How to prepare for and run a Design Thinking / Gamestorming / Creative workshop. And what to do with the outputs, too.

Time to read: 9 minutesIn June 2017, I was hired for a few days by a consultancy to help with a design thinking workshop they were running for a client. They needed to run it with 80 participants, and to make it work they’d split them up into cabaret tables of 8, each with a facilitator… who needed to […] continue reading »

Google Home or Amazon Echo?

Time to read: 4 minutesIn our house, we have six little conversational interface audio boxes.  What do we use them for, and which one is better? Here’s what I’ve discovered about Google’s Google home mini, and Amazon’s Echo (standard and dot, we have both kinds). Jokes I think that nine out of ten requests we make of all the […] continue reading »

Reduce the cognitive load of Movie Night

Title with image of pop-corn

Time to read: 5 minutesAll modern internet-enabled things have been busting my imaginary balls since they entered my life. But none has caused so many headaches as NETFLIX. And Netflix is kind of awesome, because it’s given us shows like House of Cards and Grace & Frankie.  But Netflix has no clue whatsoever how to deal with Movie Night.  […] continue reading »

Linear Calendar Jan 2018 – Feb 2019

Time to read: 2 minutesHow often do you get to see strips of time that span nearly FOURTEEN months?! Ok, so all calendars do that. The only difference with this one is that you read it left to right, like you do text. I’ve been making it for three years, because it’s handy. If you stand back from the […] continue reading »

13 lessons from 15 years of NaNoWriMo

Time to read: 3 minutes2017 marks the 15th year (probably) that I attempted National November (or Novel) Writing Month. Under the premise of “50’000 words in 30 days”, people write like mad within a month, spurring writing sessions in pubs, lively conversations online, and millions of lines written globally. I’ve tried to do it at least a dozen times. […] continue reading »

Don’t panic, this is an agile experiment!

Diagram of the process

Time to read: < 1 minuteAfter many months of requests from multiple product owners who never talk to each other (and I am including marketing in that group), we (the design team with me as Head of UX / sole UX person) are finally beginning an experiment with the blessing of our Head of Product! As of this Friday, all […] continue reading »

Iterations of icon classification

Time to read: < 1 minuteIterations of the classification and combination of icons on our news items. #iterativeDesign #designProcess #informationArchitecture #devilsInTheDetails #UXlife #UX #e13 made with @balsamiqmockups of course! via Instagram http://ift.tt/2ul1qxb […] continue reading »

Wireflows for product status 

Time to read: < 1 minuteWe launched our Free Credit Report product earlier this month, so I can finally share this!! I was reviewing the backlog with our product owner, and instinctively started drawing the signin/up flow and mapping story codes to it. It looked ok, but needed some tidying up, so I cleaned it up in Balsamiq and added […] continue reading »