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Articles

Rachel Krause

Rachel Krause is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Her areas of expertise include storytelling, UX in agile, design thinking, scaling design, and UX leadership. She has also planned and conducted research on careers, UX maturity, and intranets for clients and practitioners in numerous industries.

@rachelkrau

Articles and Videos

  • Turning Complex Data into Compelling Stories: A 5-Step Process

    Uncover the story within extensive UX-research data by following a process of revisiting original research objectives and organizing findings into themes.

  • UX Portfolios: Preparing for Interviews

    Your portfolio must play two roles when you apply for a UX job: first persuade the hiring manager to bring you in for an interview (or even a first screening call) and then support you during the interview itself.

  • Applying UX-Workshop Techniques to the Hiring Process

    Create an effective hiring process by borrowing techniques used in UX workshops.

  • What a UX Career Looks Like Today

    Our latest research on UX careers looks into specialization, explores unique backgrounds of practitioners entering the field, and details the skills and responsibilities needed to work in UX today.

  • Retrospectives 102: The Sailboat Method

    After each sprint, the team should have a retrospective session to identify what went well or not so well. The sailboat metaphor is a nice way to structure such retrospectives.

  • Persuasive Storytelling Rule #1: Adapt Your Vocabulary

    Storytelling is a powerful technique for UX teams and for working with stakeholders, but only if you use the proper words for your audience's domain. Here are tips for building vocabulary for your stories.

  • Kickoff Meetings for Team Alignment Before Starting UX Projects

    Design and development projects are highly multidisciplinary with team members with a variety of skills and vocabulary use, sometimes with conflicting definitions of terms. A kickoff meeting can make sure everybody is on the proverbial same page regarding all the team members' skills and responsibilities.

  • Tracking Research Questions, Assumptions, and Facts in Agile

    User-related questions and assumptions are not tracked throughout a product’s lifecycle, causing misalignment and overconfidence. Documenting these questions and assumptions in a knowledge board differentiates them from real facts.

  • Transitioning from UI to UX

    Anybody who's already a good UI designer and can make great screens, has a big head start to becoming a good UX designer, but more is required to excel in this expanded role.

  • Creating a UX Design Portfolio Case Study

    A 7-step process to creating a case study for your portfolio: how to describe your design, the UX process that led to this specific user interface, and the business impact of the design.