User Story Maps and Wireframes

In Agile, user story maps are a holistic view of your product backlog. A product backlog is a repository of requirements for the releases of the product. The user story map is focused on the user experience target outcomes and identifying the best way to ‘slice’ your product releases by minimal viable product (MVP). A … Read more

Form Design Best Practices and Guidelines

Every day, we fill out forms. At the office to get our work done and at home to take care of our domestic needs. Forms are the lifeblood of digital information sharing. A couple of excellent guidelines on forms: Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design Best Practices shares guidelines on input fields, input labels, validation, feedback, … Read more

Brand Leaders Deliver Exceptional Experiences

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO Amazon emphasizes platforms that each serves its own customers in the best and fastest possible way. Bezos shares … Read more

Before You Write Your Requirements, Create a Prototype

Prototype your ideas before you develop them. Use prototypes to solicit feedbacks from subject matter experts to ensure you are solving the right problem, to inform stakeholders, get feedback from your customers, and collaborate with development. Before you write your requirements, create a “prototype.” This could be a sketch – or sketches –  on a … Read more

Crafting Experiences for The Enterprise

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

Experience Design, Machine Learning and the Platinum Rule

The Golden Rule or law of reciprocity is the principle of treating others as one would wish to be treated. It is a maxim of altruism seen in many religions and cultures. Simply stated, “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.” As a child, I learned it as “Do onto others as you would want them to do … Read more

User Experience Insights Drive Better AI

In the Harvard Business Review article, AI Won’t Change Companies Without Great UX, Michael Schrage asked the question, “As artificial intelligence algorithms infiltrate the enterprise, organizational learning matters as much as machine learning. How should smart management teams maximize the economic value of smarter systems?”: “Strategically speaking, a brilliant data-driven algorithm typically matters less than … Read more

UserZoom Sponsors UX Boot Camps

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

Service Design Trends for 2017 – Agile Meets Design Thinking

John Knight posted this a few months ago. I believe that that these 10 trends are worth paying attention to: “…underpin digital transformation across mobile, tablet, desktop and the wave of new UI technologies such as wearables… these changes will shift the focus from consumer to co-creator and from metropolitan chic to global reach, thus … 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