Prototyping is a simple (not easy) catalyst for transformative change in UX I recently stumbled across a 2008 article from David Verba, “Sketching in code: the magic of prototyping.” In this article he shares the benefits that prototyping brought to his projects. “With prototypes” he wrote, “the focus is always on the application and making […]
Why I moved on from Figma
Why I moved on from Figma This is not an anti-Figma post. We need many tools and processes for the many designers and design challenges out there. This is a post describing why I no longer user Figma, and what process is more efficient for me. My work is a particular flavor of UX and Design: […]
Is Agile an anti-design pattern?
How Agile leaves design out, and what we can do about it. You might not guess it from the title of this article, but I love Agile. I work in UX, I lead web projects, and I never want to go back to the time before Agile. Why the headline, then? Because, in addition to being […]
Agile for designers: case study of a process
Using ‘No Handoff’ to integrate design and development. Background We are all familiar with project handoff: that universally hated period of inefficiency, disruption, and blame. Your precious work gets thrown over the fence, or you catch something that doesn’t make sense and have to do it anyway. Agile practices disrupted the handoff between developers, leadership, […]
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Hijacked UX!
Is your company using UX to offload their discomfort with ambiguity? I recently stumbled across an article about Dark Matter with this absolute gem of an opener: “In our search for cosmic signals of dark matter, we could be likened to drunkards looking for lost keys beneath lampposts, where the light shines the brightest…. What […]
3 Ways UX And Design Shape Innovation Strategy
Innovation is on our minds these days, every company wants to generate great ideas and capitalize on them. A successful innovation strategy, though, is a complex endeavor involving the entire organization. Here I want to focus on three ways that User Experience and Design can help minimize risk and reap big rewards in your innovation […]
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Strategies for dealing with stakeholders who are hostile to design.
Have you ever worked with one of those people who are simply hostile to design? They make sweeping statements about design wasting time. They claim, without proof, that everyone agrees with them. You’ve probably met an anti-design crusader. If they are a spectator it’s an annoyance, but what if they are an important stakeholder? Maybe […]
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Using Jira as a research repository, part one: pros & cons
I built a research repository in Jira and wanted to get my process down in writing for those in the same boat I was in: weighing the pros and cons of Jira without a guide. UX repositories are critical, but selecting the right platform for your organization is not easy. Since I created our repository […]
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Using Jira as a research repository, part two: How-to
I built a research repository in Jira and wanted to get my process down in writing for those in the same boat I was in: weighing the pros and cons of Jira without a guide. This article is part two. For part one describing the pros and cons go here. Jira was not intended for […]
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No Handoff brings Agile to Design and Discovery
Is the Waterfall method washing away your carefully crafted designs? Bring new Agile patterns to Design and Discovery with the No Handoff method. Though software development has embraced Agile, far too many of us still encounter waterfall or waterfall-adjacent processes in our design work. In the waterfall process we carefully think about and craft a […]
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