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Polytechnicast (Rob Stenzinger)

rob@shieldsstenzinger.com
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DateTitreDurée
01 Dec 2017Polytechnicast - Art Soundoff 2017 Day 24 - Gratitude and Retrospective

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I look back at Art Soundoff 2017, some things I learned, some things I want to celebrate, and express gratitude for those who took part and tuned in to all the art journaling.

05 Sep 2018Polytechnicast - Week to Week Goals Feedback with guest co-host Pete Stromquist

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I have guest co-host Pete Stromquist with me to explore our approaches to keeping connected with our goals. In particular we dive into: how do we find ways to connect day to day and week to week with bigger goals? Also, how might we do this in a useful and not-too-intense way? And along the way we discuss physical tools and digital tools we use to help with goal tracking, journaling, and self-interviewing.

31 Oct 2018Polytechnicast - Ready for Art Soundoff 2018

Art Soundoff 2018 begins tomorrow, will you be joining in to listen, to capture your own art journal, or both?

01 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Intentions and Introduction

Wherein I introduce myself and share my hopes and fears for what I'd like to do with my posts for this year's Art Soundoff creative challenge.

02 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Making a Videogame Side Project Part 1

Wherein I start one of my audio blogging categories for the month: making a videogame as a side project.

03 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Making a Videogame Side Project Part 2

Wherein I continue some thoughts about kinds of video game side project commitments. Also I relate that to an interesting place I encountered that makes their own games, is also an arcade, and does games UX research at the very same venue.

04 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Making a Videogame Side Project Part 3 - Choosing a Game Engine

Here I talk about past game engines and tools I've used such as Director, HTML/Javascript, Flash, Corona SDK, Phaser that led me to be ready to choose a game engine for Two Pizza Team.

05 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Making a Video Game Side Project Part 4 - Why I Chose Unity

Wherein I describe raw to fully cooked game engines and how I used my design constraints to choose a game engine for Two Pizza Team.

07 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 1

If any discipline can be inclusive of people from all backgrounds it should be User Experience. Here I begin a series of posts about highlighting useful UX tools and skills. Also I invite anyone making something or part of a team that makes something for people to give the systemic human centered tools of UX a try.

07 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 2 - Research

Wherein I continue my encouraging everyone to consider using UX related tools and skills, this time I highlight user centered research.

08 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 3 - Expressing Ideas So Others Can Participate

Wherein I continue my encouraging everyone to consider using UX related tools and skills. This time I describe how user experience design can take a variety of useful forms: goals, rationale, document, activity, story, hypothesis and most of all expressing ideas so others can participate.

09 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - A Visit From Jerzy Drozd

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I have Friend, Cartoonist and Teaching Artist Jerzy Drozd on to learn the story of what actually happened with an autographed birthday gift.

10 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 4 - Ingredients of a Thoughtful Meeting

Continuing the UX series, this time I talk about how and why the things you setup before people gather to work on something is important and useful to user centered design.

11 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 5 - Why Care About Being a Facilitator

This time in the UX series I talk about how and why having principles and practices that help a group of people share and combine ideas is super important whether your project is just you and a client or you and a bunch of other collaborators.

12 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Making a Video Game Side Project Part 5 - Weekend Progress

This last weekend I had what I call a "creative marathon" on the Two Pizza Team project. I share an update with where the project is at, tool choices, and what things I'll be working on next.

14 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 6 - The Need for Design as a Hat and as a Job

Continuing the UX series I talk about how UX design can both be a deeply involved job with advanced practitioners and also UX design can be useful when in the hands of someone learning on the job.

14 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 7 - Underlying Complexity is Easy to Overlook, Going Faster By Slowing Things Down

In this update in the UX series I talk about how it's easy to want to jump to something complete in one big step yet it's less risky and likely faster to add a some steps.

17 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Talisman in my Pocket

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I talk about the talisman I carry in my pocket which is a metal stamped pair of words "compassion" and "completion".

