Design Process Articles & Videos

  • How to Run a Retrospective for a Design Team

    Retrospectives are a dedicated time to come together, reflect, and collaboratively improve your design team’s process. In this video, we'll walk through the four components of a retrospective and how to use this meeting effectively.

  • Journey Mapping: 9 Frequently Asked Questions

    Journey maps are useful for building common ground in an organization, but practitioners often have questions and misunderstandings about their scope and how to create them.

  • User Need Statements: The ‘Define’ Stage in Design Thinking

    User need statements, also called problem statements or point-of-view statements, are a tool for defining and aligning on the problem you are going to solve.

  • UX Retrospectives

    Retrospectives help teams reflect on their process, identify strengths and areas to improve, and turn insights into actionable plans for better future work.

  • How to Conduct Research for Customer Journey-Mapping

    When conducting research for customer-journey maps, use qualitative methods that allow direct interaction with or observation of users, such as interviews, field studies, and diary studies.

  • Design Thinking 101

    What is "design thinking" and why should you care? The 6 steps of the process defined.

  • How to Create a UX Storyboard

    How storyboards fit within the UX design process, and the steps needed to make a successful storyboard to visualize a workflow, customer journey, or user story.

  • Journey Mapping 101

    A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal.

  • A 4 Minute UX Workshop Facilitator's Guide

    As a facilitator, it’s your responsibility to make sure the time spent in workshops is as productive as possible for attendees, while at the same time ensuring that you get the insights you need in order to move your project forward.

  • What Is Design Thinking, Really? (What Practitioners Say)

    The majority of UX and design professionals define design thinking roughly the same, regardless of industry and experience, but there’s no agreement on the specifics.

  • Observe, Test, Iterate, and Learn (Don Norman)

    There isn’t a next time in product development. You must always study to keep up with the product cycle.

  • UX Debt: How to Identify, Prioritize, and Resolve

    Like tech debt, UX debt piles up over time and, if left unaddressed, leads to compounding user problems and costly cleanup efforts. Agile teams can modify their processes to track and resolve UX debt.

  • Usability Testing with 5 Users: Design Process (video 1 of 3)

    Formative usability testing is best done with a small number of study participants, so that you have time and budget to test more design iterations of the user interface.

  • Ideation Techniques for a One-Person UX Team

    Even a lone UX wolf can ideate design options, and structured ideation techniques help you explore the design space.

  • Case Study: Iterative Design and Prototype Testing of the NN/g Homepage

    The NN/g homepage redesign relied on rapid iterative prototyping, and usability testing, to balance multiple design objectives.

  • Beating Creative Blocks in UX Design Through Reframing

    A method for getting unstuck from a design challenge. By reframing the problem, you can find inspiration in unexpected places.

  • Design Thinking 102

    Get started with Design Thinking by practicing empathy in manageable, small yet effective, ways.

  • A Model for Conducting UX Workshops and Exercises

    To ensure activity participants get the most out of UX activities, use a three-step process to conduct them: explain, execute, and examine.

  • Storyboards Help Visualize UX Ideas

    Storyboards are visual representations of UX stories, which capture attention, provide clarity, and inspire us to take action.

  • UX Visualization Techniques Reduce Your Cognitive Load

    UX deliverables such as journey maps and affinity diagrams help designers visualize information, so they can be better understand and act on it.