Design Process Articles & Videos

  • How to Deal With Bad Design Suggestions

    Gracefully respond to unsolicited design ideas, and prevent them from derailing good design. Turn them into UX learning experiences.

  • UX Mapping Methods Compared: A Cheat Sheet

    Empathy maps, customer journey maps, experience maps, and service blueprints depict different processes and have different goals, yet they all build common ground within an organization.

  • Ideation in Practice: How Effective UX Teams Generate Ideas

    Data from 257 UX professionals shows that quality UX ideas come from ideating early in the design cycle, drawing inspiration from user research, and working with a group. Many struggle with generating ideas because they lack time, managerial support, and a methodology for conducting effective ideation sessions.

  • 5 Strategies for Presenting UX Remotely

    Master remote presentations by creating the right environment, being human, reducing distractions, taking control, and telling a story.

  • Service Blueprints: Definition

    Service blueprints visualize organizational processes in order to optimize how a business delivers a user experience.

  • Troubleshooting Group Ideation: 10 Fixes for More and Better UX Ideas

    Groups can bias individuals and impact collaborative ideation. A focus on getting as many ideas as possible can mitigate some of the negative group effects.

  • Personas vs. Jobs-to-Be-Done

    Jobs-to-be-done focus on user problems and needs, while well-executed personas include the same information and also add behavioral and attitudinal details.

  • Facilitating an Effective Design Studio Workshop

    Design studios are UX workshops that combine ideation and design critique with idea prioritization and help teams collaborate and feel invested in the project.

  • Narrative Biases: When Storytelling HURTS User Experience

    Overreliance on narrative details and assumptions about cause-and-effect explanations can lead to errors in judgment by UX practitioners.

  • UX Research Cheat Sheet

    User research can be done at any point in the design cycle. This list of methods and activities can help you decide which to use when.

  • The Sketch Test: How to Test and Improve Your UX Deliverables and Other Documents

    Test your infographics, reports, and UX deliverables with representative colleagues to refine them and prevent potential stakeholder misunderstandings.

  • UX Stories Communicate Designs

    Help internal audiences empathize with users and buy into your design goals with well-crafted stories that build insight and focus on users and their needs.

  • Ideation for Everyday Design Challenges

    Improve your UI design solutions by considering many ideas before settling on any one of them. A solid ideation methodology broadens your idea-generation capacity.

  • Design Critiques: Encourage a Positive Culture to Improve Products

    Open feedback is essential for a collaborative UX process.

  • Journey Mapping in Real Life: A Survey of UX Practitioners

    Successful journey maps need to be focused on a clear business goal, well communicated in the organization, and truthful to user needs.

  • Design Thinking Builds Strong Teams

    Not only does design thinking foster innovation, but it also strengthens teams by creating common vocabulary and artifacts, and a trust-based team culture.

  • Top 10 Tips for UX Success From Agile Practitioners

    125 practitioners share their experience and success stories for improving user experience in Agile projects.

  • Minimize Design Risk by Focusing on Outcomes Not Features

    Resist the urge to lead with implementation. Once you know what the need is, you’ll know what to build.

  • Design Thinking 101

    Design thinking is a user-centered process that helps teams understand needs, generate ideas, test solutions, and drive innovation.

  • When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps

    Journey maps combine two powerful instruments—storytelling and visualization—in order to help teams understand and address customer needs.