Design Process Articles & Videos

  • AI-Assisted Prototyping: Promise and Pitfalls

    AI tools turn static designs into working prototypes fast, but speed can mask flaws. Use them to explore, not as a final product.

  • Template Trap

    Templates help, but only when used with intent. Use them thoughtfully, adapt them to context, and don’t skip the critical thinking.

  • 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 Product Triad: Design’s Role

    Effective product teams work across silos to create value. Designers are expected to make products not only desirable, but also viable and feasible.

  • Wireflows 101

    Wireflows combine wireframes with flowcharts to help document user interactions. They can aid in team collaboration, developer handoff, and help ensure clear communication for complex interactions.

  • Creating Design Specs for Development

    Design specifications should provide all the relevant information needed to align the design and development teams.

  • The Template Trap: How Template Culture Is Dumbing Down UX

    Overreliance on frameworks as universal solutions rather than adaptable starting points undermines critical thinking and threatens our field's intellectual rigor.

  • 5 Common Mistakes When Creating Design Specs

    Avoid disorganized files, late dev collaboration, unclear updates, scattered conversations, and assumptions over communication during spec’ing to ensure smoother implementation.

  • AI Design Tools Are Marginally Better: Status Update

    Despite improvements in narrow-scope AI design tools, most design-specific AI cannot replicate human designers’ output quality.

  • Redefine Your Design Skills to Prepare for AI

    Designers must embrace 5 principles as our industry shifts with AI.

  • Object-Oriented UX (OOUX)

    Identifying objects, their characteristics, and relationships in an experience can help simplify designs and make systems easier to use by aligning with people's mental models. (Credit: Sophia Prater)

  • 3 Design Processes for High Usability: Iterative Design, Parallel Design, and Competitive Testing

    3 methods for increasing UX quality by exploring and testing diverse design ideas work even better when you use them together.

  • Upfront vs. Continuous Discovery

    Upfront and continuous discovery are two approaches to implementing discovery in product development. Both approaches help teams solve real problems.

  • Types of Surveys to Run Throughout the Design Process

    There are lots of types of UX surveys. Which one to use depends on your research goal and where you are in the design process.

  • 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.

  • Using a CSD Matrix in Discovery

    CSD matrices organize project information by Certainties, Suppositions, and Doubts. Use the framework to make decisions, form hypotheses, and address unknowns in discovery. (Credit: Tennyson Pinheiro, Luis Alt and the team at Livework São Paulo.)

  • 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.