17 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 8 - Priming and Design Ethics

In this update in the UX series I talk about priming in how it affects your research to learn about what you're making or even can affect you-yourself via what you experience frequently.

17 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Two Artists Supporting Themselves and Each Other with Guest Kate Shields Stenzinger

Wherein Kate asks me "what kinds of things do we do to support each other emotionally with creative projects?", we talk about getting and giving feedback, and creative accountability meanings.

21 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 9 - Things You Can Make That Help with Systemic-Minded Human-Centered Design

Continuing the UX #artsoundoff series, here I talk about things you can make based on data, storytelling, presenting information and helping others be able to relate and participate in the design process. These things (documents, artifacts, deliverables) are forms of documenting designs and what you learn to support the designs.

23 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Is it Useful to Talk About the Gear I Use?

A number of people I follow on social media and on podcasts do a great job talking about and exploring why they choose tools they use to create. Becca Hillburn, Krishna Sadasivam, and Dave Seah come to mind immediately.

Here I wonder about the usefulness of experiment with talking about the gear I use.

23 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Feeling Less Daunted by Deadlines

Being behind where I'd hoped to be with Art Soundoff is a good chance to think about strategies to keep working at the work instead of worrying about a number goal.

23 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 10 - Decision Making and Influencing Decisions

Continuing the UX #artsoundoff series, here I talk about how so much of what your design work is about is getting decisions to happen and to get the system/product/thing made.

23 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Drafting Text via Audio

Here I share my approach to recording my thoughts in audio form as a step to creating other documents.

23 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Project Mountain Carver

Project Mountain Carver is a big project, incorporates all the things I do professionally, and has built into it ways to keep me encouraged during the long process of accomplishing multi-year-spanning goals.

24 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Two Pizza Team, a Comic + Game Hypothesis

In June 2018 I finished Two Pizza Team: In a Situation Called No Trash Talk, part one of my hypothesis that a game + comic will serve one another and an audience well.

Here I describe the work I've done so far for the video game Two Pizza Team, part two of the comic+game hypthesis.

26 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Reflecting on an Old Party Invitation Project

It's My Party was a project about making it easy to send and manage responses to invitations. Here I reflect on it as one of those things I've shelved but maybe not permanently.

26 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Games I Didn't Finish and Learned From

As I started to make video games, I found a variety of things I learned even though I didn't finish those initial projects.

27 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - User Experience Design Overview (UX for All) Part 11 - Being a Collaborative Facilitator

This time in the UX series I continue the topic of facilitating meetings, started a few posts ago in UX for All Part 5 - Why Care About Being a Facilitatator. Here are more thoughts on the principles and habits to consider how you can actively help a group of collaborators connect and clarify ideas.

28 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Inktober and Useful Creative Challenge Output

For this year's Inktober, which is a 31 day creative challenge to make and share a drawing every day in October, I chose to both partake and to try to get output that could help one of my other projects.

28 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Thinking About and Working with Data for UX and Overall

Here I explore a variety of things about working with data ranging from: exploring it, visualizing it, and things that inspire me to try to provide more ways of interacting with data. In a lot of ways, this is a post is a mix of ideas about being excited about learning from and then presenting what you learn through gathering, exploring, then presenting data.

29 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Comfort Food Video Games, an Audio Experiment with Patrick Greenwell

Do you have a video game or set of video games you revisit from time to time because they feel comfortable? What keeps these sorts of games interesting and worth coming back to? In this audio experiment Polytechnicast I'm joined by co-host Patrick Greenwell, a long time video game enthusiast and we explore what games are like comfort food to us and why.

30 Nov 2018Polytechnicast - Creative Challenge Reflection and What if

This post is my look back at Art Soundoff 2018 in the style of what went well and what could have been better. Also, I consider a what-if about creative challenges becoming even more frequent and wider reaching with different topics and media. And I share thoughts on what might be next for the Polytechnicast.

17 Jun 2019Polytechnicast - It's Not The Tools Except When It Is

When we look at other artist's processes it's fun to consider the tools they use while knowing the tools only tell part of the story.

