Collaboration & Teams Articles & Videos

  • UX & Marketing: Balancing Business Goals and Supporting Users

    There are inevitable tensions that form between UX and marketing teams because of their differing approaches to users and differing priorities. Regardless, both teams can still work together to find effective solutions that address those tensions.

  • Lean UX & Agile Glossary

    Unsure of what a word means and how it applies to UX in-practice? Use this glossary to quickly clarify key terms and Agile concepts.

  • The Product-Manager Archetype

    Product managers share common goals, strengths, activities, and skill sets. Awareness of these commonalities helps designers figure out how to best collaborate with product managers on Agile teams.

  • When to Use Empathy Maps: 3 Options

    Empathy maps are a powerful, flexible tool that can be used to plan for future research studies, capture insights during current user research, and communicate research insights from research that has already been conducted to others.

  • Groupthink in UX Work

    Groupthink is the human tendency to follow the opinion of the majority. This instinct can save time but can also lead us on the wrong path.

  • Who Does DesignOps? Common DesignOps Roles and Partnerships

    Many roles can contribute to DesignOps at an organization. Organization- and design-team structures play a large role in determining who should take on DesignOps responsibilities.

  • Dot Coding: An Activity to Elicit Perspectives in UX Workshops

    By placing colored dots on items, participants in UX workshops or group sessions can manage the collaborative discussion of research findings, design ideas, goals, or anything else.

  • Day-0 Calls: Avoid UX-Workshop Disasters by Aligning on the Basics in Advance

    A lack of agreement on goals and other basics can derail an entire workshop. Hold a call prior to the workshop to establish these basics in advance.

  • How to Build a Participant List for UX Workshops

    A successful UX workshop includes a relatively small number of diverse participants and prioritizes users’ needs.

  • Use Good Prototype Specifications to Empower Team Collaboration

    Three types of prototype specifications help explain how a design looks and is implemented. Clear prototype specifications empower team collaboration and lower communication costs.

  • Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence in UX Design

    Addressing these 3 fundamental psychological needs in our products increases user motivation and well-being. Users will be more engaged and more likely to use our designs.

  • How to Write a Mission Statement for a UX Team: A Case Study in Design Operations

    Create a team mission statement collaboratively with your team. Make sure everybody understands what a mission statement is and abstract the core purpose and value of your team by identifying themes in stories of value about your team.

  • Facilitating UX Workshops: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to start designing and facilitating UX workshops.

  • UX-Roadmapping Workshops: Agenda + Activities

    Collaboratively create a UX roadmap in a workshop setting by guiding participants through activities that familiarize them with the project goals, context, and inputs and that identify key roadmap themes and priorities.

  • Common Ground and UX

    Any efficient communication requires that communication partners establish and rely on common ground so that they can take communication shortcuts.

  • How to Handle Dominating Participants in UX Workshops: 3 Tactics

    Facilitators can use 3 ascending levels of intervention tactics to maintain positive momentum in groups with participants who monopolize activities and limit diversity of perspectives.

  • Remote Design Work: Top Challenges

    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.

  • Skill Mapping: A Digital Template for Remote Teams

    A collaborative spreadsheet is an efficient tool for evaluating skills of UX team members and creating an overall team shape.

  • 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.