Articles

Kate Kaplan

Kate Kaplan specializes in applying human-centered design and research practices to enterprise UX challenges. With over 15 years in UX, Kate has extensive experience in both conducting research and helping teams understand and apply user insights to overall business strategy.

@katewkaplan

Articles and Videos

  • Complex Application Design: A 5-Layer Framework

    Various contexts of complexity should be considered by UX designers and researchers designing complex applications, including complexities of integration, information, intention, environment, and institution.

  • How to Run a Journey-Mapping Workshop: A Step-by-Step Case Study

    How to design a journey-mapping workshop that leads participants through current-state assumption mapping, pain-point identification, and future-state visioning.

  • Journey-Mapping Approaches: 2 Critical Decisions To Make Before You Begin

    Before beginning any journey-mapping initiative, teams must decide between (1) a current-state or future-state map, and (2) an assumption-first or research-first approach. A hybrid approach for each decision works well for most teams.

  • DesignOps Maturity: Low in Most Organizations

    In a survey of 557 design and UX practitioners, organizations only did 22% of recommended DesignOps efforts, did not have DesignOps-dedicated roles, and had low DesignOps maturity overall.

  • DesignOps: What's the Point? How Practitioners Define DesignOps Value

    Practitioners define DesignOps based on the value it provides for their team or organization. Most practitioners think of DesignOps as a way to standardize and optimize processes, enable and support designers, or scale design.

  • Journey Mapping: 2 Decisions to Make Before You Begin

    Customer journey maps come in two flavors: current-state and future-state mapping. Mapping can be based on hypotheses or on real user data.

  • What Makes an Effective UX Leader?

    We asked a group of user experience professionals what makes for efficient UX leadership in their experience. Answers differed but included a lot of soft skills.

  • Remote UX Work: Guidelines and Resources

    Even though in-person UX sessions are typically ideal, sometimes budget or travel restrictions necessitate remote UX work. This article presents guidelines for remote user research, UX workshops or presentations, and collaboration.

  • DesignOps: Top Questions Answered

    Why have design operations increased in importance in recent years? Who should do DesignOps anyway? And how to best fit a DesignOps practice into an existing organization?

  • UX Workshops vs. Meetings: What's the Difference?

    Meetings are for sharing information; workshops are for solving a problem or reaching an actionable goal. We compare the differences in purpose, scope, length, structure, and preparation time for workshops and meetings.