Articles

Sarah Gibbons

Sarah Gibbons is a former NN/G employee who worked on teaching, leadership, and design thought leadership. At NN/G Sarah published ground-breaking insights on service design and service blueprinting, design thinking, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Articles and Videos

  • The "Parking Lot" in UX Workshops: Friend or Foe?

    To maintain focus in a UX workshop, set aside ideas in a "parking lot" if they diverge from the stated agenda. Parked ideas should be discussed later when they won't slow the team's momentum in addressing the meeting's main topic. Here are 3 guidelines for making the most of a parking lot.

  • Design Thinking Is Like Cooking

    As you learn design thinking, you progress through stages: being a beginner, an intermediate practitioner, and possessing advanced expertise. This progression is like learning to cook: you won't be a master chef on day 1, but there are appropriate skills to aim for at each level.

  • Service Blueprinting in Practice: Who, When, What

    UX practitioners associate the term “service blueprinting” with an artifact, framework, or collaborative tool. Those surveyed used service blueprints early on or near the end of the product-design lifecycle.

  • 3 Powerful Visual Mapping Strategies in UX Design

    Cognitive maps, mind maps, and concept maps are different ways of visualizing mental models. They each have a role in the UX design process.

  • Parking Lots in UX Meetings and Workshops

    A parking lot captures unrelated questions or out-of-scope conversations during UX meetings or workshops to keep the discussion focused and maintain momentum.

  • How UX Professionals Define Design Thinking in Practice

    We conducted research with UX professionals and designers to find out what they think Design Thinking actually is. What attributes do practitioners assign to Design Thinking, as used in practice? And how does this understanding evolve as practitioners get more experience?

  • Cognitive Mapping in User Research

    In cognitive mapping sessions, users are asked to produce a visual representation of their mental models. This type of user interview can provide stimulus for conversation, generate insights, and act as a facilitation aid.

  • Cognitive Maps, Mind Maps, and Concept Maps: Definitions

    Cognitive maps, concept maps, and mind maps are diagramming techniques that can be utilized throughout the UX process to visualize knowledge and surface relationships among concepts.

  • How to Present UX Design Ideas

    Don't just show your proposed user-interface solution. Set the stage with the necessary background for understanding the design, and follow through with visuals that tell the full UX story.

  • Dot Voting: A Simple Decision-Making and Prioritizing Technique in UX

    By placing colored dots, participants in UX workshops, activities, or collaborative sessions individually vote on the importance of design ideas, features, usability findings, and anything else that requires prioritization.