The phrase “validate the design” discourages teams from finding and following up on UX issues in user testing. UX research must drive design change, not just pat designers on the back.
Teams can use digital chronological logs or affinity diagrams to capture notes, and then aggregate these notes into top findings with the whiteboard method.
Employee collaboration and open communication are now business drivers in many companies, but social enterprise features are often poorly integrated with the rest of the intranet.
Besides usability specialists, all design team members should observe usability. It's also good to invite executives. Although biased conclusions are possible, they're far outweighed by the benefits of increased buy-in and empathy.