A proper weekend

It’s Monday and I’ve already lapsed 2 days on my 100 day writing challenge.

Boo.

Anyway, it was a good, busy weekend — I went up to Tower Bridge for the first time, and got to look down the glass floor to see the bridge open up from above.

It was surprisingly uncrowded for a public attraction, and we had our lunch there with views overlooking East towards Canary Wharf.

Eastward view from Tower Bridge
View of the West Tower

Then on Sunday, I cooked curry fish head for my uncles and aunts from my mum’s side of the family and that was pretty much Sunday done.

It was my first time gutting and cleaning the head of a hake. Which was a bit like preparing and cooking lobster for the first time.

There’s a first time for everything. Who knows what I’ll cook next that’ll be a first.

Hake head
Fish head curry

Getting comfortable about work that drags on forever

This has been a busy, tiring week. My diary doesn’t look crazy, there are no big deadlines… but I’ve been labouring over a competitor review document in the last few weeks, which sounds like such a silly thing to labour over.

The last minute rush to set up the Miro boards for this month’s internal guild discussion session added more intensity to my Thursday. And I was ambitious when I signed up for one too many sessions on mental health, which were running as part of an internal initiative. I’ll have to go back through the recordings once I have a bit of breathing space… some of them are really good.

I have been reluctant to produce standard UX documents for non-UX stakeholders. After years of producing so many of them, they end up being such a waste of time because they lack the rigour, substantiation, care and preparation they deserve to elevate insights to a point it makes any difference. You get out what you put in and all that.

Now a few weeks since starting on the deck, I wasn’t expecting to spend as much effort and time as I have just to produce the documented insights. I feel I should know this by now, but my ballpark figures never seems to match what actually happens.

I might as well go back to my old software development heuristic of doubling or tripling initial estimates — a shorthand I used whenever I was asked to say when a piece of software would be done. It worked surprisingly well for many years.

This just goes to show “years of experience” feels like an inappropriate justification for anything, really. 10 years of experience – wireframes, JSON, agile, Microsoft Word, competitor reviews.

I think my gripes come from the discomfort that the work I do seems to drag on forever. And it’s sort of the nature of the beast…. quite a bit of it is messy, thinking work.

I might as well get over it and get comfortable embracing the “dragginess” of strategic work.

Content Strateg…ic?

I run a monthly-ish internal discussion forum for strategic UX topics at my workplace, building on things I’ve learnt from running IxDA London and other communities.

Today, we covered the topic of copy and content, which came about when my colleague Olga, a technical writer, pinged me on Slack about something she thought might be a good fit for one of our monthly discussions. The initial thing wasn’t copy or content-related but to cut the long-story short, we decided to host a discussion around the strategic value of copy and content.

The title is a bit of a funny one. The core of the conversation was actually about content operations, rather than strategy. The words “strategic” or “strategy” sometimes acts as a trojan horse that gets people excited, for right reasons, I think… but in this discussion, we actually didn’t really discuss much about strategy.

I think it’s easy to get confused over something that’s “strategic” vs. actual “strategy“.

To make myself clear, what I mean by “strategy” is really about what is the “thing” that enables us to gain an advantage over… well, something else… for some meaningful purpose / goal / direction / outcome / etc.

Strategic ≠ strategy

The word “strategic”, well, could mean anything, really. It’s more about the intention and effort of doing something in a way that improves our chances for desired outcomes, rather than the approach itself. Being strategic doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with strategy.

I could’ve just called the session, “content strategy”… or “operationalising copy and content at scale”, which would’ve been more accurate to what was being discussed, and those titles would also sound “strategic”… but somehow using the word “strategic” in the title makes it sound more tight and punchy.

Also — on one hand, it’s not like people wake up one day and decide “I’m not strategic” (ok, ok… maybe they do). But then, to say you are strategic sounds like it requires a bit more thought and intent to make it work. So, it helps to use the word to, I don’t know, drive that intention home.

So, I suppose one elephant-in-the-room question might be… can a piece of work within an org / product / team / etc. be “strategic” and yet also be completely disconnected from an organisation’s / product’s / team’s / etc.’s strategy?

I think so.

The way I’m thinking of it is that the word “strategic” is a synonym for “better operationalisation” or “better ways to get things done”.