This episode begins a Summer-mini-season of the Polytechnicast!

09 Jul 2019Polytechnicast - Projects With a Useful-Enough Next Step

Continuing the mini-summer-season of the Polytechnicast with some thoughts about making more things than I share even though I do like to share work in progress.

27 Jul 2019Polytechnicast - Guitar Fretter Anniversary Stream

Guitar Fretter is a game about of memorizing the note positions on the guitar. If you play an instrument with strings and frets, you might want to check out. Match the notes on the floating monsters bellies with the correct fret positions to earn health and points.

To celebrate the birthday of Guitar Fretter for the next couple days, it's on sale for FREE, available on iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac: http://guitarfretter.com

Originally this was streamed live at: twitch.

05 Aug 2019Polytechnicast - That One Tree

A few things I encountered today had me thinking about specialization and how could I pay attention to some signals that help me with being both a generalist creator and deisgner and appreciating the clarity of specialization. Also: thinking about specialization how it works when it's based on you starting something vs. you serving an existing thing or organization.

15 Sep 2019Polytechnicast - Starting a Business as Product or System

Thinking about how as an artist I'm also excited and interested in the business side of work, how that's been one of the themes of my career so far. Also the three part business of make, teach, coach that I'm working on.

01 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Re-introduction

The Polytechnicast is this ongoing journal and fairly infrequent most times of the year except for November. Kicking things off for Art Soundoff 2019 with journaling intentions for the month ahead and re-introducing both myself and this show.

02 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - UX for All - Weather Conditions for Design Decisions

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I continue the UX for All series by re-introducing it, how I'm picking various topics about collaborative design + research and sharing what comes to mind. The main topic is considering a weather as a metaphor for good decision making.

03 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Electronic Psyduck Repair

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I reflect on how I recently purchased a broken Psyduck and fixed it up. Working with electronics is relatively new to me so this was a fun puzzle.

03 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Notebooks and Sketchbooks

In this episode of the Polytechnicast I talk about my recent notebook and sketchbook review and what I found digging through a few years of books.

04 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Challenges

Responding to "challenges" as a prompt, I share some brief thoughts on creative challenges and why I find them so useful.

05 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - User Experience - You Don't Have to Know it All (UX for All)

Continuing the UX for All series, I combine a "why" and "don't have to know it all" set of prompts, considering how choosing to collaborate, investigate, and design is a very useful thing.

06 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Interactive Halloween Tree

I finished a few spare time projects for Halloween this year: 8 props for me an my family's costumes. One project that caught my imagination and but didn't finish: my Halloween Tree.

07 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Teams as Sustainable Learning Machines (UX for All)

Continuing the UX for All series, I describe attibutes to build into a team so it serves the needs of who's funding it, the audience it's helping, and the people who comprise it.

09 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Celebrating Finishing Big and Small Tasks

A few weeks back I noticed how I've developed a habit of moving past completing tasks big or small without celebrating and since then I've been talking with others about how they celebrate finishing things and doing some reflection on it all. In this Polytechnicast I share where I'm at so far with working on celebrating more.

11 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Video Games I'm Playing

Video games have been and continue to be an influential life long interest for me. In this Polytechnicast I talk about what I'm playing lately which includes some really old games.

12 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Crispy Baked Tofu

My approach and steps I take for making very yummy baked tofu you can add to so many kinds of dishes or eat as-is.

14 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Intentional Planner Tools

Two mini-worksheets I made recently in collaboration with Kate Shields Stenzinger help simplify describing the goals and projects you're working on. We call them the Intentional Planner Tools.

The Goals and Actions planner is about reflection to help plan what's next combined with asking what you're big goals are for the next 5 years.

Then the project concept and project status mini-worksheets help you collect those things you're building and sharing with the world and make it easy to describe why they're important to your audience.

Both are available to download as PDFs.

15 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Serving Four Groups to Practice UX for All

Continuing the UX for All series I talk about how the series is evolving beyond offering a starting point for UX tools. I describe four groups who each have goals that affect your UX design work: your audience, your organization, your team, and you. Then I describe some of the worthwhile conflict you can uncover through including all four and what might happen if you choose to avoid it.

