Links I liked: 2019 roundup

Earlier this year, I tried to get into the habit of blogging by sharing a link round up once a month. It worked for … four months. Instead of picking the monthly post back up, here’s a round up of my favorite things I read, watched, and listened to this year.

Books

This year I read 22 books, which is more books I’ve read in a year in … my entire life! Here are my favorites:

• Resilient Management, Lara Hogan

• Severance, Ling Ma

• A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara 

• Educated, Tara Westover

• Red, White, and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston

Articles

• 1% Better, Robin Rendle.

• Fixing Your Work Environment Will Not Fix Your Life, Megan Greenwell

• How to own a big job at a young age, Colleen Murphy

• How to offer challenges to your teammates, Lara Hogan

• Please, Please Don’t A/B Test That, Tal Raviv

• Here’s What I Learned During My First Year as a People Manager, Allison Krausman

TV Shows

• You, Netflix

• The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Netflix

• Dead to Me, Netflix

• The Society, Netflix

• When They See Us, Netflix

• Grey’s Anatomy, Netflix. Since September, I’ve been almost exclusively rewatching Grey’s Anatomy. Highly recommend.

Podcasts

• How the Measles Outbreak Started, The Daily

• Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia. Content warning for stories of sexual assault, incest, and physical abuse

• Binge Mode: Harry Potter, The Ringer

• At Booking.com, Innovation Means Constant Failure, HBR

In addition to doing a lot of reading, watching, and listening to this year, I also wrote a few things and learned to make cakes.

Things I wrote

• Links I Liked: May 2019

• The BuzzFeed Product Design Highlight Reel

• Links I Liked: June 2019

• Links I Liked: July 2019

• Links I Liked: August 2019

• Tips for Giving and Receiving Feedback

• Links I Liked: September + October 2019

• Beyond the px — BuzzFeed’s Kelsey Scherer. An interview I did. Click & scroll down to see a great photo of my dog, Ada.

Cakes I baked

• Banana chocolate chip cake with peanut butter frosting. Technically I made this one on December 31, 2018. 

• Some kind of chocolate cake with strawberries on top 🤷‍♀️

• Chocolate–Peanut Butter Fun Cake

• Salted Dark Chocolate Stout Cake

• Raspberry Ricotta Cake. I made this with frozen mixed berries instead of raspberries alone.

• Devil's Food Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting

• Cranberry Orange Cake

Links I Liked: September + October 2019

In an effort to clear out my tabs (and share more!), here are some things I’ve been reading, listening to, and watching recently.

Leadership

• How to offer challenges to your teammates, Lara Hogan.

• What great managers do: Prune, Claire Lew.

• You Do You: How to Define and Achieve Success on Your Own Terms, Sara Konrad Baranowski.

🆒 Design links

• The BuzzFeed Product Design Highlight Reel: Fall 2019, Allison Krausman. A roundup of what we’ve been up to at BuzzFeed.

• Tips for Giving and Receiving Feedback. Shameless plug! I wrote about why feedback is so important and some tips for giving and accepting feedback. It’s grounded in design feedback, but really is applicable to almost any type of feedback.

• I’m hiring four product designers to join the BuzzFeed design team.

Non-design links

• Just Enough Research, Erika Hall. A Book Apart just released the second edition of this book. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s already proven to be super valuable and full of actionable takeaways.

• I answered some questions about how I got into design and what my job looks like today. You can read them here (and see a great photo of me and Ada).

• Please, Please Don’t A/B Test That, Tal Raviv.

Links I Liked: August 2019

In an effort to clear out my tabs (and share more!), here are some things I’ve been reading, listening to, and watching recently.

Leadership

• 7 ways of giving feedback that encourage change, Claire Lew.

• At Booking.com, Innovation Means Constant Failure, HBR. A really good reminder about the importance of experimentation, and a bit about how you need to build a culture of transparency and open communication in order to make that successful. And also a lot of your experiments will fail — that’s okay!

• Microallyship, Neha Batra. Some quick tips for being a better ally.

• This thread on management and burnout, Marco Rogers.

🆒 Design links

• Publishers are changing page templates for shopping content pages, Digiday. Shameless plug! A new feature the BuzzFeed Commerce Tech team launched is showcased in this story.

• I’m hiring designers and a manager to join the BuzzFeed design team.

Non-design links

• How Apple’s Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls, The New York Times. I really liked how this story drops you directly into an infographic rather than the traditional headline/subhead of most stories.

