking with students about their current processes of making plans, we noticed that simply texting within a group chat and waiting for responses from friends was sufficient enough for most people to make plans with their close friends. Many users cited that the most difficult part of making plans was to find a common time between everyone’s busy schedules, but they would not use a specific platform such as When2meet or LettuceMeet as these were usually for student organizations or more professional meetings rather than a casual hangout with friends.

After organizing all of our findings on a Miro board and grouping the responses from our interviews into categories, we realized that our initial target customer base, friend groups wanting to plan events, did not necessarily have a strong pain point with event planning. However, we saw that there was a greater need from student organizations and teams for a more personalized and functional platform for surveying people’s availability and scheduling events. As a result, we decided to pivot our product to remedy the pain points for student organizations rather than friend groups on college campuses.
PM Hacks: Sending personalized emails in bulk
By: Nandhini Raghunathan
Tags: User Research, Productivity, Product Management

An important part of a product manager’s role is customer communication. You may need to invite customers to a beta test, gather feedback.

Emails are still one of the easiest and most effective ways to reach customers. There are 3.9 billion daily email users with 73% of millennials preferring email as the primary form of communication with businesses. However, every product manager should consider personalizing emails as they:

deliver six times higher transaction rates. allow you to measure responses and hence quantify data.

It would be best if you are able to easily segment customers and send emails easily from your CRM but it is not always so. I have found Microsoft Outlook’s Mail Merge to be a great tool for sending bulk personalized emails. Of course, this assumes that you use Outlook. I have typically used it in conjunction with Microsoft Excel where you can construct your personalization data.

Below is a step by step guide for you can do the same:

Compose your email in Word using the rich set of tools that Word provides.

I typically customize the name and survey link. Personalizing the survey links allows you to easily track responses.

2. Create an excel sheet with a customer list and custom values you want to insert into the emails.

3. Start Mail Merge by clicking the Mailings tab, Start Mail Merge tab. Choose Email Messages.

4. Now click on Select Recipients in the Mail Merge tab. Select the appropriate option. I chose to Use an Existing List. If you are doing something similar, select the excel sheet that you created in Step 2, choose the appropriate sheet.

5. Now, you can personalize the email by clicking on Insert Merge Field option. You can see that I have added FirstName and SurveyLink. To do this, place the cursor where you want to insert one of the custom fields. Click on Insert Merge Field and then select the field.

6. You can preview the result by clicking on the Preview Results option. I highly recommend sending a test email to just yourself to check the formatting.

7. Once you are ready to send the email, click on the Finish & Merge option and choose Merge to E-Mail option. You will now be able to set the subject and send the email.

8. Click on Mail Merge to Outbox and your emails will be sent to your recipients.
UX Research é pra todos??
By: Jaqueline Rocha
Tags: User Research, Observe2020, UX, Pretux, UX Research

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Introduction to User Research in Business Development
By: Mandar Kanade
Tags: User Research, Marketing, Cxl Minidegree, Cxl, Conversion Optimization

(Image source: freepik.com)

Marketing is all about building a business and selling a particular product or service to a targeted audience. Now, who defines this target audience? And on what basis you can design your marketing campaign? This is where the user research comes into the picture.

What is User Research?

To simply put User Research focuses on understanding the user’s goals, needs, and beliefs. You can use this insight to create better user experiences and deliver greater business value.

“To find ideas, find problems. To find problems, talk to people.” — Julie Zhou, former VP of Product Design at Facebook

Yes! It is that simple. You need to identify your targeted audience before you start designing your product or service. Understand the attitude of potential customers and then design your advertising campaigns. User research done at early stages help you identify various problems beforehand only and avoid the extra cost required for implementing subpar ideas. Usually, companies that put users first do better. It is about asking meaningful questions and thinking critically about the answers.

We all have our opinions and biases. User research helps us understand the customers’ biases and their attitude about the brand without taking any biases for granted. Also researching only the right audience will help you get the insights out of it. For example, if you are providing a stock trading service, researching people who have no background knowledge of trading will not be fruitful. You should target the audience who do the trading on a regular basis.

When is the best time to do user research?

User research can be done at various stages of the product development life cycle. The sweet spot would be during the product designing and prototyping phase. Implementing ideas is a costly process. If we identify our target audience and their needs before the implementation phase we can rule out many inefficient decisions. It reduces risks and saves money by eliminating subpar options from decisions early on in product development.