I’ve just Google’d this:

“strategic”

  1. relating to the identification of long-term or overall aims and interests and the means of achieving them.
  2. relating to the gaining of overall or long-term military advantage.

and

“strategy”

  1. a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.
  2. the art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle.

(source: Oxford Languages)

So, “strategic” is actually more of a verb-like thing rather than a noun-like thing. A “doing” rather than a “what”. Activity vs. Approach…. i.e.

  • “the identification…”
  • “the gaining…”

Which sort of makes sense.

And the word, “strategic”, is not the same as “strategy”, which is more about approach, plans or means — from which people can use to make decisions with towards a more desirable direction.

Activity instead of Approach.

Is it pointless to be strategic if you already have a strategy?

To play devil’s advocate (sorry for the overused phrase), if you can indeed be doing things strategically despite that not being related to a / the strategy at all, isn’t that like a stupid thing to do?

Maybe.

But maybe the focus here isn’t so much about whether being strategic has to link up to strategy or not… but whether being strategic has advantages to… well, not being strategic. Whatever that means.

And “not strategic” can only be known, I think, when you have a way of determining:

  • intent / purpose
  • ability or a way of saying how one can or cannot do something
  • some kind of “bullshit” test or meter — i.e. a way of knowing if it’s going to work or not

Which is a kind of similar in structure to what a strategy needs to contain:

  • intent / purpose
  • an approach or way to succeed
  • some way of knowing if it’s worth it and confidence that it’s going to succeed

(not too far off from Rumelt’s definition of a good strategy)

The difference is that strategy can sort of stand alone on its own, but being “strategic” needs people and the work playing out in actuality.

Muscle > Means

I prefer to think of being strategic as sometimes more valuable than an actual, working strategy. This is because strategies can change, for all sorts of reasons, and they should change if it’s clear those strategies are not going to work. The way you would know if it needs to change is actually a people and intent thing — i.e. being strategic in the way you go about things… even if being strategic may not necessary be linked to a / the strategy at all.

So, I said the thing earlier about Activity instead of Approach, but I actually like to think of it in terms of “Muscle” versus “Means”. Often times, what you really want is a strategic muscle… especially in today’s environment where things are complex and constantly changing. You’ll acknowledge that the “means” of strategy will have to bend and flex and adapt with conditions.

So, anyway — this is me trying to rationalise why I didn’t call the session “Content Strategy”.

Designers, don’t underestimate failure at work

Experiencing and observing failure at work is highly undervalued skill for a designer to have. It’s priceless to have gained hard-earned professional insight, and almost all expertise and maturity depends on how to manage the risk of failure of all shapes and sizes.

Consider what your response might be to the following situations:

  • A development team that’s so focused on project delivery it ignores fundamental errors informed by user testing that requires additional effort to fix
  • A massive disconnect between what consumers and providers want, with your product providing value for both audience groups.
  • A misalignment between your product and technology leads about priorities and overall objectives for the project
  • One’s professional inability to deliver critical design solutions that meet both business and customer needs

You might argue that these are all different things, but they share a common trait of being treated as failures.

It’s easy to dismiss these things as inconveniences, externalities, or problems outside our immediate scope of influence, or dismiss oneself as an outcast or impostor, but I think designers have a unique vantage point from which they can help to unlock value for themselves, as well as with and for others.

However, if a designer to cannot understand the underlying nature of failures, how does one assist in designing solutions for it – across multiple levels? This is why reframing one’s orientation towards failure can help tip the scales towards favourable outcomes.

The key lies in the following things:

  • Understanding multiple perspectives and stories behind failure situations
  • Embracing curiousity and introspection to tease out opportunities hidden behind failures
  • Facilitating solutions that unlock value informed by learning

A mature designer is one who understands the value and means for recovering fast and finding ways to unlock opportunities behind those failures (My inspiration from this comes from John Maeda’s Interaction19 talk, where he talks not about failing fast, but recovering fast).

Also, designers are well placed to observe and experience failure in a multitude of ways. These are several situations why this is so:

  • Designers often have unique sensitivity into observing and uncovering mismatched vectors existing within situations, perspectives, effort and goals.
  • Designers, in an attempt to solve problems, need to cross chasms involving people and systems in different contexts, requiring much trial and error as well.
  • Working with people is hard, and with designers often being ‘temporary or situational experts and learners’, huge mistakes will be made to bridge that gap to work effectively with their colleagues, customers or users.
  • Sometimes, an over-emphasis on craft vs. solving actual problems presents huge opportunities for failure, misunderstanding and re-education.

