Articles

Rachel Krause

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.

@rachelkrau

Articles and Videos

  • Don’t Be Scared of Saying ‘I Don’t Know’

    Saying 'I don't know' at work can be scary, but by focusing on how you would find the answer to the question, you'll still be in control of the conversation.

  • Creating Engaging Reports & Asynchronous Presentations

    To keep your stakeholders and team members engaged, incorporate storytelling techniques such as writing for your audience, adding anecdotes, and using analogies in your asynchronous research deliverables.

  • Stop Obsessing Over Features: Focus on User Goals to Solve Real Problems

    Focusing on shipping new features instead of solving customer problems results in products and services that don't serve real users. Shift the mindset from 'what did we get done' to 'how valuable is the work that we're delivering' to avoid becoming a feature factory.

  • 3 Uses for Skill Mapping in UX Teams

    Skill maps can be used to better understand team composition, identify the skills of new team members, and track career progression.

  • Responding to Unhelpful Design Feedback

    In UX design meetings, critiques are sometimes based on hypothetical scenarios and pseudoevidence: not actual user problems, but something that *might* happen.

  • Assessing User Reactions to Visual Design

    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.

  • The Design Tool Does Not Make the Designer

    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.

  • Management vs. Craft: UX Needs to Value Both

    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.

  • UX-Maturity Stage 4: Structured

    An organization recognizes the value of UX and has semisystematic UX-related methodology that is widespread, but with varying degrees of effectiveness and efficiency.

  • 3 Ways to Level Up Your Visual Design Skills

    Designers, researchers, and generalists alike can improve their visual design skills through creative exercises focused on identification, replication, or exploration.