people viewing a complex systems diagram on walls

Activating Change: A Designer’s Guide to Systems Thinking

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This past year we became acutely aware of how interconnected we all are. The toilet paper shortage gave the world a glimpse at supply chains, and the pandemic as a whole was a crash course in how our healthcare system can handle crises. It can be difficult to envision how we can make a difference even if we know the systems we live in don’t function well for everyone. But what does this have to do with design? Designers make

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Focus on Usage Maturity: Part III

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Using a Usage Maturity Matrix to Make Design and Strategy Decisions Early Foundations You may recall from earlier installments in this series, that usage maturity is a measure of users’ comfort and familiarity with, and degree of use of, a product, process or place.   During our master’s capstone research at Kent State, my project partner and I explored the varied levels of usage maturity of participants using Apple’s voice assistant Siri and found usage maturity did not coincide with participants’

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Customer Experience during a Pandemic

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Global pandemics are a challenge for everyone. Customers look to institutions and businesses they already trust for answers. Meanwhile, companies must scramble to figure out the best way to maintain excellent Customer Experience (CX) during unprecedented times. No matter what the economy does, you can take some proactive steps to ensure your customers remain loyal to your brand. Creating an excellent CX takes dedication and focus, especially during a global pandemic.

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User Experience Research at Scale

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An important part of any user experience department should be a consistent outreach effort to users both familiar and unfamiliar. Yet, it is hard to both establish and sustain a continued voice amongst the business of our schedules. Recruiting, screening, and scheduling daily or weekly one-on-one walkthroughs can be daunting for someone in a small department having more than just user research responsibilities, and the investment of time eventually outweighs the returns as both the number of participants and size

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