Mapping can help UX practitioners synthesize insight into one place and visualize the problem space. This video covers 3 maps that are often utilized during the discovery phase of a UX design project: ecosystem maps, experience maps, and process maps.
Our research with UX practitioners found 3 main areas of frustrations with service-blueprint projects. Here are recommendations for overcoming or alleviating these problems.
In a museum, knowing the backstory of an artifact makes it more interesting. Similarly, in a UX project, you can make better decisions when you know the context of your UX artifacts like journey maps and wireframes.
Unsure how to get started using UX mapping methods? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn how to visualize UX insights and ideas into mapped visualizations.
Agile development teams that struggle to keep track of UX work in the product backlog can utilize a separate backlog for UX. This method can help siloed teams where UX and development aren't in direct communication. Separate UX backlogs do have pros and cons, which are discussed here.
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)
Edgar Anzaldua presents a 6-year case study of learning and applying ever-more subtle UX concepts and growing his influence. Always something new to learn, from junior to senior professional level.
In the discovery phase of a UX project, a problem statement is used to identify and frame the problem to be explored and solved, as well as to communicate the discovery’s scope and focus.
Teams who don't know much about UX, often ask you "so when will you give us the design?" during the early design-thinking stages. Areej Aljarba used design thinking itself to overcome this misconception. (Video from 'Back in the Real World' panel with past UX Conference participants.)
Even people with limited drawing abilities can learn to sketch a wireframe if they learn a few common conventions used to represent various design elements.
Feedback during design critiques can be filled with hypothetical scenarios and unactionable suggestions. The right facilitation techniques help stakeholders and team members stay on track while still feeling heard.
How do you decide whether to have a meeting or a workshop for a given problem or stage of your UX design process? Both involve a group of people, but there are 5 big differences, and the two formats work for different situations.
Collaboratively create a UX roadmap in a workshop setting by guiding participants through activities that familiarize them with the project goals, context, and inputs and that identify key roadmap themes and priorities.
Pain points are problems that occur at the different levels of the customer experience: interaction level, customer-journey level, or relationship level.
Mapping can help UX practitioners synthesize insight into one place and visualize the problem space. This video covers 3 maps that are often utilized during the discovery phase of a UX design project: ecosystem maps, experience maps, and process maps.
Our research with UX practitioners found 3 main areas of frustrations with service-blueprint projects. Here are recommendations for overcoming or alleviating these problems.
In a museum, knowing the backstory of an artifact makes it more interesting. Similarly, in a UX project, you can make better decisions when you know the context of your UX artifacts like journey maps and wireframes.
Agile development teams that struggle to keep track of UX work in the product backlog can utilize a separate backlog for UX. This method can help siloed teams where UX and development aren't in direct communication. Separate UX backlogs do have pros and cons, which are discussed here.
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)
Edgar Anzaldua presents a 6-year case study of learning and applying ever-more subtle UX concepts and growing his influence. Always something new to learn, from junior to senior professional level.
Teams who don't know much about UX, often ask you "so when will you give us the design?" during the early design-thinking stages. Areej Aljarba used design thinking itself to overcome this misconception. (Video from 'Back in the Real World' panel with past UX Conference participants.)
How do you decide whether to have a meeting or a workshop for a given problem or stage of your UX design process? Both involve a group of people, but there are 5 big differences, and the two formats work for different situations.
An 8-step process for UX designers and researchers to collaborate better with their stakeholders, for increased collaboration, to help stakeholders meet their goals, and to ensure the impact of your work.
Advance planning and having thought through alternatives can save you when facilitating a UX workshop and the unexpected happens (as it always does). Jan Haaland shares his experience during a panel with past participants in the UX Conference.
At the core of all the myriad of exercises and activity types in UX workshops are a simpler set of 7 foundational activities that can be blended to achieve the desired result.
With experience, UX teams have evolved techniques for better collaboration and design practices to involve and engage remote and distributed team members. With participants at the Virtual UX Conference.
Redesigning a user interface can be done in many smaller incremental releases, or as one big complete redo. Big change is risky, but necessary in 3 cases.
A general technique that's helpful in many kinds of UX workshops and design ideation is to first have team members work independently to create diverging ideas and solutions. Then, as a separate step, everybody works together to converge on the final outcome.
A clear vision gives the team something to aim for, and this is especially important for intranet projects, which often involve contributors from many different departments or functions.
In UX design, you always have to prioritize. Features, personas, usability problems, and the list goes on. Dot votes are a simple way to find the group sense of what's the most important.
The facilitator of a UX workshop, meeting, or other team activity anywhere in the design process has the job of enhancing the group's performance by optimizing the process through structure, activity, and guidance.
To launch a new design operations practice in a company, prioritize and aim for manageable and achievable first steps. Preferably measurable ones that can prove value and form the basis for subsequent steps.
The majority of UX and design professionals define design thinking roughly the same, regardless of industry and experience, but there’s no agreement on the specifics.
Like tech debt, UX debt piles up over time and, if left unaddressed, leads to compounding user problems and costly cleanup efforts. Agile teams can modify their processes to track and resolve UX debt.
Visualizing user attitudes and behaviors in an empathy map helps UX teams align on a deep understanding of end users. The mapping process also reveals any holes in existing user data.
Empathy maps, customer journey maps, experience maps, and service blueprints depict different processes and have different goals, yet they all build common ground within an organization.
Data from 257 UX professionals shows that quality UX ideas come from ideating early in the design cycle, drawing inspiration from user research, and working with a group. Many struggle with generating ideas because they lack time, managerial support, and a methodology for conducting effective ideation sessions.
Groups can bias individuals and impact collaborative ideation. A focus on getting as many ideas as possible can mitigate some of the negative group effects.
Jobs-to-be-done focus on user problems and needs, while well-executed personas include the same information and also add behavioral and attitudinal details.
Service design improves the experiences of both the user and employee by designing, aligning, and optimizing an organization’s operations to better support customer journeys.
