Articles

Sarah Gibbons

Sarah Gibbons is Nielsen Norman Group's Chief Designer. She works at the intersection of design research, strategy, and user experience design.

Articles and Videos

  • 3 Types of Roadmaps

    Roadmaps cover future work and vision, but this can be done at different scopes, from everything related to the product to only the UX activities and priorities, possibly narrowed to a sub-specialty of UX.

  • Sympathy vs. Empathy in UX

    Sympathy acknowledges that users are having difficulties, but empathy goes further by understanding the users' needs and motivations.

  • 5 Prioritization Methods in UX Roadmapping

    The best prioritization method depends on project context, team culture, and success criteria.

  • UX Roadmaps in 6 Steps

    A roadmap documents upcoming and future priorities for your user experience. The process starts with gathering goals, proceeds through the creation and sharing of the UX roadmap, and never ends, since the last step is to update.

  • Design Thinking Learner's Journey

    Research with people who are learning Design Thinking shows that they progress in a nonlinear manner through 4 phases of increasing competency and confidence. Understanding these phases helps both learners and educators/managers.

  • How to Sell UX: Translating UX to Business Value

    We speak users, whereas stakeholders speak business. We must translate: "if we do this for the user, it'll do that for the business."

  • A Designer's Identity

    What does it mean to be a "designer?" Let's broaden the definition, based on the purpose, not the discipline. (Keynote by our Chief Designer, Sarah Gibbons)

  • UX-Maturity Stage 1: Absent

    A company at this stage is either oblivious to UX or believes it doesn't apply to what it does.

  • UX vs. Service Design

    User experience is focused on what the end user encounters, whereas service design is focused on how that user experience is internally created.

  • UX Roadmaps 101

    A roadmap is a strategic plan for future user-experience work and user problems to be solved immediately vs. next vs. in the far future.