Many of us want to contribute towards something resulting in positive outcomes, but how? It’s much easier to play the less-messy role of observing and being a critic or informant from the sidelines. However, it also doesn’t work to meddle in complex issues from the outside, or to attempt solving all problems in one go.

Instead of complaining, it’s perhaps better to look at the bigger picture, and seek help to understand multiple realities shaping everyone’s behaviour and interests. Tools like soft-systems methodology (Peter Checkland) or systems mapping can help with this. Incidentally, this has not often been in the formal realm of design practice, but it’s something we can get better at – if merely to inform ourselves about these worldviews.

Sometimes, design work can act as a Trojan horse to displace or reframe complex problems and situations between different groups of people, to help refocus everyone’s attention on what’s worth solving. Circular, heated debates can sometimes be diffused by evidencing complexities and disagreements with experiments, prototypes or stories – and the level of designer social savvy can tip the scales between a violent disagreement and broad acceptance of a new norm.

With proper care and tact, even process improvements can help unlock tangled, disconnected or imbalanced ways of working or situations. For example, we can opt to solve things across different time scales, re-scope things to yield the right-sized solutions, or be flexible to model new behaviours and leading by example.

Then, finally, being honest with oneself, and realising that sometimes, we ourselves are the cause of the problem. Understanding how to recover quickly and healthily from this, then re-addressing the situation in a positive new light, can add years to a designer’s maturity level.

One might ask — shouldn’t this apply to non-designers too? Well, yes. But I think the unique blend of designers’ sensitivity and ability to work across the spectrum from social to systems does provoke an a more optimistic way of working despite its challenges, that’s worthy of our investment and too important not to ignore.

One last trick, I sense, is to give ourselves the space and time to do so.

Thanks to Kim Lenox, Fabien Marry and Martina Hodges-Schell for listening to me during my recent struggles with failure and giving me sage work advice.

Reflecting on reflective practice

I attended a fringe event of the User Research London conference on Friday this week, thanks to the lovely team at STBY.

It was an intimate evening of discussions and camaraderie, as I took the opportunity to briefly rekindle with Jo Wong and Dan Szuc from Apogee HK, as well as other friends I haven’t met in years. But there were many new faces I got to know that evening, and we were sharing and debating and, well, reflecting on the idea of reflective practice.

The woke designer

Reflective practice, or more appropriately — a reflective practitioner — is someone who actively integrates aspects of learning, awareness, and savvy intrinsically to their design practice. Kind of like a designer who’s woke.

So, the idea of reflecting on reflective practice, while sounds very meta, is actually just a part and parcel of being a reflective practitioner — it’s not abstract at all.

Geke van Dijk from STBY opened us up by framing our discussions around highlights, tips, and challenges, which surfaced several things like:

  • The importance giving ourselves and our colleagues space to reflect on our work (e.g. retrospectives, blocking out specific times in our calendar),
  • Not having enough time (general busyness, increased obsession and preoccupation with speed which is a dangerous thing)
  • Embodying reflectiveness in our own lives (you can’t really switch it on or off, and that there are sometimes identity issues when reflectiveness changes you as a person so much)
  • Impact or influence of culture (team, organisation, discipline, upbringing; appropriateness of practice in different parts of the world)
  • Gratitude / thankfulness / lightness of practice (of people close to us, friends in the industry, likemindness, intentfulness)
  • Frameworks, tools, resources and methods (Nobl.io’s organisational design resources, Johari window, DIY toolkit)

The metaphor of scaffolds

Some of this really resonated with something I’ve been developing over the last few months in the form of a talk, which is the metaphor of scaffolds in relation to approaches for facilitating work within teams and organisations.

I think of scaffolds whenever I think of things like the double diamond, experience maps, UX principles and diagrams, and even definitions of strategy and vision. These often emerge from or is applied to some understanding of a problem space, and typically is expressed in words and/or visuals, to help people solve problems and do work.

