Category: Process and Methods

Simplify your work and your life by learning the tools and techniques that authors have used to conquered gnarly problem spaces. From avoiding burnout to doing scrappy research on a shoestring budget, you’ll benefit from their experience, avoid making the mistakes they made, and go on to make all new mistakes of your own. (Then contribute your learnings back to us!)

Deliverables / Discovery, Research, and Testing / Process and Methods

Collaborative Journey Maps

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In many organizations, the design team does some research then retreats to their tower to conjure deep magics that turn note filled notebooks into a customer journey map. At least that’s what it looks like to their peers. Journey diagrams capture tons of detailed info about users, processes, and systems. The best teams share the same understanding of the user’s journey. Instead of having your team wonder where you got this information or how you came to these conclusions, have

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Deliverables / Findability / Foundational Thinking / Process and Methods / Prototyping

Stop Counting Clicks

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Every user interaction is a decision. Every decision can lead to an exit. So the more options we offer, the more exit opportunities we create, which will reduce the probability of conversion. Right? Well… In fact, the number of interactions a user makes is in no way directly related to conversion rates. It might be a surprise, but there is no statistical evidence to prove that this widely held belief is true. When establishing the amount of clicks that are

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Learning From Others / Process and Methods

Design is Changing Shopping (for the Better)

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Technology changes at the speed of light. Just when a shopping experience is updated for the latest craze, something new arrives on the scene and uproots the way people shop online. Even though this happens all the time, some design trends can give hints at how the landscape of eCommerce changes from year to year. Paying attention to these improvements allows us to stay on top of consumer needs and make educated guesses about where and when the next big

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Case Studies / Discovery, Research, and Testing / Process and Methods

Taking Research out of the Lab

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To date, usability testing has been largely confined to usability labs. This ensures a controlled environment where users can interact with products or designs and researchers can field questions. The downside of this is not being able to get the context of use of what you are testing. But a recent project for a life science organization cemented the idea that taking user research out of the usability lab yields the best results.

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Design Principles / Discovery, Research, and Testing / Process and Methods

Focus on Usage Maturity: Part II

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Meet Users Where They Are, Draw Them Deeper In If we want users to remain our users, we ought to entice them deeper into our design ecosystem. Attempts to extend or expand users’ usage, frequently results in designs complicated by added features, and functions. My user experience research has informed digital and physical designs often with an emphasis on correcting the usability of such complexities. Users interact with the things we design at varying levels of usage maturity. Usage maturity

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