• BuzzFeed’s new MoodFeed recommends content based on how you’re feeling, Techcrunch. Another shameless plug — we built this as a fun experiment.

• This month, I read Severance (highly recommend) and have been listening to Lover on repeat.

Links I Liked: July 2019

In an effort to clear out my tabs (and share more!), here are some things I’ve been reading, listening to, and watching recently.

Leadership

• How to own a big job at a young age, Colleen Murphy. An honest and open look at what it takes to be in a leadership position when most people around you (and even reporting to you!) are older than you.

• What's different about being a senior manager?, Lara Hogan.

🆒 Design links

• BuzzFeed’s Product Design Roles. Shameless plug. I updated our roles documentation this month. The two most notable updates: adding summaries to every level and moving from a rigid promotion system to a more flexible one. Like what you see? We’re hiring.

• Why redesigns don’t make users happy, Vitaly Dulenko.

• Users Don’t Hate Change. They Hate Our Design Choices., Jared M. Spool. On the design team at BuzzFeed, we’ve been thinking a lot about updates to our core experiences and products. I’ve been reading about how users react to “redesigns” and trying to get different perspectives. If you know of anything good, send it my way!

Non-design links

• Working From Home? Here's How to Avoid Bingewatching a Whole Season of Stranger Things While You Do It, Girls Night In.

• TBH I’ve spent most of my free time this month finishing re-reading Harry Potter — in July, I read Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. If you like Harry Potter, you should listen to Binge Mode from The Ringer.

Links I Liked: June 2019

In an effort to clear out my tabs (and share more!), here are some things I’ve been reading, listening to, and watching recently.

Leadership

• Resilient Management, Lara Hogan. This book is a quick read full of actionable advice, prompts for self reflection, and tons of reference material to dive deeper.

• How to Be Resilient in the Face of Harsh Criticism, HBR.

🆒 Design links

• The BuzzFeed Product Design Highlight Reel. Shameless plug! I wrote about all the great things the Product Design team has shipped this year.

• Drop caps & design systems, Ethan Marcotte.

• 1% Better, Robin Rendle. I love this quick read because it reminds me of what I’ve been telling the Design team at BuzzFeed for the last few months: if what you’re doing makes our products better tomorrow than they were yesterday (if even by a small amount), you’re on the right track.

Non-design links

• Fixing Your Work Environment Will Not Fix Your Life, Megan Greenwell.

• Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia. Content warning for stories of sexual assault, incest, and physical abuse.

• Seth and Rihanna Go Day Drinking.

• Two of my favorite recent quizzes on BuzzFeed: How Far Can You Make It Through This "Sk8er Boi" Lyrics Quiz? and If You Still Remember All The Lyrics To "Super Bass" I'll Be Seriously Impressed

Links I Liked: May 2019

In an effort to clear out my tabs (and share more!), here are some things I’ve been reading, listening to, and watching recently.

Teaching design fundamentals

Earlier this month, I asked Twitter to recommend their favorite resources for teaching design fundamentals. Here’s what people suggested:

• Classes on Skillshare and Canva

• The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst

• Practical Typography

• Inside Paragraphs, Cyrus Highsmith

• The Non-Designer's Design Book, Robin Williams

• Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton

• Grid systems, Josef Müller-Brockmann

• Designing the Editorial Experience, Sue Apfelbaum. This wasn’t recommended in the thread, but it’s one I recommend to people working on media products.

Leadership

The BuzzFeed design team (like many design teams in media and tech) is often changing. This means we often have people at all levels learning and practicing new skills. Here are a few links I gathered about mentorship:

• What the Best Mentors Do, HBR

• How to be a mentor, Aurora Klæboe Berg

• Mentorship and Sponsorship, Lara Hogan. This one is mostly about sponsorship, but I really like the clear and concise definition of mentorship used here.

• What does sponsorship look like?, Lara Hogan

🆒 Design links

• Queer Design Club. In their own words, “Queer Design Club is a new project highlighting the work of LGBTQ+ designers in the field today and throughout history.”

• Intercom launched their new brand, and shared a fantastic post and video about the process.

Non-design links

• How the Measles Outbreak Started, The Daily

• When Personal Becomes Professional: How I'm Managing My Anxiety at Work, Girls’ Night In

• Not All Bosses Are Evil (Said a Boss, Nervously), The New York Times

• The Society, Netflix. This show has all of my favorite ingredients for a great tv show: teens put in situations where they have to Grow Up Too Fast, a sci-fi edge, lots of drama that seems implausible but somehow keeps you on the edge of your seat.