I like thinking of them as scaffolds, because:

  • They’re often transitional and facilitative, “erected” to support the development of an end solution or outcome.
  • Someone typically has to take the lead to guide others to navigate the “path of the scaffold” — it isn’t always obvious just by looking at it.
  • The structure of the scaffold suggests how work can be done, so that groups of people can achieve a shared outcome better.
  • Sometimes, scaffolds can become permanent (for better or worse) — they become part of actual solution that teams are working towards.

The double diamond is a good scaffold — useful for communicating the structure of design work, acting as a bridge between disciplines and teams across organisations

The idea of scaffolds within the context of reflective practice is meaningful to me, because it suggests a long-term adoption by groups of people towards a shared direction. The success of a scaffold is when it’s meaningfully used by diverse groups of people without you being there.

Reflective, forever

Reflective practice isn’t without drawbacks. It takes more effort and time. It requires observation, understanding, action and risk-taking. Sometimes it means people getting uncomfortable, when they see things from a different point of view (of others’, particularly), and when it nudges them to act wisely on behalf of the larger context. Sometimes people misinterpret systems and subvert them in the wrong way.

And although reflection isn’t the only way, it’s a preferred way. And it’s by being more reflective, our craft and discipline becomes strengthened as a force for the long term, both for ourselves and for the world around us.

We just need to keep spreading the love.

Post-conference thoughts from Interaction16, Helsinki

IxDA’s Interaction16, held in Helsinki last week, lived up to the expectation of fielding current trends like virtual reality, internet of things, designing with algorithms, artificial intelligence, and driverless cars. And indeed, those topics did take centre stage, but with a different subtext than the ones I’m so used to seeing on my daily feeds. This subtext is about“designing the future for people”, rather than “what is the future enabled by more fancy tech?”. A slight but crucial difference. As I reflect on the conference, I’m reminded by this Don Norman quote,

Technology first, invention second, needs last

As designers, we often can’t invent our way into the future as we rely on the means to get us there. In general, technology arrives to us first as crude and unrefined solutions, and then as diverse forms of adoption, before we ever get to influence its evolution or integration into society. But a lot of that is now here, and we need to get stuck in.

Boston Dynamics robots look scary and sound “inhumane”

The message I heard across the keynotes and presentations is that designers need to get deeply involved in the technological sea change we’ve been talking about for awhile now, rather than remain observers from afar. There are two threads to this: Get more involved designing for the new forms of technology that are starting to permeate society (IoT, robots, artificial intelligence,…), and Build robust and widely adoptable solutions for today’s problems that support tomorrow’s experiences (gov.uk, thick data, designing for refugees,…). The two aren’t necessarily related, but both worthy of our attention.

Designers are already here — just not evenly distributed

In her keynote, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, laments: “where have the designers gone?” Although she’s been running IoT communities and events for a long time, designers are still under-represented. This includes myself, as someone who often organises monthly IxD events around IoT topics.

Another charismatic plea comes from Cameron Sinclair keynote — “Forget Virtual Reality!”, he says, “let’s work on Actual Reality!”. He criticises the fetishisation of digital communities over smart cities (a misnomer), on our need to support scale (to what end?), on our attempts to make our cities more resilient (against what?).

The two keynotes are true in the fact that while interaction design is becoming more widespread, there are still a lot of gaps and tons of work to be done. Leisa Reichelt said in one of the IxD Awards videos — we need to get the basics right first, and then move into the more interesting stuff. At the moment, we’re still at a point where keynote speakers are telling us what machine learning is. We’re still a long way off. And while interaction design has grown considerably, we’re still not distributed well across the areas of need. It reminded me that work doesn’t have to exist in the form of salaried employment all the time, and that we can aspire to Design as a lifelong vocation. We have to take charge if we want to realise the future we deserve (an apt phrase borrowed from this year’s Student Design Challenge)

Existential crisis for Joe, who wasn’t able to join us in Helsinki.

Pause, Reflect, Progress

We no longer come to conferences to debate the definition of interaction design (thank goodness). There are better things to debate, to think through critically, and to resolve. As designers, we continue to use language in new ways, but that’s necessary to solve problems with new mediums, contexts, systems and platforms. Matt Nish Lapidus’ cited Lev Manovich that we are now interfacing with a “culture encoded in digital form” — and that our interfaces are our new tools, rather than the tools we use to create those interfaces. This is a result of the pervasiveness of digitization, and so a reframing of our practice, as Marko explains, shifts from control to emergence.

