Articles of Note
“It’s important to identify people whose behavior is not representative for your user population and exclude their data from your analysis. (Testing representative users is one of the core principles of usability testing, and unrepresentative participants invalidate many of the findings from a study.) In this article, we’ll discuss how to identify three types of problem participants: outliers, cheaters, and professional participants.”
“Rather than asserting pace, teams need to acknowledge it and check-in with it. We need to show empathy for individuals, the team and the organisation to recognise when we can go fast and where we need to slow down. It’s having the awareness and maturity to recognise when the team or individuals need time and space to think, reflect and possibly pivot. Once you’re conscious of it, you can be deliberate.”
“It’s easier to start with people who already want to do research. Find early adopters and advocates for UX research and start mini research projects with them to show the value and benefits of research. It’s not enough to say UX is great and research is amazing, it’s easier to convince other people to incorporate research in their process when they’ve seen the success elsewhere.”
“To my relief, almost a year later, TableKit continues to mature and improve with each release. While we still have a long road ahead and we continue to evolve, here are the things I believe we did right so far. If you’re a developer or a designer at a small to mid-sized company, involved in building a design system for your own team, hopefully these insights can help you find success as well.”
“When journey maps are used in the right way — as a means to address a specific, known business goal — the benefits are vast … Because the structure of a workshop is dependent on the skill level and preferred methods of the facilitator, there are many ways to lead a journey-mapping workshop. This article provides an overview of one way — a case study with examples from a recent workshop — but there could be many variations of the activities listed that could also be productive.”
Worth Another Read
“What features your customers ask for is never as interesting as why they want them. So: Direct them away from talking about the solution and back to describing the problem. Listen, pause, and then ask what it would allow them to do if they had it today. Ask what they’re currently doing as a substitute. They’ll either identify a problem (good — now go solve it) or be unable to provide specifics (feel free to deprioritize this suggestion).”
Something for You To Watch
(Kathryn Corrick and Frank Wales, 23 mins)
“With continued regulations, data protection will be done by design and default. It won’t just be the job of legal or compliance but will become part of how teams work on a day to day basis. Agile focuses on speed but data protection and privacy require taking time to consider how things can be exploited … The key takeaway from this talk is that data protection and privacy will provide opportunities for product people to re-engage their relationships with the customer.”
(Josh Seiden, 43mins)
“An outcome is a measurable change in behaviour that drives business results. That word ‘behaviour’ is really important because it helps us focus on what people are doing. What are our users doing? What are our customers doing? What are we doing? … How can we change those things to create more value for our users for our customers and for our business?”
(Yue Wu, 36 mins)
“Users don’t know what features they want. User research can be used to get users to show you what they don’t want to tell you. If a user is asked “how would you improve this product?” the answer they give may not actually get them to use the product more. Instead, through user research, product people can understand user intent and use it to develop what users need and not what they thought they wanted.”
LeadDev Live Redux
LeadDev Live took place online this year and had some great sessions. We think you will find these of especial interest.
The rest of the sessions are well worth a look too.
Upcoming Events
Lean UX & Product Discovery for Agile Teams, 15 September - 6 October, Online
Industry, 22-23 September, Online
How to Write OKRs That Don't Suck, 1 October, Online
#mtpcon London, 1-2 October, Online
UXDX, 6-9 October, Online
JAM, 12-17 October, Online
UCD Gathering, 15-16 October, Online
DesignOps Summit, October 21-23, Online
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