Group Personas

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

Design Thinking: A Brief History

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

The Right Color Palette for Data Visualization

While visually appealing (harmonious) color palettes are easy to come by these days, finding the right color palette for data visualizations is challenging. Things are made more difficult, as we need to convey information across thousands of unique data sets in many different types of visualization layouts. And then there are issues like accessibility, enough … Read more

The Partnership Between Designers and Data Scientists

From Experience Design in the Machine Learning Era, Fabien Girardin shares that with a behavioral data-driven experiences, we exploit thick data, the qualitative information that provides insights on people’s lives, big data from the aggregated behavioral data of millions of people and the small data that each individual generates. Traditionally, designers focus on defining the experience of the service, feature or … Read more

Minimum Desirable Product

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

Viability, Feasibility and Desirability

IDEO has been leading the charge on an innovation model built around Design Thinking. In this model, there are three key perspectives: Viability. Is it viable. Does it have a reasonable chance of succeeding? Is it capable of producing a profit or achieving your goal? Feasibility. Is it feasible. Does the technology exist or can … Read more

Data Visualizations: Storytelling and Persuasion

In Data Visualization: Your Secret Weapon in Storytelling and Persuasion, Adam Singer, Analytics Advocate at Google shares: “In a world increasingly saturated with data and information, visualizations are a potent way to break through the clutter, tell your story, and persuade people to action.” Statistics are good but showing your data in context of what … Read more

What is UX Debt?

The term “UX debt” comes to us from the term “Technical Debt” coined by Ward Cunningham. Technical debt (sometimes called code debt) is “a concept in programming that reflects the extra development work that arises when code that is easy to implement in the short run is used instead of applying the best overall solution” … Read more

Lean UX

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

10 Tips for UX Success from Agile Practitioners

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

Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation

Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation is one of the four statements of the Agile Manifesto. If you are a small software company or you are working in a JAD with your customers, then customer collaboration is the actual customer who is purchasing your solution. If you are large organization, the customer may be your internal customer … Read more

User Experience Documentation Needs to be Agile

Recently, I was interviewed by Portofino Media, Topics for Agile Innovation, Exploring the Agile User Experience Journey. In this interview, Armond Merhabian and I focus on UX in context of the Agile Manifesto. In recent blogs, I have covered UX and other parts of the manifesto like Individuals and Interactions Over Process and Tools and … Read more