User research is a continuous process. Insights gathered from the research can be implemented at any stage. Hence we can do this research during the implementation phase also. But incorporating changes in this phase can be difficult at times. Many businesses also do user research after launching. It isn’t recommended to only do testing after launch, though doing user testing at all is better than not doing it at all. Research at this stage helps in understanding the user experience of our product or services. This can help us in improving the user’s experience.
Getting to the Bottom of Things: UX Edition
By: Thomas Southall
Tags: User Research, User Experience Design, User Testing

As I navigate life in the world of UX I seek for constant growth. This time has given me the chance to contemplate on my work. I’m a user experience designer and researcher and it’s my passion to improve the experiences that users go through on the web and mobile. I’m always pushing myself to learn more and to be a designer that brings meaningful work to the table. To be meaningful, the first thing that comes to mind is the research that I do in my work. I set parameters, talk to users, and audit similar websites, amongst much more. After all that work I can’t help but wonder to myself, did I get everything? What have I missed?

I leafed through my copy of Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things for some more insight.

“One of my rules in consulting is simple: never solve the problem I am asked to solve.” (Norman, 216)

I came across this quote while reading through the chapter about design thinking. When solving experience problems, it’s not always best to have a certain result in mind. It’s rational to work with an idea of what you think the data will tell you but it shouldn’t cloud your expectations.

You need to be open to surprising yourself with what you find during your research. What I try to get to with this questioning is to know what customers are trying to do. I additionally want to know what impediments lay in front of them.

Observing Customers

One of the most interesting parts of my work is observing people. As a designer and researcher I’ve led user interviews. It’s fascinating because people can create a thousand perspectives from any experience. I’ve conducted these interviews in-person and on the computer. Whenever I have the chance I always take the in-person option to speak to people. Interviewing over zoom calls requires you to sacrifice a lot of nuance. It’s harder to read facial expressions (especially if they have their face cams turned off). It’s unfortunate but due to everything going on right now, it’s the safest option. Luckily I have other tools at my disposal.

Errors & Root Cause Analysis

We all have experienced errors. They’re annoying, stressful, and in certain situations, deadly. Errors get in the way of what we as users what to do. In focusing on these barriers, I use Root Cause Analysis. This kind of analysis takes a look at human error and asks “why did this error occur?” and “what can be done to prevent this?”. In his book, Don Norman adds that a useful tool when performing the root cause analysis is The Five Whys. The Five Whys strategy was a strategy first implemented by Sakichi Toyota. It asks those investigating a problem not to stop when they uncover the first reason to a failure. It’s not a hard set rule to only go to five, but it’s still a good discipline to push your expectations farther.

I like working in UX is because I’m able to make digital spaces more pleasant and efficient. I’m grateful that I have resources such as The Design of Everyday Thing and similar resources. I will become a better designer with all the resources I have available.
Podcast Episode 2: Conducting user research during a lockdown
Tags: User Research, Covid 19, Lockdown, Pandemic, Hawthorne Effect

Podcast Episode 2: Conducting User Research During a Lockdown

Take a listen to our User Researcher’s, Merissa Brown, Erin Grey, and Steven Palmer as they talk to Randal Whitmore about what it’s like to conduct User Research during a lockdown while working on the NHS Jobs platform.

Hear about the inevitable tech woes that become part and parcel of the experience as well as asking the big question — has User Research helped in delivering on the project?

01:06 Organisations we’re working with but is it more about the candidates?

04:00 What are the problems we are trying to save and the vision of the project?

07:35 Is this project saving money going forward? Is the process the same for every organisation?

09:00 How has User Research helped in delivering this project?

14:44 What are the User activities that you carry out for projects like this?

25:10 How much in-person UR did you do pre-Covid and what does that look like now?

31:12 Key challenges of remote testing (Hawthorne effect)

37:07 What’s been the most surprising finding?

Want to listen when your phone is on lock, away from the laptop, on a stroll?

Check out Anchor.FM — several platforms available including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast fix.

Want to explore more?

