Increase Quality and Time to Market with Rapid Prototyping

Markets are changing faster than ever. Driven by expediential changes in technology, customers want more personalized experiences and they want it now. How do you keep up with the ever-changing market landscape and deliver high-quality products and services? No matter how deep our up-front understanding is of our market, we really cannot predict our customers’ … Read more

The ProductCamp San Diego Experience, Small Tasks and Backup Plans

We held our first product camp in San Diego a couple weeks ago. It was a great event. I was impressed by the turnout and quality of discussions. A product camp is an “unconference” for product marketing, management, design, development or related topics. An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. Modern unconferences have been around since … Read more

An Experience is More Than What it Looks Like

Visual appearance is important. Studies have shown that if your product appears professional, customers are more likely to fault themselves for usability issues versus the product. Visual appearance also contributes to the overall aesthetics of your product that create that important emotional connection. It is important to get your visual appearance right. But your brand … Read more

Empathy to Innovation

Empathy is the tool that we use to gain understanding. Understanding leads to insights. Insight is what informs experiments. Experimentation results in innovation. Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s thoughts, feelings, and condition from their point of view, rather than from your own. You try to imagine yourself in their place in order to understand what … Read more

Research, Testing and Design

As previously discussed, Design Thinking means thinking like a designer. It is not so much a process but a mindset. There is a process that designers follow… in the simplest of terms, it is research, design and test. Designers do have a bias to designing. They want to create elegant solutions that make peoples’ lives … Read more

Design Thinking Enhances Culture, Speed, Efficiency, Customer Experience and Profitability

A recent Forrester Total Economic Impact Study found that Design Thinking practiced across diverse portfolios of products and services helped clients reduce costs, increase speed, and design better solutions. The purpose of the study was to evaluate design thinking’s financial impact for both individual projects and a grander organizational transformation. Forrester interviewed over 60 executives … Read more

Interview for Innovation

To innovate, you must observe and talk to the people for whom you are designing your solution. Observe them in the place that they will using your solution and hear from them in their own words. The goal of an Interview is to really understand their experiences, needs, and desires. Here are few tips for … Read more

A Win-Win Relationship with Product and Experience Design

In a small organization, one person may be responsible for the success of the product and the experience design. But even in some of the smallest companies, you see these as different roles. The person responsible for the product success is usually focused on defining the product – sometimes referred to as the Product Manager … Read more

Empathy Maps

How do you win the attention of your audience and create content they actually care about? It happens when you take the time to understand and take on their thoughts, feelings and motivations as your own; it happens through empathy. Empathy mapping is an effective way to tap into the head and heart of your … Read more

Design Thinking, Lean and Agile Better Defining Customer Problems and Solutions

In today’s experience economy, successful companies don’t stand out because of their efficient production or their better engineering. It is their dedication to understanding their customers and their strong commitment to solving customers’ problems and servicing their needs. In the article, Why Design Thinking is the Future of Management, Stefan Link shares: “Design Thinking helps … Read more

2017 Designer to Developer Ratios Trends

One of the questions that I get all the time is “What is the best Designer to Developer ratio?” As you can imagine, this can vary depending on marketplace and business goals. If you developing an engineering tool for engineers then your engineers who are developing it probably have a good idea of who is … Read more

Human-Centered Design, Design Thinking and Design Making

Human-Centered Design (HCD), as the name implies, is designing solutions around people. HCD involves the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process by observing the problems within context, brainstorming, conceptualizing, developing, and implementing a solution.  It is the process that innovators like Apple and IDEO follow. In this process, you first need to clearly define the problem then … Read more