15 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Stuck and Unstuck Creative Projects

Thinking about how I get moving again on creative projects feels related to how I got stuck in the first place.

17 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Human Business Endeavor Sim (Practicing UX for All)

I share an idea about making a game of exploring options and scenarios for combining different parts of a business to solve problems for the audience.

17 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Choosing a Favorite Tool is Difficult

I share a few options for my favorite tool and consider how I probably have a bunch of favorite things that help me with understanding, considering, and solving problems.

17 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Beginning a Project

At the start of a project I've already gathered things that help me commit.

19 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Plausible Introvert, Extrovert, or Ambivert

In a recent conversation I shared with someone that I can identify with being introverted though in recent years consider myself an ambivert. As I've noticed in previous conversations, the term ambivert is not as well known.

19 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Learning for Business and for Casual

While exploring the Art Soundoff journal prompt "what are you learning?" I share a few things I'm learning in both a business context and casual play context.

20 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Drawing Some Posters

While exploring the Art Soundoff journal prompt "what are you drawing?" I describe some of the drawings I'm working on now and how they are based on holiday gifts I created last year.

22 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Creative Work and Health Thoughts and Replies to the Slow Dooown Podcast

This summer indie creator and publisher Jaques Nyemb shared and 8-episode fascinating thoughtful and fun micropodcast series called Slow Dooown. Each episode Jaques asks a question of the audience and in this episode of the Polytechnicast I share some replies and thoughts about collaborating, social presence, and being sustainably creative.

24 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - How is Art Soundoff 2019 Going So Far

Even though there's a few more days to go in this year's Art Soundoff creative challenge, I'm looking at my experience of this year's challenge asking what went well and what could be better.

24 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - UX vs Creative Voice (Practicing UX for All)

Thinking about creativity, the label of being a creative, and the relationship between service and expression as a designer.

25 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - 3 Ideas About Getting Useful Data from Conversations (Practicing UX for All)

Thinking about some things I've found helpful for building a useful shared understanding through conversations with your audience, your organization, and your team.

25 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - UX Portfolios as a Design Problem (Practicing UX for All)

What's sharable, useable, and useful to put in your portfolio? Your UX portfolio is an interesting challenge. Doing the work that leads to a credible conceptual foundation for a product or service doesn't always come with sharable artifacts to curate as a gallery in a portfolio. In any case, finding the story, the goals of your audience, and your goals is a place to consider your portfolio as a design problem.

26 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Perfectionism in Making Video Games, Comics, and UX

Considering how I related to perfectionism in my creative projects making video games about 15 years ago. This influenced things I explored in UX design and in making comics and carry with me to this day.

26 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - UX Mentoring Revisited and Guest Teaching Design

Sharing your time to listen, learn, and help connect others to the community you've been part of is a worthwhile endeavor. In this episode of the Polytechnicast I reflect on some recent volunteering I'm doing to support those studying systemic minded human centered design.

27 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Three Things About My Art

As part of the Art Soundoff creative challenge, I explore this journal prompt "3 things about your art". Fantasy art, comics storytelling is something I found later than sooner, and sketching are all building blocks for my work.

Related Links and Resources

28 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Outlets to Decompress

As part of the Art Soundoff creative challenge, I explore this journal prompt "Outlets". I consider how guitar, drawing, and playing games appeal to me in some contexts as a way to wind down or decompress.

29 Nov 2019Polytechnicast - Rapid Visual Storytelling for Designers

As a guest instructor I recently taught a class about making use of visual storytelling to serve the product design process in a variety of ways - especially through sketching the stories and visuals as quick doodles.

23 Jan 2020Polytechnicast - Something Ate My Goal Notes

Today I annotated 11 double sided physical pages of goals and what happened next is I left them at a bagel place.

