Articles of Note
by Anna Kaley
“Agile teams are particularly prone to UX debt as a result of heightened pressure to regularly ship new features and functionality. However, UX debt can accumulate in any project, regardless of the development methodology employed, and too much of it will result in a loss of trust, traffic, and revenue. In this article, we define UX debt and show how it can be identified; we also discuss methods for how to prioritize UX-debt issues and resolve them.”
by Sara Belt & Peter Gilks
“We believe that mixed methods yield comprehensive answers: blind spots and caveats in specific approaches can be tackled through mixing methods. Triangulation allows us to have greater confidence and richer insights than is possible to achieve through a single method alone. We aspire to form a comprehensive narrative of what we know about the current and future users of our products rather than methodologically siloed insights.”
“If you think about it, the design system process is a bit of an anomaly in modern product development. A large design effort, culminating in a suggested total overhaul of a site? If I were working on a feature, I would never spend weeks or months designing a perfect system that had all the answers. I would want to start small and learn. Test those ideas with real people, gather feedback and learn from my mistakes. I think the same could be true of designs systems.”
Vidhya Sriram (@vsriram15) interviewed by Sofia Quintero (@Sofiaqt)
“If I go to different meetings, understand the problems, then circle back, I start understanding who is an influencer, who is the decision maker, and who is struggling but doesn’t have a voice. Find a way to connect to that person and see if you can solve their problem, even in the smallest way. And maybe you’ll start building champions at different levels … What you're doing is truly trying to understand if there's a problem from their perspective to see if you can add value. If we just bring it down to that one first principle, I am certain that we can add value, get buy-in and be a powerful change agent in our own way.”
“A few months ago, I watched a video of someone moderating a usability test in a way that I considered to be non-ideal. While my initial inclination was to give this person direct feedback, I eventually decided against it … Instead, I started to wonder how I might normalize an environment in which a researcher might expect to receive constructive criticism. I decided to run a “moderated research critique” and submit my own work for review.”
Worth Another Read
“From a solution point-of-view, the team’s walkthrough of the sketchboard brings us to place where we’ve got a pretty tight idea of what solutions we need to take forward into a detailed design. A well-reviewed sketchboard is a visual specification of the solution, with certain elements of specific sketches highlighted and circled, lots of notes, and several new sketches conveying the important details we’d made decisions about. Only at this point do we feel we’ve explored enough ideas, confronted the right problems, and received enough team input and perspectives to move forward into the detailed structure of a wireframe.”
UX Brighton Conference Redux
The UX Brighton Conference had Advancing Research as its theme this year. We think you will find these talks of especial interest:
If you like these you might like to check out the other sessions.
Upcoming Events
Kicking Off - Using Example Mapping for Better User Stories, 8 January, Southampton
Build, Measure, Learn, For Real, 15 January, London
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results, 23 January, Mountain View
MTP Engage, 7-8 February, Manchester
Smart Scrum Product Ownership, 7-8 February, London
ProductCon London, 27 February, London
Agile-Lean Ireland, 25-26 April, Dublin
Agile Manchester, 8-10 May, Manchester
MTP Engage, 22-24 May, Hamburg
ACE!, 23-24 May, Kraków
Enterprise UX, 3-5 June, San Francisco
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