e46 Personas are meant to be used, not just created
Personas are a widely used method, as they are seemingly easy to create and fit well into the image of a standardized design process. But as with any other t...
9am26 Newsletter - Reflections on Design Leadership
9am26 is my biweekly newsletter on all things product design leadership: design and research practice, managing people and teams, finding our places in tech product orgs, scaling and maturity, describing best practices and new ways of being a design leader from great companies and design teams. Why am I writing this again?
e45 Better presentations with the pyramid principle
If the goal of a presentation is to influence stakeholder decisions, the pyramid principle provides a simple framework to create decks that have flexible dep...
e44 Nonviolent communication for designers
As designers become more seniors, there is a common expectation of also becoming better at communication. It’s often unclear what’s it that actually needs to...
e43 The team’s common rituals build the team
When a design team is formed from individual designers, it needs to have certain rituals in place to grow into an actual team. Besides the usual suspects of ...
e42 Facilitating participatory design
Designers might describe what they do as designing, but more often than not, it’s more facilitating. The modern design process calls for participation not on...
e41 Articulating the design team’s value
Some design teams have a vague understanding of how they contribute to their organization beyond the daily tasks of producing UIs. However, the value the tea...
e40 Prototypes model experiences
Since we design interactive systems, prototypes are the most important artifacts we can produce in our work. Prototypes expand what we can create, model the ...
e39 2023 Retrospect
2023 is drawing to an end, which is a good time to take a pause, reflect a bit on the year, and chart a path for the coming year.
e38 Maturity models help formulate what good looks like
Design maturity models help get a holistic understanding of where the design team is and should go, but they are also often distracting by being overly gener...
e37 Nurturing designer and researcher careers
Effective nurturing of designers and researchers is not only crucial for their career development but also essential for building a high-impact design organi...
e36 Design team structures - defining how we work
Defining a team structure with intention helps design leaders achieve their goals, scale their teams, and create great designs. Key factors to consider are t...
e35 Develop your leadership style
Design leadership style is a powerful determinant of a design team’s effectiveness. By understanding and articulating your style, you can be a more intention...
e34 Wartime - peacetime design leadership
Product design and research leaders are facing a shift from peacetime to wartime conditions. With shifting priorities, layoffs, budget cuts, and higher deman...
e33 Activating insights for the design process
Evidence-based design serves the users truly, and actively using user research insights provides the evidence. Use workshops and other collaborative tools to...
e32 Rigor is essential in user research
Rigor is a key ingredient in any successful user research project. But what does rigor mean, exactly? And how can you ensure that your research is rigorous?
e31 Why writing matters for designers
Writing is a valuable skill for product designers, especially in distributed teams. Besides its inherent use for async communication, it’s a valuable tool fo...
e30 Raising the team’s empathy
Empathy is a key skill for designers and design teams. The ability to understand another person not only helps in creating better products but also in establ...
e29 Managing designers and managing researchers
Product designers and UX researchers have different mindsets, skills, and communication styles. Managing these two roles requires an understanding of both ro...
e28 Desire paths - following the users’ tracks
Desire paths, and shortcuts people make in physical spaces are also relevant to UX design. Users always find clever ways to use software that suits them bett...
e27 Onboarding designers
Onboarding new design team members in a good way is essential for their success and the overall productivity of the team. Planning this right fosters a suppo...
e26 Product trios for designers
Product trios is a great team setup to do product discovery, yet working in this type of close collaboration is not for everyone. Designers need to be prepar...
e25 Writing useful hypotheses
Writing useful hypotheses in the product design process helps understand user and business problems better while fostering critical thinking about the produc...
e24 Problem space, solution space
Understanding the concepts of problem space and solution space is crucial for achieving exceptional product outcomes. While these two realms are intricately ...
e23 Celebrating successes is a team effort
In the fast-paced world of product design, celebrating successes often takes a backseat to chase the next goal. But failing to acknowledge achievements toget...
e22 UX strategy - the design team’s guide to success
Having a clear strategy is what sets apart mediocre design teams and good teams. A clear strategy is crucial for design teams to have a clear vision and dire...
e21 1-on-1s - strengthening the team with coaching
1-on-1s can be a real game-changer when it comes to building a design team that works like a well-oiled machine. Managers can improve their team’s skills, ca...
e20 Designing meaningful products with AI
AI has become a buzzword in tech, but simply adding it to a product does not guarantee value. Designers need to have an understanding of the underlying techn...
e19 Design audits - improving collaboration, quality, and alignment
Design audits are an often overlooked but valuable tool for designers and design leaders to get valuable insights and energy for change.
e18 Sustainability for product design teams
Product designers should think about including more sustainable practices in their work. They should consider carbon consumption, influencing business models...
e17 Career ladders chart a path for the team’s growth
A clear career ladder is vital to retain team members and ensure they are growing in their roles. They provide clarity not only for professional development ...
e16 Getting deeper with well-formed user interview questions
User interviews are one of the easiest user research methods to get started with. To make them effective, the flow and formulation of questions need to be ri...
e15 Pair design leads to better design collaboration
Pair design is an awesome way to get designers to collaborate more closely, increase design quality, and for team members to learn and grow together.
e14 Building great design teams with a purposeful hiring process
Great teams are not born overnight - they are forged through a purposeful hiring process. At its core, hiring is not just about filling roles; it’s about fin...
e12 Articulating design decisions makes design work transparent
Well-articulated design decisions are often the single most impactful improvement design teams can do. It helps in transparency, more confident design choice...
e11 Design intent clarifies what a design aims to achieve
Without a solid intention, a designed solution will have unclear decisions, shallow exploration, and mediocre quality. Describing the shared design intent gi...
e10 Design principles set the foundation for good design
Design principles set the foundation for consistently articulating design choices and prioritizing trade-offs across the design team and the wider organizati...
e09 What is good design
Design teams and leaders need to define what good design looks like within their context to be able to push for better outcomes.
e08 Writing experience stories for better portfolios
Storytelling is a key skill for designers, and it can be also used to understand what we learned and to create better portfolios - by telling stories about o...
e07 Player-coach leaders
Player-coach roles in design teams are getting more common again but come with tradeoffs for both design leaders and their teams. Leaders need to balance the...
e06 Delight is great UX
Well-polished details on their own are not enough for delight, the users’ goals need to be met exceptionally too.
e05 Teams of T-shaped designers
Product design teams are more effective and produce higher quality output if they have deep expertise in each design discipline, while they also need general...
e04 Writing great job ads
The hiring process needs to be a designed experience, and job ads are the first touchpoints for potential candidates. A great job ad should be human-centered...
e03 Structuring research notes
Taking notes on user research sessions should go beyond asking observers to write down everything they see. Structuring notes drive impact beyond a single se...
e02 Brag doc - Keeping track of wins
Brag doc, a running list of what has gone well, is a great practice for designers to reflect and keep track of learnings and wins. It also helps managers to ...
e01 Design critique - a core practice for design teams
Design critique is not only a basic method for designers to get feedback and improve the quality of their work, but also a core practice for design teams to ...
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