design thinking Articles & Videos

  • Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking

    Empathy maps help UX teams visualize user attitudes and behaviors, building a shared understanding of end users while highlighting gaps in existing user data.

  • Design Process Isn't Dead, It’s Compressed

    As AI speeds up design work, the argument to "throw out the process" misrepresents how experienced designers work.

  • User-Ecosystem Thinking: An Anthropologic Approach to Design

    The NN/g UX Podcast featured coauthors Mike Youngblood and Ben Chesluk, who are challenging the traditional, outdated model of “users” in UX.

  • UX Strategies for Complex-Application Design

    UX in complex, specialized domains requires adapting familiar methods across the design lifecycle to address domain constraints and expert-user needs.

  • The 6 Rules of Design Thinking

    Follow the 6 rules of design thinking during workshops to help participants embrace the core principles of design thinking and ensure successful outcomes.

  • The Diverge-and-Converge Technique for UX Workshops

    By first working independently on a problem and then converging to share insights, teams can leverage the benefits of both work styles, leading to rapid data analysis, diverse ideas, and high-quality designs.

  • Affinity Diagramming for Collaboratively Sorting UX Findings and Design Ideas

    Use affinity diagramming to cluster and organize research findings or to sort design ideas in ideation workshops.

  • The Role of Design

    Don Norman explains the role of design and how designers can gain more respect.

  • When to Empathy Map

    Empathy maps 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.

  • UX Basics: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn more about the basics of user experience.

  • Avoiding 3 Common Pitfalls of Affinity Diagramming

    Inexperienced facilitation in affinity diagramming workshops can lead to groupings that do not serve the team goals or misrepresent underlying issues.

  • Mood Boards in UX: How and Why to Use Them

    Create mood boards to collect visual inspiration, communicate brand identity, and decide on the product's visual direction.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Design Thinking Activities

    The 6 stages of the design thinking process can be supported by a very wide range of UX methods and activities. Don't limit yourself to the most commonly mentioned methods.

  • Design Thinking: Top 3 Challenges and Solutions

    How to overcome 3 common challenges with design thinking: my team isn't interested, I have no time, I don't know where to start.

  • Discovery Mapping Methods

    Mapping can help UX practitioners synthesize insight into one place and visualize the problem space. This video covers 3 maps that are often utilized during the discovery phase of a UX design project: ecosystem maps, experience maps, and process maps.

  • Overcoming Service-Blueprinting Frustrations

    Our research with UX practitioners found 3 main areas of frustration with service-blueprint projects. Here are recommendations for overcoming or alleviating these problems.

  • 5 Facilitation Principles for Both UX Workshops and User Tests

    Both UX workshops and usability tests benefit when facilitators are focused on goals, follow a meeting guide yet are open to improvisation, encourage participants to act, and don’t talk too much.

  • Sympathy vs. Empathy in UX

    Sympathy acknowledges that users are having difficulties, but empathy goes further by understanding the users' needs and motivations.