Rachel Krause is the Director of Live Training at Nielsen Norman Group. She leads the design, delivery, and continuous improvement of NN/g’s live training offerings. She has expertise in UX strategy, facilitation, storytelling, product design, and stakeholder management, and is passionate about empowering UX professionals to build skills, solve complex problems, and elevate UX maturity within their organizations.
4 user research methods for assessing visual design (and when and why to use each): preference explanation, open & closed word choice, and numerical rankings for brand attributes.
There are many design tools, and new ones come out all the time. Finding a single tool to do the job is not likely, so focus instead on understanding core design principles and adapting your process to best fit a particular task.
Dual career ladders are important in user experience. Don't force talented UX professionals to become managers if their growth path would instead benefit from focusing on UX craft.
An organization recognizes the value of UX and has semisystematic UX-related methodology that is widespread, but with varying degrees of effectiveness and efficiency.
Designers, researchers, and generalists alike can improve their visual design skills through creative exercises focused on identification, replication, or exploration.
Along with design and development work, research efforts need to be represented in an Agile backlog to enable teams to focus on continuously learning about users throughout the project.
Agile development teams that struggle to keep track of UX work in the product backlog can utilize a separate backlog for UX. This method can help siloed teams where UX and development aren't in direct communication. Separate UX backlogs do have pros and cons, which are discussed here.
Feedback during design critiques can be filled with hypothetical scenarios and unactionable suggestions. The right facilitation techniques help stakeholders and team members stay on track while still feeling heard.
Communication is the top challenge when designing remotely, according to 213 UX professionals. Receiving feedback, replicating informal conversations, and maintaining a clear direction on projects were the biggest communication concerns.