“We don’t have good models to talk about AI” — Chris Noessel

Hopefully, we’ll be more careful in using terms and labels borrowed from technical domains that may limit our thinking. For example, Chris Noessel articulates that “agentive technology” is new from an experience point of view, as a moniker to frame our understanding of the nature and limits of artificial intelligence-based agency as a phenomenon, agentive behaviour, and our relationship with it.

Taking up arms: The future we deserve

The future may sound look really exciting and interesting (or even scary) on the flashy covers of Wired or on a Fast.co news feed, but I’ve always been skeptical about that packaging — primarily because they lack depth in understanding of the human condition. But I shouldn’t be so hung up about everyone else’s version of the future. I swallowed a huge dose of Finnish pragmatism across the seven days, and Marko Ahtisaari’s opening keynote did make a point that we shouldn’t be futurists anymore. Now is the new Future, and it’s up to us to define it.

My Interaction16 sketchnotes are up on Flickr. Feel free to use, share, and comment under a creative commons license. https://flic.kr/s/aHskw4w7SZ

My Interaction16 sketchnotes

Introduction to Sketchnoting Workshop with General Assembly, 21 October

I’ll be running my introductory workshop on sketchnoting again on Monday evening, 21 October at General Assembly’s London campus in Farringdon. Ticket prices start at £20 for super early birds and go up to £30. The class is limited to 20 people.

The workshop is aimed at helping newcomers understand the strengths and benefits of sketchnoting and pick up practical methods to get going. It’s interactive, intense, and participants will get their hands dirty with opportunities to reflect on improving their notes and developing their own style and approach.

Materials will be provided – you’ll get to take home a tombow ABT dual brush pen and a MUJI gel-tip pen, as well as all the sketching paper you need to to get you started.

Here’s are some comments shared by previous attendees:

“really useful insight into structuring note-taking…”

“enabled me to improve my approach to sketch notes with better precision… an excellent job at distilling all aspects and even covering tools”

“highly recommended”

You can get tickets via the General Assembly site: Introduction to Sketchnoting for Improved UX Design

A sketchnote produced by a former workshop attendee

Sketchnotes as part of a maturing creative practice

A few years ago, I produced my first sketchnote at a visual note-taking workshop led by the lovely Eva-Lotta Lamm. Since then, I’ve done more than a hundred sketchnotes over two dozen or so events across 5 different countries with no intention of stopping.

I do it primarily for the challenge, the intimacy from being immersed in ideas, and I’ll admit, the compliments I get from onlookers, peers and experts. But the value I get out of it is so much more, because the most rewarding thing about sketchnoting is not about its product, but its process.

The best learning happens in real time

Active participation enhances our learning, but in broadcast situations like talks, panels, speeches and shows, it’s all too common to sit back and watch, listen, reflect, and question. Sketchnoting turns that on its head and allows you be part of that experience.

The flexibility of visual note taking over conventional note taking means you take more advantage of your senses, cognition, understanding and visual communication skills while you are in the moment absorbing everything. This involves things like:

  • prolonged concentration and being in a flow state
  • synthesising and visualising complex ideas in real-time
  • making connections that are non-linear and can flex around the narrative as its being presented
  • uncovering and visualising patterns and structures
  • leveraging aesthetics in visual communication

So while it’s nice to admire interesting sketchnotes as an output, but even better to experience sketchnoting for yourself.

Sketchnoting is a learnt skill

Visual notetaking is a skill that has to be learnt. You don’t need to be an art student to be able to do sketchnotes, but you have to be willing to stretch yourself a bit and visualise things that you “see” in your head onto paper.

This takes a bit of practice, obviously, but you can get up to speed by using some tips and tricks like Dave Gray’s approach to drawing things and people, choosing a framework or template to structure your notes, or using different types of pens to create depth and hierarchy in your notes.

Just like learning another language, and it shouldn’t take you too long to build up a basic vocabulary. Drawing portraits, abstract concepts and complex objects will of course take more time but at the end of the day, every little thing you draw is an investment you make in participating in the experience, which pays back in dividends.

