In the creative process, you start with an idea. You explore aspects of that idea – go wide – and diverge into many directions to better understand and define your problem. You follow many paths – some lead to dead-ends, some stray too far off from your vision and some lead to the same … Read more
You could say the basic principles of Design Thinking have always been around. It was these basic principles that early humans built tools and drew on cave walls. It required observation, experimentation and prototyping. Learning from each iteration and evolving the design and our evolution as a species. Just as is does today. In his … Read more
My favorite toy as a child was a broken single reflex camera. It served as everything from my Star Trek tricorder to a spaceship for my little toy men. My parents would have never guessed it. I wouldn’t have guessed it either. But if my parents had observed my play and asked me a few … Read more
Design Thinking is a powerful tool to innovate your strategy, organization or next disruptive product or service. But getting your organization to adopt Design Thinking can be a challenge. Here are some of the challenges that I have seen and ways to mitigate them: Executive Buy-In If your executive team doesn’t see the value in … 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
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
Inspired by Lean and Agile development theories, Lean UX focuses on the actual experience being designed, rather than deliverables (an updated edition came out this month). This book shows you how to collaborate closely with other members of the product team, and gather feedback early and often. It shares how to drive the design in … Read more
Usability evaluations assess the degree to which your website, application, product or service can be used by your customers, the efficiency of your solution and the overall delightfulness you deliver. These evaluations are to validate that the tasks are easy to complete. It is a test of the ease of use of your offering not … Read more
Earlier this year, the Nielsen Norman Group asked Agile practitioners at a UX conference to share tips that have contributed to the success of their Agile projects. They received 125 responses from professionals that worked in various-size companies and held different job responsibilities, ranging from UX designers and developers to product owners and project managers. Here are … Read more
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
“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
Personas Personas help you specify the context of use by identifying the people who will use your solution, what they will use it for, and under what conditions they will use it. They help you to create a point of view that is based on your target audiences’ needs and insights so you can see … Read more