16 Feb 2020Polytechnicast - Being There When a Team is Starting Their Design Journey - Additional Thoughts About the Article

I wrote this article called Being There When a Team is Starting Their First Design Journey, my first Medium article. So many organizations in the recent 10+ years have asked: what if we explore if we should build something for our audience instead of just can we build something. They may not have intended to ask that question at the start, but they're asking this when they invite human centered design. Like I shared in the article "Even though UX design is becoming more common, the tools and skills of UX are not yet everywhere". Great opportunity for human centered designers to contribute.

In this Polytechnicast I share a summary of the article and explore some additional thoughts surrounding. It would be faster to read the article but then you'd miss out on all this extra commentary.

20 Jun 2020Polytechnicast - Minimum Viable Product as Jargon for Learning

In this Polytechnicast I consider how I've found MVP useful. Also how MVP and any highly celebrated business and design concept will go through a cycle where the name for the concept draws more and more negative takes.

And I share the news that I'm launching a Patreon of news and special episodes of the Polytechnicast and more!

18 Aug 2020Polytechnicast - 4 Weeks Instead of 4 Days to Refine the Game Guitar Fretter

Guitar Fretter is 10 years old and I still have more ideas to add and refine. Some of those ideas I'm putting into a new game, some I'm putting into the classic version of Guitar Fretter. Recently I thought I'd make a quick art update and I expected to be ready to publish in about 4 days. Did things get out of hand where it took 4 weeks instead? Analyzing the list of what to improve and testing along the way, it felt it best to make more improvements. This episode of the Polytechnicast journals my thought process and highlights what happened as I worked on the latest udpate. Also: a brief overview of what is Guitar Fretter.

02 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - Creative Challenge Worksheet

Since I'm taking part in a creative challenge called Art Soundoff (http://artsoundoff.com), I decided to use the workbook from my Customizing Your Next Creative Challenge workshop. Customizing Your Next Creative Challenge is available on Gumroad and Skillshare.

03 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset

Something I've been considerering for a number of years: how can I help spreat the tools of ux design far and wide. Human centered design + understanding systems and situations where the things we make connect with the audiences we serve are useful mechanisms for so many. Here I talk about how I started with "UX for all" then "Practicing UX" and am thinking how "UX Mindset" may be even more approachable as a way to choose to involve people and see situations differently to be able to make better things.

06 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset for Business

Continuing the UX Mindset series, I share why I think it's so useful for anyone running, planning, or leading a business to see user experience design and human centered design tools as so worthwhile to include in decision making.

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

06 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset for Software Engineering

As someone who's worked both as a software engineer and ux designer I want to share the value adding human centered design tools for making engineering decisions.

This episode continues the UX Mindset series!

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

07 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset for Designers

Advocate for design in order to advocate for and include learning about our audiences. We designers practice many useful skills to help us and those we work with to make inclusive decisions that shape products and systems. Something that can get overlooked along the way: helping others see the value of this including of human context. It's useful to practice helping others learn from their audience and include human centeredness.

This episode continues the UX Mindset series!

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

07 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset for Artists

Audiences learn about your work, then what's it like for them to learn more, to support your work. If you offer a variety of products how do they find the one they need in this moment? UX Mindset for artists has two distinct and useful concerns:

  • Making your work findable, purchasable, useful, and usable
  • Including the audience in the work itself

This episode continues the UX Mindset series!

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

10 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset Tool - Lists to Include Others and More #artsoundoff

Being open to including others is a big start to making something more meaningful. List making is one of the best tools you can use no matter if you identify as a ux designer or not.

This episode continues the UX Mindset series!

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

12 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset - Listening to be present, lead, consult, coach, or journal #artsoundoff

Listening is the most powerful thing you can do to understand. Here I share a few ways of listening that work individually or combined to meet the needs of you and your team in the moment.

And the UX Mindset series continues!

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

12 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset - Groups of People Interconnected #artsoundoff

Any product we make connects a variety of groups of people. UX Constituencies are groups of people I find relate to most any project/product/system/endeavor: your audience, your team, your organization, the world, and you. Here I explore why considering each of those groups helps you make more meaningful things whether you're a UX expert or any person with a UX Mindset.

