“In order to be an effective designer you must learn how to work with all parties associated with the organization—ranging from managers and stakeholders to developers and other fellow designers. Make an effort to educate yourself about their ways and goals and help them have a clear a understanding about your role as a designer. Develop and maintain good relations. Be transparent in all you do, use relevant metrics and prove yourself with the best results.”
Mariusz Wozniak on ”More Tips from UX Designers to UX Designers” ;)
User Research, Quick ‘n’ Dirty (Google Ventures Startup Lab Workshop Notes)
March
16,
2013
I’m a big fan of Design Staff, a blog on product design for startups by Google Ventures partners. They do a great job on giving tons of practical advice, actionable tips and tricks that you can just pick up and run with. If you’re into product design - especially if you work with startups - and don’t know it yet, go ahead and bookmark it now.
Turns out GV design partners not only write about design, but also do workshops. Recently I’ve stumbled upon a video recording from Startup Lab workshop called “User Research, Quick ‘n’ Dirty”. I’m all for quick and dirty, so I dug in.
During about 2hr workshop Michael Margolis - GV design partner with 20 years of user research experience - presented “basically anything you need to do to run simple usability studies and customer interviews”. Sounds good? If you’re interested and have about 2 hours to spare, see it for yourself - it’s worth it.
Here are my notes:
- Startups tend to charge ahead with their idea towards the launch, hoping that they’ll do their learning and validation after launch. This often results in wasting weeks or months chasing what quickly turns out to be the wrong idea.
“Every great startup has a ‘Why now?’ when you think about it.”
How to choose the right UX metrics for your product l
- Think “data informed design” rather than “data driven design”. You are still the driver.
- Use HEART (Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task success) framework to categorize UX related metrics that may be applied to eighter whole product od feature at hand.
- Use Goals-Signals-Metrics process to define actual metrics that matter the most for a specific project.
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Steve Jobs for NYTimes
“I design experiences. Or I design for experiences, if we must mince words. I don’t do this because I was trained to do so. I do this because I must. I am a User Experience Designer.”
Stephen P. Anderson on “What is User Experience?” via Boxes and Arrows
Top 10 mobile UI design and interaction patterns galleries
January
9,
2013
As a designer you probably want to stay on top of new design trends and patterns - even if you choose not to follow them, it is still important to at least be aware. Also, starting each new project you probably go through research phase - and competitive analysis is usually a big part of it. On such occasions design patterns libraries and galleries come in very handy. Here’s my personal top 10 when it comes to mobile.
“I’ve always been pushing that envelope. I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say: O.K., you’re not that good. You just reached the level here. I don’t ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.”
Quentin Tarantino, Q&A w NYTIMES (via 9-bits)
(via 9-bits)
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