Read Remote user research: our team’s lockdown experiences
Making industry work better — with the help of design thinking
By: Eriks Digital
Tags: User Research, Design Thinking, UX Design, User Experience

Applying Design Thinking to Make Industry Work Better

The first step of Design Thinking, empathizing, is crucial because it helps us to better understand our users — We conduct interviews, administer surveys, look at GDPR compliant recordings of people actually using our products, analyze data from Google Analytics, or a combination of all (and more). Each of these methods helps us in a different way to gain insight into our users’ behaviors and needs so that we can move in the right direction to identify the problem and ideate a solution.

Bringing the solution to life

Once we have an idea of the problem and a possible solution, we work to create a prototype. The prototype allows us to do two things:

Test it with users to obtain feedback prior to development —

Currently, we are working to re-design the O-Ring selector. The aim is two-fold: To help smaller businesses that might not have the capacity or knowledge regarding the complexity of O-Rings, and to help our internal colleagues at ERIKS point customers more quickly to the right product. Speaking with the business and looking at customer data, we want fewer, simpler and more guided steps. To figure out the pain-points of the redesign, we asked 50 users to test the prototype and complete a survey to give us a better idea of the usability of the selector.

2. Work with developers to implement an optimal solution —

By showing our prototype to developers, we get a realistic outlook on how feasible our solution is. If implementing our solution will take too long or is too complex, we go back to the ideation phase to come up with another solution that can better fit the timeframe and resources available, yet solve the needs of the end-user.

Developers can drop comments on our prototype. Here, we are looking to redesign the check out experience.

Implementation and the never-ending Design Thinking cycle

Once the design is handed off to the developers, the work isn’t finished. We work with our Product Owners and CRO Specialist to ensure we will be tracking the different changes and how it impacts conversion. For example, in the beginning of 2020, we worked to redesign the Product Detail Page (PDP) on our webshop. These design changes were made based on recordings that showed potential pain points, standard UX best practices, and by gaining user insight from prototypes. After development and subsequent AB testing, we are able to see whether or not the new PDP led to better add-to-cart rate than before. In this case, the new PDP saw a statistically significant better performance.

This is in combination with UX changes and faster page loading times

Though this is a win, the design thinking process is never over. In the world of UX, there is never such a thing as a perfect product… and so the process starts all over again. This feedback will take us back to the first step of the Design Thinking cycle, allowing us to continually optimize and explore ways to ensure a better digital experience.
Must have attitudes from a qualitative researcher
By: Isti Tene
Tags: User Research, Research, Moderator, User Experience, Qualitative Research

3 things that i have learned from qualitative research is LOL:

1. Listen, with an open mind of course. Put aside your assumptions

2. Observe, what people say might be different than their real feelings (Check iceberg theory)

3. Learn. take all the insights, the information as new knowledge, remember and retain it for the future

And empathy are guiding us of how we listen, observe and learn from the user/consumer.
¿Cómo investigar en UX para problemas complejos?
By: Santiago Bugdadi
Tags: Investigación, User Research, Cynefin, UX, Complejidad

in Everything New Is Dangerous
Leveraging User Research to Improve the Skiing Experience
By: Lydia Brian
Tags: User Research, Skiing, UX Design, User Research Resources, UX Research

UX research and design is all about understanding and improving the meaning and value of an individual’s experience. Digital products may come to mind, but pretty much any product, interaction or place can benefit from good user experience design. If, like me, you’re excited to head to the ski resorts this winter (and praying they stay open), you might be greeted by a friendly lift attendant, reassured by a supportive ski instructor, or perhaps a bit confused by the complex trail maps — your only safeguard to making sure you don’t end up on a terrifying ‘black’ run. It’s not always possible to ski with a guide to provide us the ultimate skiing experience, but why can’t we apply user-centred design methods to a day on the slopes to find new ways to delight?

As part of a recent assignment with Springboard, I was tasked with designing a product that could enhance the user experience of any situation of my choosing. It being July, and missing the snow, I chose to research the ski resort experience. Also, being a ski instructor who already wants to know every detail of an individual’s experience on the snow and how to make it better, it added a new dimension to what the “ski resort experience” really means. I challenged myself to forget my bias’ and go in blind, so frankly, I had no idea what this “product” could be, given most people don’t bother using their phones while they’re shredding the slopes (or do they??).

