member spotlight: Josephine Dru
Our Member Spotlight program selects someone from the community to highlight. These are people who contribute in ways that foster an even more connected and diverse learning environment. Our goal is to help you get to know your fellow community members a little better and learn from one another.
We are shining our spotlight on Josephine Dru. Josephine is an active member of the SWD community, having completed 16 challenges, solved 8 exercises, and provided more than 50 pieces of feedback to other community members. Recently, during our premium office hours sessions, she mentioned her approach to setting goals and regularly practising the art of feedback, which we’re highlighting today.
Josephine taught undergraduate writing at college, where her students became better writers through frequent practice and repeatedly observing and commenting thoughtfully on others’ writing. Thinking critically about both the positive aspects and opportunities for improvement in someone else's material trains us to be aware of those elements in our own work. Wanting to expand this development personally, Josephine created the 100-day learning habit, finding inspiration from the challenge Become a Better Designer in 100 days and adapting it. The key principles behind her approach are detailed below.
What is a 100-day learning habit?
Repetition, dedication, and accountability are all helpful tools to leverage when we decide to make intentional steps towards learning a new skill. A 100-day habit incorporates all of these aspects, and is a great framework for ensuring progress towards a goal. Here are some guidelines for beginning your own 100-day habit, which can be applied to whatever your particular expectations and targets are.
Establish a flexible, but specific, timeframe. The 100 days should be close together, but need not be strictly consecutive. For example, aiming to complete your 100 days over a 20 week period will ensure that you maintain your momentum, but won’t risk burnout or disappointment if you miss one day (or several days in a row).
Set a clear goal and expectation. What are you hoping to learn, and how can you leverage publicly-shared material to get there? For example, if you’re looking to become more technically skilled and aesthetically creative in your data visualisations, you could choose (as Josephine did) to review one SWD challenge submission for each of the 100 days of your habit. The habit need not apply solely to data visualisation and focus can be applied to many subjects covering design, writing, artistry, and ultimately any subject that you want to improve upon.
Once you’ve selected an overall goal, you’re ready to start your 100-day habit. Each day, you’ll spend no more than 15-30 minutes total on the following tasks:
Choose an example of someone else’s work to review. Remember that the goal is to learn from other people’s efforts, so finding 100 unique works that fit your goal is important. If you can find several examples at once or solicit suggestions from others, that can be helpful and time-saving. (Josephine structured her SWD reviews as “20 galleries in 20 weeks”, picking 5 examples from each gallery to focus on themes of interest, like mapsmaking or designing for mobile .)
Identify one theft-worthy feature. Select an element from the piece which is particularly impressive, original, or provides inspiration for future work. (The phrase theft-worthy comes from the book Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon.)
Indicate one opportunity for improvement. For example, if you’re reviewing examples of data visualisation, this opportunity for improvement could be a different chart choice, more effective use of colour, a takeaway title, or a clear recommendation.
Publish the link to the design. Highlight both the theft-worthy feature and the opportunity for improvement in the post. You could share this on social media, or on a blog of your own. Keep in mind that you are providing unsolicited feedback, often to a stranger, publicly, so do your best to be constructive and considerate in what you share on social media. The intent of the 100-day habit is to help you improve your own skills, rather than to criticise the work of others.
Why take on a 100-day habit?
Learning by critiquing forces us to be more thoughtful about not only what a creator made, but why they made their choices. Providing feedback on work, whether it be writing, UI design or data visualisation is an incredibly effective learning habit. It gets us beyond simply reacting to creative work (e.g., “I like that” or “I don’t like that”), and instead think about what the goal of the piece might have been. The simple act of taking someone else’s perspective broadens our ability to consider multiple approaches within our own creative work.
Prescribed time limits help prioritisation. Dealing with time constraints can feel like a burden, but getting in the habit of doing so makes us more effective at prioritising and ultimately, completing work. We grow less precious about accomplishing every single thing we might have hoped to achieve, and instead, learn what is essential and what is worth the effort.
Build a library of inspiration. A natural byproduct of this endeavour is that we’ll assemble a catalogue of inspiration to look back on. Moreover, we’ll have intentionally considered each of those 100 pieces, so it’ll be more likely that we’ll recall them in greater detail, and in meaningful contexts when similar situations arise.
Small amounts of regular practice feel achievable and produce lasting results. Practising the habit regularly will facilitate greater learning. As Josephine adamantly quoted to me, “Never underestimate the inevitability of gradualness!”
So far, Josephine has undertaken two rounds of “100-day habits” focused respectively on UI design and data visualisation. By breaking the topic down into very manageable pieces and having a clear end date, the goals feel achievable and not overwhelming. Depending on your availability and motivation, there’s no reason why you couldn’t take on multiple 100-day habits simultaneously.
We encourage you to chat with Josephine directly this month. She has graciously extended an invitation to anyone in the community who would like to review work with her and discuss visualisations collaboratively. Having used the community as her inspiration, she may well have a tip or two to share as well on what makes a visual stand out to her, as she scans the SWD galleries for her next example. Congrats, Josephine, on a well-deserved Member Spotlight!
There are plenty of noteworthy members in the community—too many to spotlight at once. This program is part of our larger efforts to find new ways to share multiple voices and experiences. As you discover great work and ideas in the community, let us know who you think should be featured next by completing this quick nomination form. In the meantime, be sure to give appropriate kudos and spread the word!