And the UX Mindset series continues!

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

13 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset - Mental Model You're Working Toward #artsoundoff

It's useful to have even a rough concept of what you're working toward, things you know are important or likely to encounter, or at least are worth checking to see if they'd be helpful. For example, a mental model like a creative progression going from rough concept to refined to complete. You can have a UX Mindset informed mental model of getting your work done so that you are working toward including your audience.

And the UX Mindset series continues!

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

13 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset - Misunderstanding and Misuse of UX's Power #artsoundoff

Where does UX go wrong? Whether a system is broken at the surface or takes deeper understanding to see how it's not serving the health of its audience along with it's other constituencies: UX can be used to help fix or to make things worse. How can that be? Organizations have a lot to do to just exist and maintain exsistence. Some are not questioning things they could question to fix what's broken. Let's pay attention, be curious, inclusive and move what we make toward collective health.

And the UX Mindset series continues!

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

13 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset - Active Learning is Certain-enough Instead of Overconfident #artsoundoff

Actively learning is a lot like using applied research. It's a very useful place to work from, you can be confident enough to proceed making things yet not too confident to prevent learning as you go.

We setup teams and organizations to sink or swim based on too much certainty. We're certain often from a combination of ego and efficiency seeking without adapting until expensive mistakes happen. What if we practice being confident enough and setup teams to actively learn instead?

And the UX Mindset series continues!

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

29 Nov 2020Polytechnicast - UX Mindset - Creative Roadblocks Then a Book Outline #artsoundoff

Here I explore some of the reasonable and unreasonable goals I had for this month of journaling and developing the UX Mindset series. Practicing this kind of thing helps you meet your own creative process quirks and explore ways to change and work around those quirks. I recorded so many more rough draft journals than I posted, at least 2:1 if not 3:1. It helped me explore the big topic and discover a concept for a UX Mindset book.

We'll see where the UX Mindset series goes from here. Probably be back on the Polytechnicast, certainly will be in upcoming workshops, and a good chance I'll persue developing a book.

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

08 Feb 2021Polytechnicast - Emotional Effort of Design

The emotional work of discovering, including, representing, and collaborating in design is what I explore in this think aloud journal. This recording didn't start as a Polytechnicast or even an exploration about UX Mindset but that's where I found myself going.

Since the beginning of 2021 I've been blogging every day on my Interactive Storyteller blog. I hope you'll join me there too as I talk about illustrating, making games, and UX design. It's very much the prose form of the Polytechnicast.

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

08 May 2021Polytechnicast - Improving Communication Skills as a Product Engineer

Something I'm grateful for is to be on a learning adventure together with folks I've worked with. At times I get questions from folks who listen to the show and folks I've been on teams with in the past. I'm going to include all this in a category of listener questions and make a few Polytechnicasts based on these questions.

In this episode I get a question from a colleague who is wondering about practicing communication skills coming from a product team and engineering perspective. How could this help with understanding and communicating your own philosophy and values in a collaboration?

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

04 Nov 2021Polytechnicast - Making your own art journal prompts #artsoundoff

Any path that brings you to journaling about your art, here I share some context around planning what you'd want to get out of your journaling plus choosing and creating prompts that are a good fit for what you want.

Related Links and Resources

Rob's Products and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

11 Nov 2021Polytechnicast - Memory of organizations - repeating other people's stories

Have you been part of an organization that seems to repeat projects that don't learn much from one another? It's a thing I've wondered: why do companies forget? This episode of the Polytechnicast I journal about group memory and wonder if it would be helpful to remember what different teams have tried and learned in the past. Is it because we resist repeating other peoples stories?

Related Links and Resources

Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

09 Dec 2021Polytechnicast - Building on the UX and Systems Work that Came Before

Whether the work that you take on is building on skillful work in the past or not, things got to the way they are for some reason. Now you're here. In this journal I share reasons to find others past work as useful research and signals to help instead of joining a narrative that it has little to no value. Even if that past work wasn't well done, it holds clues and questions to dig into.

