Podcasts – UIE Brain Sparks

We often talk in terms of silos in organizations, where information isn’t readily shared and communication leaves something to be desired. Another way to think of a team who is heads- down working on the overall journey is to imagine swim lanes. Each department is so focused on their own part of the experience that they might not be fully aware of each step a user has to go through to complete the journey.

Sometimes, the world of user experience design requires creative solutions. There are numerous methodologies and an even greater number of myths about where and when they are supposed to be used. Lean UX is one such process that is associated mostly with startups and very early stage projects. But what if you were to apply Lean UX to an existing site? And what if that site was a multinational industry-leader with millions of users?

The innate problem with analytics packages is they tell you if something is happening but not why. With the sheer number of numbers that you can look it, it can be hard to determine if something is even important. If it’s tracked, it must be important, right? Much like superstition, something that is believed to be an important metric may not apply to the reality of your product or service’s experience. Understanding the behavior of your users, introducing some science, is what leads to greater context and insight.

In this episode of the UIE Podcast, Amanda Linden talks about her challenge of fighting back clutter in Asana’s design. Hagan Rivers talks about her techniques for helping enterprise app teams deal with the issues of clutter.

When we’re training teams on our design methods, what we perceive as ‘proper’ may in fact become a hinderance. Our dogmatic approach to our processes may prevent people from ever employing the techniques. Is it better to do it the right way, or to teach a wrong way that will get the job done?

You’ve got a groundbreakingly innovative product idea, and you’ve assembled a crack team of designers. You know exactly what you want to do, but you’re unsure of how to do it. Without a framework to drive your product development, it’s Game Over.

Mobile, ambient technology, and connected devices are about mediating people’s behavior in their environments. Uncovering the whys and hows that drive behavior takes empathy, hours of observation, and masterful prototyping skills. You’ll succeed when you make, test, iterate, and learn.

Design leaders are unsung revolutionaries. They’re often at the forefront of culture change, advocating for a new conversation about creativity and quality. The old one involved meetings, presentations, and top-down mandates, and little to no input from customers.

Creativity isn’t just about expressing yourself. It’s also about solving problems by putting disparate pieces together to form a new, unique whole. Practical Creativity fuels the everyday work and once-in-a-lifetime breakthroughs of designers, engineers, and scientists.

The only job of application navigation is to get users to the right screen. Ideally, all of your users should find what they need in 10 seconds or less, and with only a few clicks. But many enterprise app navigation systems fall short. If you’re facing a much-needed nav overhaul and don’t know where to start, it can be overwhelming.

For the longest time, making a great experience for the user was a business-strategy luxury item. A great product only had to work and ship. A great experience was a nice-to-have, not a requirement. Times have changed. The cost of delivering a product is no longer a barrier to entry. Quality is no longer a differentiator. What’s left? The user’s experience.

Products and service designers deal with complex design problems in equally complex markets. It’s hard to know which solutions are winners and which ones will fail. Fortunately, you can use simple design insights from biology to eliminate doubt and risk, and prepare you for whatever comes your way.

Corporate life expects us to be experts, to know the answer to every question. We make “requirements”, which turn out to really be assumptions, but because we never call them assumptions, we never go about testing them. This is as much a social political issue as anything. The higher you are in the organization, the more you’re expected to just know the answer.

Storytelling is a powerful way to measure our understanding of our users and their experiences. But unfortunately, we don't always get the story right. User experience rests more on listening to what the users want to tell us rather than the stories research teams and designers tell themselves within the confines of their organizations. Perhaps it’s time to first try story listening before recanting the tales.

When we add new features, we often force them to break the habits they’ve carefully formed. That’s what makes our users upset when we change the design unexpectedly. Their old habits no longer deliver the value they once did, and now they have to form new ones.