Your friendly ski instructor, yours truly

To begin with, I needed to gather some research. I reached out to skiers across the world — it didn’t matter if they were off-piste junkies or cautious ‘blue’ cruisers — as long as they frequented ski resorts I wanted to hear from them. It being the middle of the pandemic meant I conducted solely remote user research interviews, using Zoom to connect with skiers in Europe, New Zealand and Canada to talk about skiing — what they love (it varied HUGELY), what they hate (and they all hate the same thing…), and why.
How to empower an e-commerce website
By: Shyamali De Silva
Tags: User Research, E Commerce Business, User Interface, User Experience, E Commerce Website Design

How to empower an e-commerce website

Photo Credits Pexels

E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry, and is the largest sector of the electronics industry. Copied — Wikipedia

When it comes to designing a website, the number of challenges that we face are uncountable. As a designer, it’s a challenge to cherry-pick the options that come to our mind and evaluate the most suitable designing element that would look good on the website. Following a design process will help to understand the basics. At the end of the day, it’s all about the customer’s experience and the journey, that they will remember.

The two key elements that are vital when it comes to designing a website or any application design would be,

Know who will use your website.

will use your website. Know why they will use your website.

Know your target market segment

Getting to know about the audience is really important because it will make the designer understand user requirements and the best way to approach them. When your audience is specific it helps a lot in the market research to identify and determine who your audience really is. As designers, we should always design with your audience in mind.

How to do a User Research

There are an endless number of elements of design that determine our ability to sell to our audience. First from that lineup would be,

Balance

In symmetrical balance, the visual weight is distributed evenly and it’s very pleasing to the eye as well. A balanced design feels right, stable, and aesthetically pleasing. Balancing a formation comes with both positive elements and negative space usage. Handling positive and negative space equally makes the design balance perfectly.
L’équipe RH post COVID-19 : 3 changements majeurs à prévoir
By: Laure Girardot
Tags: Hr Software, Hr Talent Management, Hrtech, HR, Trends

in In Fitness And In Health
How to be a better programmer
By: Anas Bin Sohail
Tags: Developer Stories, Students, Coding, Advice, Programming

If you have never ever coded before or you’re not that good enough to write a program but you are much interested in learning and growing your skills then go ahead and learn!

Make sure you take this advice before taking the step

No to Codephobia : Mostly people have fear in them when they see a block of code they get scared and so as their level of interest decreases. So, you must not fear it rather than getting scared of it you should take more interest in it and learn with fun, take your time and try to understand it and once you did it then try to make it more short and functional.

: Mostly people have fear in them when they see a block of code they get scared and so as their level of interest decreases. So, you must not fear it rather than getting scared of it you should take more interest in it and learn with fun, take your time and try to understand it and once you did it then try to make it more short and functional. Start with the Basics : Make sure you build your foundation first and try to master the basics as it all started from there.

: Make sure you build your foundation first and try to master the basics as it all started from there. Build projects as you learn: It’s always a good step to build projects as you learn and to use those concepts in your projects on the go.

Last but not least

Try to upgrade your existing projects first instead of going for a new one (Once you mastered the required skills). You can always start a new project but instead of building a new one from the scratch you can always use your existing project and modify it because It will help you learn how to maintain existing software or project.

By following it you can develop yourself. Once you develop yourself then it won’t be hard for you to become a good programmer.

Regards

Anas Bin Sohail

@thebinsohail
The Top Education Publications on Medium
By: Edward West
Tags: Students, Entrepreneurship, Education, Learning, Education Reform

I used Top Publications list to sort through the fastest growing publication on Medium. I wanted to concentrate on those publications that are still experiencing growth (not entirely inactive).

Below are 3 publications that highlight different ways of learning and give a voice to educators, students, and really anyone wanting to share ideas/concepts. They also help show that learning is done in and out of the classroom.

Startup Grind

This is an absolutely massive publication with over 430,000 followers. It focuses on sharing ideas and processes that startup entrepreneurs follow. Definitely a valuable source of information for students both in and out of the classroom. I think this publication does a great job of highlighting real world experiences — both the success stories and failures that entrepreneurs go through. I actually think they could start a pretty successful YouTube channel if they have the time.

Age of Awareness

Age of Awareness is much smaller than the Startup Grind. It does a good job of highlighting teacher and student experiences. It also helps show us that learning is a continuous process — not just something that happens inside classroom walls. This publication is working to bring positive changes to the ways we learn.

Student Voices

This publication is not as active as it used to be but it is still home to many great articles. It helps connect students to the outside world. It seemed to have done a great job on including many students and teachers in the conversation — holding true to its name. It helps highlight many of the issues students face that are often ignored or not talked about.

