The most underestimated, underused, and unknown element of Human-Centred Design that I have ever encountered is the Question. That sentence that pitches up at the end, and finishes with a beautiful and quirky uncertain squiggle with a supportive dot underneath. When we are five, we tend to be great at questions. We ask the Queen […] continue reading »
Tag: UX
A forgotten UX need: Selection by exclusion
Today I was advertised a lovely-looking wine subscription box. Seems genuinely smart, as it asks you flsvour preference questions, like “the evening is winding down, are you most likely to reach for a platter of cheese, a sponge cake, or macarons?”. But. Like many other services like it, it does not account for managing selections […] continue reading »
5 tips for a better UX portfolio
Have you ever had to put a UX portfolio together? I have. And I’ve had to go through bunches of them when interviewing people, trying to decide who might be a good future colleague. It’s very difficult. I recently participated in a portfolio feedback session with MA students in User eXperience (UX) in which another […] continue reading »
8 UX “must reads” (the books)
I’m often asked about what I use as a design reference. And as the question has been coming up more and more often, I thought it’d be good to try and write up an answer. This answer will be in multiple parts. In the first part, I listed a few NN Group articles that act […] continue reading »
Reduce the cognitive load of Movie Night
All 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 »
Don’t panic, this is an agile experiment!
After 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 »
One button, six disciplines, six perspectives and goals….
I've been working in a "small" company (40-50 people) and this means I am interacting with all these disciplines (and more) in person. The other day I was adding a button to a wireframe and asked myself the usual "should it be a button or a link?" "What's the right verb for this action?" and […] continue reading »
Wireflows for product status
We 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 »
“What is UX” for Startups
I’m at a startup, as Head of UX, shaping a product that’s launching next week, and helping the team find ways of working that make them be more productive and feel more empowered. One of the challenges with the otherwise small and jovial company, is that there is already a silo: Marketing. What’s wrong with […] continue reading »
How to win at UX
UX is trendy, and we should all rejoice… Except UXers often work to unrealistic expectations, (“make this product user-friendly in 8 weeks”) try to solve non-existent problems (“build that team a dashboard with metrics XYZ”), and are seldom allowed time to do real research or work as a team (“we don’t have time for that, […] continue reading »