I’m Writing A Book! (And Other Exciting Updates)

Thank you, readers!

I know I’ve been writing a lot of articles, lately, but I wanted to take a quick moment to check in with my readers. Some of you have been following my little blog for a while now. I know I haven’t posted one of my Information Architecture and chess posts in a while. I haven’t given up on that, but the blog (and my writing) have been evolving over the past few weeks.

Really, this blog started as a way to help me understand Information Architecture (and how it applies to chess) by doing what I know — writing. Then it became IA work within UX and design, when I posted my usability in chess post. I shifted to writing about the chess industry as it relates to UX. I still have on my to-do list is just being able to share my joy of the game, which I’ve talked a little bit about. I want to add more game analysis, too.

There’s really just a lot I think I want to do with this blog, and it’s been interesting watching it evolve as I grow too. It’s growing into more than just a vessel to understand. This exploration through my blog has helped me a lot and I want it to reflect me — personally, and professionally. Without this blog, I wouldn’t be sharing the following news:

I am going to be at Chicago Camps on June 5th, doing a talk on chess and UX!

AND, I AM WRITING A BOOK ABOUT CHESS AND DESIGN/UX.

I am so excited!! A lot of the current structure of my outline came out of these blog posts, the feedback I’ve gotten from readers, from you. So, thank you.

I never would have thought I would be writing a book when I published my first post. The more research I did for the blog, the more I found that wasn’t fitting into the constraints of the blog post. It was really a chapter, some of this information needs some space to breathe. There’s a lot of stuff I didn’t get to cover in a small amount of time.

At first, approaching this whole chess and information architecture, UX aspect, my mentor, Grace, said that this could be a book. I laughed it off — yeah, okay, sure. But the more I wrote these posts about chess and understanding our place online, the more I realized she was right.

When I did the “What Does Chess Have To Do With UX?” post, Grace read it, and was like, “you know you just wrote the introduction to your book, right?” I had to accept that it was time to let the book exist as a tangible concept rather than something that could happen one day. It would be real.

So, here we go. I’m going to write a book, and if you want to listen to me talk about chess and UX, you know where to find me in June. I am so excited for you to one day be able to read this.