Over at the User Interface Conference LinkedIn Group (which you should join, as we’re having lots of interesting conversations over there), a discussion popped up about Lean UX. In the discussion, one group member, Lorena, posted what she’d been doing, which sounded a lot like what I’ve heard folks are doing in Lean UX. She [...]

The term Lean UX is bandied about quite a bit these days. Along with it, there seems to be some confusion as to whether this is just a buzzword, a new way of working, or simply a new description for what people in the UX realm already do. Jeff Gothelf of The Ladders is a champion of Lean UX, so Jared Spool sat down with him to find out what Lean UX was all about.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Four Stages of Competence. These four stages are unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. As someone learns and adapts to your design, they are working their way through the stages. The ultimate is the user who is unconsciously competent — they can seemingly move [...]

One of the joys of putting together a conference, like the annual User Interface Conference, is the great conversations I have with all the smart people who show up. This year was no exception, and one conversation that stood out was a quick discussion I had with Kim Goodwin, author of Designing in the Digital [...]

Because my son is a professional magician, I’ve picked up a bit of magician’s lore over the years. Amongst the pros, they have a saying: “If you want to learn a new trick, read an old book.” Turns out, there’s a lot of excellent illusions which have been lost for years that, when you bring [...]

We’re really good at criticizing things. We can spot the flaws instantly. But that’s different than a critical exploration of what we’re trying to do. Where we learn what it takes to make a great design. Where we explore both the problem space and the possible design solutions. I ask teams whether they do critiques. [...]

The field of user experience has grown incredibly over the past decade. It is really quite refreshing to see the number of companies who are starting to view user experience as an essential part of their business strategy. Design skills are in high demand. It is a great time to be a UX professional. But [...]

At times, getting a team to produce good ideas is like pulling teeth. You try to inspire, create, promote, even cajole people to dream up great design ideas. Some times it works. Other times you’re sitting around a conference table feeling clueless. That’s not the case when you bring Adapative Path’s CEO, Brandon Schauer into [...]

Gamestorming can allow collaboration to happen. It quickly gets a lot of people working together, sharing ideas, and getting creative. Words may be tricky because you’re not certain if someone has interpreted what you’ve said the way you meant it. The beauty of Gamestorming is it gets people to think visually and physically express their thoughts and ideas on paper.

Get all of the recordings and slide decks from last year’s User Interface 15 Conference for free. We’re celebrating this year’s User Interface 16 Conference’s fantastic program by giving everyone access to last year’s great show. The recordings and slide decks contain these great topics: Engaging team members in the design process Developing a content [...]