The Power of Optimism

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill In today’s dynamic markets, teams must be curious, optimistic and thoughtful. Curious to explore new trends and new ideas. Optimistic to keep motivated and motivate others. And thoughtful to have empathy for the people that you … Read more

How to Hire the Right User Experience Talent

Over the years, this is the most consistent question I get asked is “How do you hire the right User Experience talent?” Here are my guidelines: Understand Your Vision and Strategy What is your organization’s vision and strategy and how does the experience you deliver to your customers support it?  Your vision is probably to … Read more

Design Sprints with Sean Van Tyne on Portofino Media

I joined host, Armond Merhabian, and co-host, Daniel Spencer, to discuss how Design Sprints can accelerate Product discovery and development. We discussed how Design Sprints take the five stages of Design Thinking and do them in five days. This is not done in the Development phase, but earlier in the Portfolio phase, to determine if … Read more

Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation

Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation is one of the four statements of the Agile Manifesto. If you are a small software company or you are working in a JAD with your customers, then customer collaboration is the actual customer who is purchasing your solution. If you are large organization, the customer may be your internal customer … Read more

Joint Application Design

IBM formalized the Joint Application Design process in 1974. In JAD, customers and end-users jointly define and design their solution with the solution provider that is developing and delivering it. It closes the gap in time and cost around understanding requirements early and throughout the application development lifecycle. In the JAD process, sessions are held … Read more

Better Metrics for Measuring Agile Development Success

The term agile was first coined for this in 2001, in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.  According to the manifesto Twelve Principles of Agile Software, their highest priority is to “Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” Which is a good thing, especially in today’s rapidly changing marketplace. Another one of their principles … Read more

Plans Don’t Fail. People Fail to Plan

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower In the Agile Manifesto, it is stated that the value of Responding to Change Over Following a Plan. The Agile movement seeks alternatives to traditional project management like waterfall and traditional sequential development that cannot adapt quickly enough … Read more

Jeanne Bliss’s Five CX Competencies Transform Your Experience

Jeanne Bliss shares with us in her post Five CX Competencies Transform Your Experience: CUSTOMERS AS ASSETS Your focus is to get leaders to make a defining performance metric – the growth or loss of your customer base. The purpose is to shift to a simple understanding – knowing what customers actually did to impact … Read more

Value-Driven Design to Value-Centered Design

Value-Driven Design is a process where the design choices are made to maximize system value rather than to meet performance requirements. Value-Driven Design grew from a collaboration of three Technical Committees of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA): the Economics Technical Committee, the Systems Engineering Technical Committee, and the Multidisciplinary Optimization Technical Committee. … Read more

Minimum Viable Product

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) center around the business perspective. It asks the question “what is the minimum product I have to build to figure out whether I have a business?” You might do that from testing signups on landing pages or putting up price points and collecting payment information to helps assess the true … Read more

User Experience is not what you think it is

UI is not UX   Usability is not UX   Design is not UX User experience encompasses all aspects of your end-user’s interaction with your company’s brand, products and services. To learn more about what User Experience is not and is, please join us at the UX Boot Camp for Product Managers in Tustin, California, … Read more

The Third Wave of the Internet is all about the Experience

In the mid 1990’s there was a common believe of “build it and they will come” when it came to internet businesses. There were investments into anything that had a ‘dot com’ at the end of it because no one wanted to miss out on becoming a millionaire. After billions of dollars were invested with … Read more