You've been there before. Overlapping deadlines, conflicting stakeholder priorities, and design reviews turning into endless cycles of feedback without clear decisions. It's frustrating, inefficient, and often leads to poor UX compromises.
Yesterday I stumbled upon Parvaneh ...
When we think about people who are deaf, we often assume stereotypes, such as "disabled" older adults with hearing aids. However, this perception is far from the truth, and often leads to poor decisions and broken products.
Let's look at when and how deafness emerges, and ho...
Many dashboards aren't actionable enough to be useful. They are designed to display all important metrics in one single place, but then it's rarely clear which of these metrics require immediate attention — and if so, which actions would be needed to actually address these i...
So we design and ship a shiny new feature. How do we know if it's working? How do we measure and track its impact? There is no shortage in UX metrics, but what if we wanted to establish a simple, repeatable, meaningful UX metric — specifically for our features? Well, let's s...
Many years ago, I assumed that simply by doing good design work, my efforts would be noticed, my work recognized, my attention to detail appreciated — and then surely I would get noticed, resulting in some sort of a promotion, or new projects, or more impactful work.
What I ...
For years, "UX strategy" felt like a confusing, ambiguous and overloaded term to me. To me, it was some sort of a roadmap or a grand vision, with a few business decisions attached to it. And looking back now, I realize that I was wrong all along.
UX Strategy isn't a goal; it...
A while back I stumbled upon an honest, practical guide on how to scale a design team in a high-growth company, including a team’s evolution, roles, meetings, processes and systems. Kindly shared by Andrew Coyle.
Andrew raised a few useful points that I never thought of, and...
Friendly note: get a friendly UX bundle for Smart Interface Design Patterns 🍣 and Measuring UX 🍎 — with live UX training coming up. Jump to table of contents.
Bulk operations are heavily underused in most products. The term refers to running repetitive tasks in lar...
UX research doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. Yet very often it’s perceived as a huge, blocking effort, requiring weeks and months of work, often without a clear timeline in mind.
In practice, we can get meaningful insights without significant delays. Let’s see...
In the early days of my career, I believed that nothing wins an argument more effectively than strong and unbiased research. Surely facts speak for themselves, I thought.
If I just get enough data, just enough evidence, just enough clarity on where users struggle — well, onc...
When talking about job interviews for a UX position, we often discuss how to leave an incredible impression and how to negotiate the right salary. But it’s only one part of the story. The other part is to be prepared, to ask questions and to listen carefully.
Below, I’ve put...
Friendly note: get a friendly UX bundle for Smart Interface Design Patterns 🍣 and Measuring UX 🍎 — with live UX training coming up. Jump to table of contents.
So you need to design a new AI feature for your product. How would you start? How do you design flows and ...
Friendly note: get a friendly UX bundle for Smart Interface Design Patterns 🍣 and Measuring UX 🍎 — with live UX training coming up. Jump to table of contents.
In many products, setting notification channels on mute is a default, rather than an exception. The reason...
In times when we are figuring out how to design AI interfaces, it’s important to stay focused on what truly matters — people. After all, no technology is useful without real value for real people — and inclusive design is the foundation of it.
In the world today, roughly 10%...
You can find techniques for UX strategy in Measure UX 🧭 — with live UX training later this year. Jump to table of contents.
We see many debates about designers being replaced by AI. About designers having to relearn their craft entirely to work with AI. And of course if...
Earlier today I stumbled again upon a wonderful short piece on Sad Truths On What It’s Like To Be A Designer by Michael McWatter. It’s an honest and on-point overview of some little sad truths that many of us experience in our careers. As it has turned out, being a designer ...
🌟 Data vs. Findings vs. Insights in UX #
In many companies, data, findings and insights are all used interchangibly. Slack conversations circle around convincing data points, statistically significant findings, reliable insights and emerging trends. Unsurprisingly, often co...
So we want to set up a new design system for your product. How do we get it up and running from scratch? Do we start with key stakeholders, UI audits, or naming conventions? And what are some of the critical conversations we need to have early to avoid problems down the line...
Think about your past projects. Did they finish on time? Did they get delivered without cutting corners? Chances are high that they haven’t. Perhaps they got delayed, moved, cancelled, “refined” or postponed. As it turns out, in many teams, shipping on time is an exception, ...
🔥 UX & Design Files Organization Template (Google Doc + .zip-file), with an overview of little helpers to neatly organize UX assets in sensible folders ↓
UX & Design Files Organization Template, by Courtney Pester
Full folder structure template (Google Doc)
Compress...
When you design an interface, which pronouns do you usually use to address your users? Do you write “My account” or “Your account”? “My drafts” or “Your drafts” — or only “Drafts”? And does it actually matter?
In this newsletter, we’ll shine some light on the different meani...
When it comes to URLs, there’s a common assumption that most people don’t pay attention to them. That people don’t even notice URLs, don’t remember them, and that they can always re-find what they are looking for anyway. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
People do...
With AI upon us, companies have recently been turning their attention to “synthetic” user testing — AI-driven research that replaces UX research. There, questions are answered by AI-generated “customers”, human tasks “performed” by AI agents.
However, it’s not just for desk ...
User journey maps are a remarkably effective way to visualize user’s experience for the entire team. Instead of pointing to documents scattered across remote fringes of Sharepoint, we bring key insights together — in one single place.
Let’s explore a couple of helpful custom...
When I start any UX project, typically there is very little confidence in the successful outcome of my UX initiatives. In fact, there is quite a lot of reluctance and hesitation, especially from teams that have been burnt by empty promises and poor delivery in the past.
Good...
How do you know what UI component to choose? 🌳 Decision trees offer a systematic approach for design teams to document their design decisions. Once we’ve decided what UI components we use and when, we can avoid never-ending discussions, confusion and misunderstanding.
Let’s ...
Many job openings in UX assume very specific roles with very specific skills. Product designers should be skilled in Figma. Researchers should know how to conduct surveys. UX writers must be able to communicate brand values.
The Many Roles In UX #
Successful candidates must...
You can find more details on design patterns and UX strategy in How To Measure UX 🍣 — with a live UX training coming up this year. Free preview.
No design exists in isolation. As designers, we often imagine specific situations in which people will use our product. It mi...
The goal of the content design is to reduce confusion and improve clarity. Yet often it’s difficult to pin point a problem as user feedback tends to be not specific enough. But: we can use a few simple techniques to assess how users understand and perceive content. Let’s tak...
Complex data tables are difficult to get right. They always come along with filters, sorting, customization options, batch actions, cell states, pagination, and a huge amount of data. Their purpose is to help people find insights, by comparing data points across rows and col...
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