Assumptions tend to be the downfall of many research projects. Making design decisions based on generalizations of what people are likely to do leads to surprises once you finally get your product in front of actual users. The result? Rework and frustration due to an overall lack of communication within the team.

Facilitation is an important skill, whether with collocated or remote teams. It drives conversation and collaboration. The ability to facilitate well is integral when conducting participatory design activities, giving a presentation, or even giving a virtual seminar. Russ joins Adam Churchill to discuss the book and the various types of facilitation in this podcast.

When you prototype, you can learn a ton of things about what you’re building and how you should build it. Prototyping is an exploratory process, revealing details and ideas that only emerge once you have something in front of you. There’s one thing you can learn while prototyping that nobody ever talks about: Who should [...]

Join us on June 20, when Adam Connor presents Design Studio: Building Design Consensus Early in Your Process. Design reviews can result in conflicting lists of stakeholder feedback and out-of-scope ideas about what the design should be. Bruised egos, longer timelines, and higher budgets are often par for the course. Adam Connor builds design consensus [...]

What if you could ask one question during an interview that would tell you everything you need to know about the candidate you’re thinking of hiring? As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of Lou Adler’s Hire with Your Head recruiting strategy. A big component of how Lou approaches hiring is the interview conversation. [...]

In this week’s UIEtips, I discuss the five most common pitfalls of prototyping. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Prototypes are a fabulous way to exploring ideas with a team. They shorten the time between “This is what we’re thinking…” and “Oh, I get it.” In our work with design teams, we see a lot [...]

In this week’s UIEtips, we look back at a past article where I discuss several different user research strategies and the profound impact they can have on your products. Here’s an excerpt from the article: “Damn, I wish we’d done this a year ago.” That’s what I hear right after I’ve started a team on [...]

Shared understanding is important to any team working towards a common goal. Ensuring every member of the team is on the same page can be difficult. Sketching is a quick, lightweight method for communicating design ideas or interactions. Starting with sketching early in the design process lets everyone share the same vision.

A beautiful design means little if it’s not useful. Content is the key to making it useful. From the outset of the design process, you must consider the content for the site. Members of the design and development teams should work along side the content strategist to ensure the right content is delivered with the right message.

In this week’s UIEtips Kevin Cheng discusses how to communicate ideas using comics and sketches. Here’s an excerpt from the article Having everybody reading the requirements document before a project starts isn’t just bureaucratic nonsense; it also ensures there are no surprises at the end. The problem is that requirements documents use words like “community,” [...]