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.
There are 7 activities that act as a foundation for every UX exercise during a workshop or collaborative team meeting. By understanding these, you can create almost any other exercise you need.
Meetings are for sharing information; workshops are for solving a problem or reaching an actionable goal. We compare the differences in purpose, scope, length, structure, and preparation time for workshops and meetings.
Collaborative sketching is a powerful tool for building buy-in for design decisions; however, it can be difficult to get stakeholders comfortable with the idea of drawing in a group setting. These variables help make group sketching more productive and effective with stakeholders.
Service blueprints are the primary tool for service design, but practitioners often misunderstand how they relate to journey mapping, who should be involved in the process, and how to sell their value to the organization.
Because the field is being defined in real time, practitioners often have questions about what Design Operations means, and how to establish DesignOps practices.
UX practitioners associate the term “service blueprinting” with an artifact, framework, or collaborative tool. Those surveyed used service blueprints early on or near the end of the product-design lifecycle.
A parking lot captures unrelated questions or out-of-scope conversation during UX meetings or workshops in order to keep the discussion focused and maintain momentum.
Cognitive maps, concept maps, and mind maps are diagramming techniques that can be utilized throughout the UX process to visualize knowledge and surface relationships among concepts.
By placing colored dots, participants in UX workshops, activities, or collaborative sessions individually vote on the importance of design ideas, features, usability findings, and anything else that requires prioritization.
Stories build empathy and make the user needs and pain points memorable to your team. Effective stories speak the language of the audience, are rooted in data, and take advantage of compelling artifacts.
Journey maps are useful for building common ground in an organization, but practitioners often have questions and misunderstandings about their scope and how to create them.
User need statements, also called problem statements or point-of-view statements, are a powerful, fundamental tool for defining and aligning on the problem you are going to solve.
Retrospectives allow design teams to reflect on their work process and discuss what went well and what needs to be improved. These learnings can be translated into an action plan for future work.
When conducting research for customer-journey maps, use qualitative methods that allow direct interaction with or observation of users, such as interviews, field studies, and diary studies.
