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 »
Category: UX & Design
User eXperience and Design. Tips, tricks, or just snippets of my online finds, both praise for a job well done and gripes for shameful behaviour.
I discovered UX (User eXperience) as a discipline in 2002. I had been working with its principles in mind for more than ten years already, and it was a revelation to be told “look, there are books for how you think!”. Since then, I have been constantly learning, working, and expanding on the topic of UX in every aspect of work and life
Five principles for fostering a feeling of inclusion
A few weeks ago I ran a small ideation & affinity mapping workshop with some colleagues on the theme of Inclusion. And I want to tell you what we discovered. What’s a DE&I activity? The premise of the workshop was simple. I needed to put together a proposed budget for DE&I activities in the coming […] continue reading »
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 »
5 UX “must reads” (cheatsheets edition)
I’m often asked about what I use as a design reference. And I have asked that question of people over time too. It’s how you learn, when your discipline does not yet have textbooks… Sadly, I’ve seldom gotten a useful answer, as far as I can remember… so I thought that it would be nice […] continue reading »
How to prepare for and run a Design Thinking / Gamestorming / Creative workshop. And what to do with the outputs, too.
In 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?
In 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
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 »