In 2007, I wrote an article for Pragmatic Marketer magazine entitled “Easy to Use for Whom: Defining the Customer and User Experience for Enterprise Software.” I opened the article with: “Enterprise software is only easy to use if the customers and users think it is easy to use. To determine “ease of use,” first understand … Read more
User story maps are a holistic view of your product backlog. Focus on the target outcomes and identifying the best way to ‘slice’ your MVP. A user story map is “a better version of a product backlog. Building a user story map helps us focus on the big picture – the product as a whole … Read more
I was recently interviewed by Carlos Marquez, CEO at Connexa. He was looking for clarity around Agile development and the roles that Customer Experience and User Experience play. Here’s what I shared: According to the latest definition of Agile software development on Wikipedia: “Agile software development describes a set of values and principles for software … Read more
I sat down with Armond Mehrabian, host of Portofino Media, to talk about the User Experience Manifesto. In past episodes we delved into Design Sprints and Agile UX at the Portofino studios but for this episode we met at at Nutmeg Bakery and Cafe. The ambiance was caffeinated. https://soundcloud.com/armond-5/here-comes-the-user-experience-manifesto
In the O’Reilly article, Design thinking and data science: Solving problems with data necessitates a diversity of thought, Dean Malmgren from Datascope and Jon Wettersten from IDEO shares: “Problem solving not only requires a high-level conceptual understanding of the challenge, but also a deep understanding of the nuances of a challenge… Solving problems with data necessitates a … Read more
While helping BD Medical Technology redesign their intranet, I got the distinct honor and pleasure of working with the Nielsen Norman Group. NN/g conducted card sorts and tree studies with UserZoom. This also led to me doing a NN/g Design Thinking and Agile online seminar. UserZoom has been one of the primary sponsor of UX … Read more
Easy to Use was a good book. It covered much of what I have learned over my many years of creating great user experiences with agile development for enterprise software. But there were a few more things that I that I wanted to say. Easy to Use 2.0 covers new topics like user experience myths and … Read more
In some cases, you may only need to define a limited set of primary and secondary personas. It may be important to make the distinction between your buyer, user and influencer personas. But as you think through your scenarios, if you find groups of personas interacting with the environment or with other personas, you may … Read more
I recently helped a large enterprise software organization define and develop their UX strategic objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). We held a two-day offsite. On day one, in the morning, we discussed how they did Agile and UX. Agile was a big part of their operation. We also talked about how they did UX … Read more
Andrew Chen shares in Minimum Desirable Product: “a business-driven company might try to assess viability upfront, thinking about metrics and revenue and market sizes. A feasibility (engineering) oriented organization might try to pick a super hard technology first (P2P! Mapreduce! Search!), then try to build a business around it. And a desirability-focused team might focus … Read more
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
Google Design Sprint takes the Design Thinking process and compresses the five stages into five days. Developed at Google Ventures, it’s a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, and behavior science. The idea is that working together in a design sprint, you can shortcut the endless-debate cycle and compress months of time into a single week. … Read more