There are several other publications on Medium that touch upon learning in some way but are not focused on it. Also, there are many that are no longer active (but remember they still have a great archive of works). I am hoping that more students and teachers discover Medium in the future and use it as a platform to both express their concerns and to highlight their successes.
U.S. Reaches Deal With Pfizer For 100 Million More Vaccine Doses
Tags: Health, Data Science, Social Media, News, Vaccines

Updated at 9:30 a.m. ET

The Trump administration says it has reached a deal with Pfizer to buy an additional 100 million doses of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, effectively doubling the federal government’s supply from Pfizer.

The pharmaceutical giant is to deliver 70 million doses by June 30, 2021, and complete the rest of the order by the end of the following month, according to a statement released Wednesday morning by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Pfizer said the government has agreed to pay $1.95 billion for the additional doses of its vaccine, which was developed jointly with BioNTech. That’s the same amount the U.S. agreed to pay for the first 100 million doses in a deal announced this summer.

“Securing more doses from Pfizer and BioNTech for delivery in the second quarter of 2021 further expands our supply of doses across the Operation Warp Speed portfolio,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. “This new federal purchase can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021.”

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Earlier this month, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first to get the greenlight for widespread use in the U.S., kicking off a massive vaccination campaign. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has since authorized the use of a COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna.

“The additional doses ordered today provide for a seamless transition from the first 100 million doses contracted earlier this year,” HHS said, adding that the agreement includes the option to buy 400 million more vaccine doses.

This is the second time the U.S. has moved to increase its vaccine supply in the past two weeks. On Dec. 11, the U.S. said it will buy 100 million more doses from Moderna, which will now supply a total of 200 million doses for $3.2 billion.

Together, the two companies have committed to supply 400 million doses — enough to immunize 200 million people, as both companies’ vaccines require two doses. The U.S. population is about 330 million.

A major challenge for both companies is meeting the staggering demand for vaccines against a pandemic that has killed more than 1.7 million people globally.

The Trump administration recently suggested that Pfizer was having production challenges in delivering its orders, a criticism that the company pushed back against.

Moderna “doesn’t have a track record of mass production,” as NPR’s Sydney Lupkin reported, and is expected to rely on outsourcing some production to contract manufacturers.

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Male cat rescued from moving garbage belt in Russia
By: The Animal Reader
Tags: Animal Rights, News Articles, Animal Welfare, Cats, Cat Rescue

The rescued cat at the office of environment ministry in Ulyanovsk, Russia, photo: Ulyanovsk Region’s Ministry of Environment / Reuters

A cat was saved from a moving garbage belt in the town of Ulyanovsk in Russia. Worker Mikhail Tukash picked up a white plastic bag from the belt and when he opened it, he saw two eyes looking at him. There was a black and white cat staring at him.

“It (finding the cat) happened by accident. We must slash every bag to see if there is metal inside. We collect metal. So, it happened by accident,” Tukash said.

Since the cat’s rescue on Monday, he quickly became a local celebrity, which led to him being adopted by the Ulyanovsk region’s environment ministry.

“The cat was on the brink of death,” the ministry said on Wednesday. “A little more, and he would have ended up in the trash separator.” The cat was all healthy after a veterinary exam.

Pictures from the ministry showed the cat napping in a chair at the office of environment minister Gulnara Rakhmatulina and exploring his new environment. The ministry has announced a nationwide contest to choose a name for the male cat.

“I want to appeal to pet owners: remember that you are responsible for those you have tamed,” Rakhmatulina said. “If you can’t keep your pet at home, you can always leave it in good hands or at a shelter.”
Homing Tam, Product Manager
By: Homing Tam
Tags: Public Relations, Cats, Product Manager, Adoptdontshop, Lalamover

joined in 2018, from 🇭🇰

my everything (my wife said we shouldn’t have worn black)

What led you to become a product manager?

Destiny.

I was a “product manager” in my previous company. I was responsible for Google’s product (e.g. Google Maps Platform, Google Cloud Platform & Google Analytics). I gave customers suggestions to make the most out of these products.

I had a good time in interacting with potential customers, building sales pipeline, solving technical problems and carrying out project management. Owing to customers’ own constraints, they may not be able to take all my suggestions. I felt bad. I talked to myself, “what if I can make my own call and develop things in the way I wanted to”.

