Design Process Articles & Videos

  • Getting into the Discovery Mindset

    Successful discovery requires teams to be open to uncovering “unknown unknowns.” Center your discovery efforts around problems rather than solutions.

  • 7 Tips for Successful Discoveries

    Discovery is challenging; it can be hard to know what to research, how to do discovery as a team, and how to get buy-in. Follow these 7 tips for smoother discovery efforts.

  • NN/g’s Free UX Templates and Guides

    Use this curated set of free NN/g templates and guides for inspiration and to accelerate your product development activities and UX career.

  • UX Deliverables: Glossary

    Use this glossary to quickly clarify key terms and concepts related to UX deliverables.

  • Design Systems vs. Style Guides

    Design systems are a set of standards (like Google’s Material Design or IBM’s Carbon Design System) needed to manage design at scale. Style guides (like content or visual style guides) are just one piece in a design system.

  • How to Run Surveys at Every Stage of the Design Cycle

    Most UX surveys are administered during the final Listen phase of the design cycle. However, there are many different types of surveys, which can be used effectively throughout the design cycle.

  • Building Interactive UX Maps

    Interactions can be applied to high-fidelity UX maps to showcase user research and further engage with stakeholders.

  • The 10 Best Intranets of 2023: Trends in Design and Process

    Noteworthy highlights from Intranet Design Annual winners in 2023 include supporting the return to work and hybrid working, fostering employee growth and development, utilizing AI effectively, and minimizing the need for employees to leave the intranet to access additional tools.

  • CSD Matrix: Framework and Template for Shared Understanding

    A CSD matrix outlines and simplifies project context and understanding by categorizing information into three distinct types: certainties, suppositions, and doubts.

  • 10 Best Intranets of 2023: What Makes Them Great

    Winners of the 2023 Intranet Design Annual span 5 countries and 6 industries. Average team sizes were larger this year compared to those of years past, while collaboration with external agencies played a significant role in executing successful intranet redesigns.

  • User Experience vs. Customer Experience: What’s The Difference?

    Customer experience (CX) is a term commonly used to define UX over long periods of time.

  • How and Why to Include Users in UX Workshops

    Inviting users to directly participate in UX Workshops can vastly improve the workshop output; however, the exact strategy and methods for including them vary based on the workshop type and goals.

  • Design Risks: How to Assess, Mitigate, and Manage Them

    The risk-management process enables teams to assess risks during the design process in order to reduce harm to users and to the organization. Risk mitigation involves systematically reducing the likelihood or the impact of a risk.

  • Data vs. Findings vs. Insights: The Differences Explained

    Data refers to unanalyzed user observations, findings capture patterns among data points, and insights are the actionable opportunities based on research and business goals.

  • 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.

  • UX Strategy: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos about UX visioning and strategy.

  • 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.

  • Discovery in Agile

    Scaling discovery work in Agile helps teams plan appropriately scoped activities around targeted questions and probable assumptions instead of arbitrary sprint timeframes.

  • How Practitioners Create Journey Maps: Typical Uses, Roles, and Methods

    Data from 343 companies provide a baseline to understanding typical approaches for selecting journey-mapping applications, research methods, contributing roles, and map components.