Related Links and Resources

Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

31 Dec 2022Polytechnicast - One Big Project and a New Self Discovery

In this episode I ask why I've posted so few things in 2022. It's a bit about what I'm currently working on and it's also something I've been trying to figure out for years.

Related Links and Resources

Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

  • Take one of my classes about collaboration, creativity, and UX design: Skillshare
  • Get the game Guitar Fretter, an action puzzle that makes a game of memorizing the note positions on a guitar. Now with Lefty Flip in the full version and a free demo version with 9 levels.
  • Join Skillshare via my referral link which gets you 1 month of Skillshare Premium for free.

  • You can buy me a coffee with an option to send a note along.

  • [Subscribe to the Polytechnicast RSS feed in your podcast app](

01 Feb 2023Polytechnicast - Being Your Own Bad Boss and Products in Progress

Prototype cards for my creative warm up cards game Doodle Creatures Have Needs.

An update about Word Turtle Island and a few other projects I tried to finish this month.

Related Links and Resources

Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

31 Mar 2023Polytechnicast - Video Game Delay Thoughts About Word Turtle Island

W-O-R-D up.

Reflecting on game development and how it feels affirming in a way that other video game projects meet delays. I thought I'd have Word Turtle Island ready for first or even early access by now yet I also feel good about how it's coming along.

Related Links and Resources

Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

20 Apr 2023Polytechnicast - Minimum Viable and Minimum Lovable Product Strategy Question

In the overlapping circles of feasible, viable, desirable, what is the emphasis and culture practiced?

I received a question via my Mastodon account about minimum lovable product vs minimum viable product.

@Nycteris@mastodon.art: "So @robstenzinger I was just reading about “minimum Lovable product” vs “minimum Viable product” because you want to have enough features to maximize love of a core group of users - do you think this is a real strategy?"

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Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

16 Aug 2023Polytechnicast - A Place to Practice Spelling

This is Spell, the magical cat who hosts a save place to practice spelling words.

In the middle of working on my next big game Word Turtle Island, where you use words as weapons to battle creatures taking away the books of power, the idea for Spell's Spelling came to me. In this episode of the Polytechnicast I reflect on how this came about and how sometimes a project that takes time away from another project can be worthwhile.

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Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast

20 Apr 2024Polytechnicast - Word Turtle Island Coming Soon to Early Access

Wort and Portia from Word Turtle Island

About 2.5 years. That's how long I've been working on Word Turtle Island to get it ready to publish as an early access game. It's about the right time to be getting the word out and to get myself into practice with showing up social. Practicing being more present even if it's chaotic and inconsistent. Such as this 20 some minute audio podcast. Hi.

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Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support What I Make

18 Jun 2024Polytechnicast - Word Turtle Island - Available Friday June 21

A new ask me anything form. Some example topics to ask me about like why I made a game for 2.5 years without publishing a whole lot about it publicly. And most important - it's official that Word Turtle Island is going to be available publicly as an early access game on Steam and Google Play June 21, 2024!

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Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support What I Make

25 Jul 2024Polytechnicast Special - Growing Your Creative Business with Jerzy Drozd

Earlier this summer I visited Columbus Ohio to visit my friends Anne and Jerzy Drozd. Part of the plan for our visit was to make some creative experiments together, one of them is this very recording with Jerzy.

For the first time I can think of both he and I are launching products at the same time. Both projects took years of development. Both we made solo. His project is the book The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue and mine is the action + cozy game Word Turtle Island.

In this episode, a special crossover of Thunder Punch Daily + Polytechnicast, Jerzy and I navigate stories of why we made these projects and how we're facing the significant task of marketing to reach the people we know will enjoy what we made. It's a lot like an episode of the Lean Into Art cast which was special to revisit for me, hope it will be for you too.

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Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support What I Make

19 Nov 2024Polytechnicast - How to work within the gaming industry - a question via my blog

A question from someone who knows someone who met me at 2D Con. Every person's path is their own but it's also fun to learn how olther folks got to where they are.

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Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support What I Make

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