Coincident enough, Alex Fok (1st tech. hire of the company) and Kelvin (my old friend) reached me out and asked me to join the company. It’s how I started a a “genuine” product manager.

What does a typical day look like?

I usually arrive at office around 9:30am. Upon arrival, I make myself drinks: a cup of (green) tea AND a cup of coffee. I clean the unread messages from customers until the unread message count drops to zero. (I have OCD.)

Then I started with what I have left the day before — either reproduce bugs reported by customers, or do housekeeping of our own product documentation / communication. On average I spent 2 hours on regular meeting and another 2 hours for the irregulars, everyday.

Regular meetings would be weekly update on my own product focus, product team review and sync-up with engineers on scopes and timelines. For irregular ones? I told you they are “irregular”.

Off work at 7pm. Pick my wife from her office. Back home and pet cats.

Name people or things you feel inspired when creating a product

“搵食啫，犯法呀” (I go to school by bus)

WONG Tsz-wah (Dayo), standup comedian

What would your self-portrait look like?

Sitting next to my wife and surrounded by 😺

Anything you want to promote or plug?

Adopt don’t shop https://www.google.com/search?q=adopt+dont+shop

My blog (?) tamhoming.wordpress.com
Cryptocurrency & Blockchain News|27.12.2020
By: Alp Işık
Tags: Cbdc, Japan, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Bitcoin

The market value of bitcoin has risen to over $500 billion.

BC2C stopped XRP transactions for users trading from America.

In Japan, the central bank is starting work on its digital currency.
2020攝影回顧
By: Bin-Xiu Su
Tags: Taiwan, Japan, 聊聊攝影, Fujifilm, Sony

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The Japanese ‘3 Doors to Success’
By: Martin Giles
Tags: Japan, Self-awareness, Self Love, Improvement, Self Improvement

‘三磨の位’ (San-ma-no-kurai) is a term derived from the Japanese martial art of Kendo (way of the sword) and can be applied to your life for discipline and self-improvement.

The teachings in Kendo schools explain that the secret to achieving skill and mastery to Kendo is through the San-ma-no-kurai, which means ‘3 levels of improvement.

The 3 levels are:

To learn. To practice what you have learned. To refine and tweak what you have learned.

It’s believed that it’s essential to nurture both internal and external skills (observation being external and intuition being internal) in order to become holistically developed and to be able to read your opponents intentions, a lesson that applies to humans and their behavior, and not just in the world of Kendo.

Although we all learn and develop, it’s critical to continue to train and refine a skill in order to maintain and further improve on it, a feature of the Kaizen philosophy of the Japanese. The Kaizen philosophy says that perfection does not exist, and no-one can ever totally master anything and one must therefore continually strive for improvement.

This ongoing cycle of perpetual improvement is voiced within the Japanese saying of “Today I must beat the me of yesterday”.

Short story #5 from series ‘100 amazing traits of Japanese’.
I’m not going to Japan in January.
By: Giulia Fois
Tags: Travel, Japanese, Japan, Vulcanus In Japan

I love how tremendously dramatic this picture is lol poor little bird, it seems really sad. Well, this is pretty much my state of mind as well.

This won’t be the same old useful post as the others, I’m sorry. I just wanted to quickly announce that after being able to get the visa, booking the flight ticket for mid January and organizing everything, I’m still not being able to go to Japan as originally planned.

Unfortunately the Japanese government has decided to tighten up its immigration measures, so basically I won’t be able to go until further notice, hopefully at the beginning of February (in the best case scenario).

I am disheartened by such news because everything finally seemed to be heading in the right direction, and now we are back to the start. The thing I hate the most is being at the mercy of events, without a clue about when I will able to go, feeling totally powerless. There’s nothing else I can do at this point other than waiting.

I hope the situation will be solved by September of next year, so that everyone who gets selected for the 2021 edition will be able to fully live the experience.
日本28日起鎖國禁外國人入境
By: C Y S
Tags: Japan

A columnist in political development in Greater China region, technology and gadgets, media industry, parenting and other interesting topics.
Dumb Joke #6: I’m not a Gaijin, I’ve been in Japan for almost 20 years. I’m Gaijinese!
By: Steve B Howard
Tags: Short Form, Japan, Humor, Jokes, Short Shots City

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