Sketchnoting is a journey

I think sketchnotes is a lot like sketchbooking, where it forms part of your existing creative process and journey that develops over time. Just as artists use sketchbooks to develop their ideas, capture observations, and refine their thinking, sketchnoting allows a UX practitioner to be more focused, critical and reflective about what’s being learnt from the content.

It’s pointless, therefore, to see the whole picture by looking at someone else’s sketchnotes — just as you wouldn’t piece together the Mona Lisa by looking at Leornado’s sketchbooks. The output then becomes a byproduct of the note-taker’s experiences, thoughts and learnings. Some are more communicable, and some are more personal.

That shouldn’t stop you from making your sketchnotes memorable and interesting as that helps with socialising your ideas. At the end of the day, what matters most is what you take from it over time as you mature as a practitioner.

I’m really passionate about sketchnoting as a means to improve learning and visual communication. I run sketchnoting workshops with General Assembly from time to time – the next workshop is on Oct 21. I’ve also produced a follow-up post on Learni.st on getting started with sketchnotes for folks who have not tried their hand with sketchnotes and want a quick way to get started. Have a look!

Typography resources

As an addendum to my talk, “Typography is IA”, I’ve compiled a list of resources which I’ve found useful in my learnings and research. I hope you find them useful and enjoyable as much as I did.

Starting points

Useful reads and references

If you really want to go deep and geek out

Note that most of these tend to focus on typography for print. YMMV.

Or try the reading lists from the experts themselves…

Reading lists

Feel free to suggest more, or ask if you have any specific questions. Thanks!

Slides

Typography is IA – IA Summit 2013

An apprentice’s heart

I think the theme for 2012, at least for me, was about professional growth. As a result of my first full year as a permie at Sapient, I’ve dug more roots into projects and roles than before. Still, I continued my commitment to the community by organising UXCampLondon 2012, becoming an IxDA local leader, attending, supporting and speaking at numerous events, and building new and existing relationships.

The biggest lesson I’ve learnt is to be patient with myself. It’s easy to be pulled in many directions when I’m solving a problem, but some pragmatism does no harm to balance things. Plus, it’s impossible to be expert at everything. I’ve learnt instead to accept the context of the problem, but improve the way I work with people towards a solution. Old habits die hard – being a programmer for so long, I’ve gotten used to a more direct way of problem solving. This needs to change, as problem solving in design is a lot more organic and social.

So I’ve been looking at ways to build shared understanding. To begin with, I’ve started looking at deconstructing the various ways I approach problem solving, to see if any of them can be done socially i.e. not alone. I’ve experimented with sketchboards, scaffolding design documentation, paper prototyping, sketching out conceptual models – basically making things very visual, tangible and interactive.

I think that effective shared understanding is a result of three things coming together regularly:

  • shared artifacts – ‘objects’ that can be shared/owned/worked on socially
  • shared activities – solving a problem together
  • shared leadership – people who take initiative, execute to a vision, draw and connect others

This was the point of a talk I did in September. Needless to say, it can be quite stressful trying to solve the problem while trying to solve the way to solve the problem. But I see no other way – many UX briefs contain elements of wicked problems, many of which demand a pedagogical approach rather than a systematic one.

In response to this, I’ve decided to invest some of the experiences I’ve gained in the UX community into the creative domain at work. I’m hoping that all the various ‘problem solving approaches’ trapped inside everyone of us can be diffused across the group, just like what happens when we attend events, go to conferences, meet up informally, etc. I’ve also been drawing inspiration from things like activity theory, so it’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

My main motivation for all this is based on these assumptions

  • it’s impossible to know and learn everything
  • some approaches work better than others
  • everyone has a different way of solving problems
  • knowing how and why people solve problems a certain way provides new problem solving ideas, which one can adapt
  • this doesn’t destroy an approach or style an individual has developed over time

If there was one word I would use to sum all of these things up, it’s the word “apprentice”, because we end up behaving like apprentices as we move from one domain to another and solve more complex problems. Although we’ll approach mastery of our core UX skills over time, we’re also shifting from one problem domain to another especially in projects where problems are increasingly ‘wicked’ (in which there seems to be no shortage of).

I like what Stephen Anderson said recently during his Euro IA keynote; We should ultimately be doing what interests us and what we’re curious about. That, to me, is really about adopting an apprentice’s heart. And the challenge for UX (and for me) in 2013, just like any other year, will be a pedagogical one.