Design Process Articles & Videos

  • Design Principles 101

    Design principles are value statements that guide designers in making the right tradeoff-type decisions in UX design contexts.

  • How Well Discovery Phases Are Performed in UX Projects

    Our survey results reveal that many UX practitioners perform discoveries in some shape and form, although many are on the short side, lack user research and don’t involve the right people.

  • 21st Century Design

    Traditional design education is too narrow. Don Norman advocates a broader perspective for design and designers.

  • When and Why UX Practitioners Use Service Blueprints

    We asked 97 UX practitioners how and why they use service blueprints. Here's what they said.

  • Journey Mapping: 2 Decisions to Make Before You Begin

    Customer journey maps come in two flavors: current-state and future-state mapping. Mapping can be based on hypotheses or on real user data.

  • Are You Doing Real Discoveries?

    Discoveries are a powerful part of the UX design process, but unfortunately, many teams are not doing true discovery. Here are 5 main ways to go wrong.

  • Workshop Facilitation 101

    By following a set of simple facilitation principles and using standard tools and activities, anybody can grow into a confident workshop facilitator.

  • Tools for Running Remote UX Workshops

    How to maximize team participation and the value of the outcome when running a UX workshop remotely. Different platforms have different benefits and downsides, so choose depending on your circumstances and needs.

  • Remote UX Work: Guidelines and Resources

    Even though in-person UX sessions are typically ideal, sometimes budget or travel restrictions necessitate remote UX work. This article presents guidelines for remote user research, UX workshops or presentations, and collaboration.

  • Persuasive Storytelling Rule #1: Adapt Your Vocabulary

    Storytelling is a powerful technique for UX teams and for working with stakeholders, but only if you use the proper words for your audience's domain. Here are tips for building vocabulary for your stories.

  • Service Blueprinting: Fails and Fixes

    The most common pain points with service blueprinting are setting expectations, determining scope, and communicating insights, according to 97 UX professionals.

  • Discovery: Definition

    Although many different instigators, roles, and activities are involved in a discovery, all discoveries strive to achieve consensus on a problem to be solved and its desired outcomes.

  • Tools for Remote UX Workshops

    The type of workshop will dictate which tools your team should use. Ultimately, with limited time and budget, your best bet is to use a tool your team already knows how to use.

  • Foundational UX Workshop Activities

    There are 7 activities that act as a foundation for every UX exercise during a workshop or collaborative team meeting. By understanding these, you can create almost any other exercise you need.

  • Dualities of User Experience (Jakob Nielsen keynote)

    Many issues in the user-experience field don’t have a simple answer. Rather there’s a tension between two good answers that are often polar opposites. Both extremes can be useful perspectives, and both have their advocates when people debate UX. How do we resolve these differences? This was Jakob Nielsen's keynote at the UX Conference in Las Vegas.

  • UX Workshops vs. Meetings: What's the Difference?

    Meetings are for sharing information; workshops are for solving a problem or reaching an actionable goal. We compare the differences in purpose, scope, length, structure, and preparation time for workshops and meetings.

  • Top Tasks for UX Design: How and Why to Create Them

    Top Tasks are a tool used to focus a design team on the same, best set of user tasks. It comprises a list of 10 or fewer activities that users should be able to achieve using a design. If people can’t do these things, the design has failed. It takes a small amount of effort to create Top Tasks lists, but their impact is great.

  • Six Pillars Supporting Better and Easier UX

    Great design doesn't just happen. Rather, the organization must build 6 pillars that carry UX to success: capabilities, executive support, teams, resources, process, and schedule.

  • 10 Best Intranets of 2020: What Makes Them Great

    Clear vision, Agile development, and the goal to connect coworkers are what distinguishes the best intranets.

  • How to Get Stakeholders to Sketch: A Magic Formula

    Collaborative sketching is a powerful tool for building buy-in for design decisions; however, it can be difficult to get stakeholders comfortable with the idea of drawing in a group setting. These variables help make group sketching more productive and effective with stakeholders.