I am a product designer who came back to an IC role because AI lets one person build so much. This project started as a hypothesis: the judgment behind the work can be made visible and systematic.
2020 reading roundup: adopt a test & learn mentality
As year 2020 comes to a close, and as I archive my day planner, mounds of sticky notes, and work journals for the year, I found a few quotes and insights I highly recommend to my community of UX professionals. Do you make it a practice to ask yourself how the next thing you design can maximize your opportunity to learn about your business, brand and users?
"Customer feedback is information you collect from your customers about their experience with your product, service, website, or business as a whole. You can use this feedback to improve customer experience by removing or reducing areas of friction and increasing positive touchpoints."
"Expertise can be the gradual accumulation of many modest insights."
James Clear’s Blog | Author of Atomic Habits
"This generation has never been more informed than ever, but at the same time remarkably not reflective."
Unknown
"it’s critical to track the effects of your experiments both quantitatively and qualitatively”
“Whether we use KPI’s, Usability, Credibility, or other measures, having an imbalance in either direction leads to a lot of guessing.”
“Always Have two goals when testing hypotheses…
The key to creating good product experiments is to start with two viability goals at once: a primary goal that changes and a secondary goal that stays the same. In other words, the primary goal is something the team wants to achieve without losing something else…
For example: Our (primary) goal is to increase revenue while keeping costs the same (secondary).”
Bonus book recommendations
Incredible collection of practical and easy productivity tactics to maximize the finite hours of your day. From the creators of GV's Sprint.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
This 'old school' book is incredible for any working human. Having read it later in life I’ve realized it’s the clear foundation for many other popular business leadership and productivity books that followed it. This book is actually in my list of top 10 non-fiction books of all time. I officially understand what all the the hype is about following Franklin Covey and the years of success the organization has had helping professionals. I especially recommend this read to graduating High School or College students just coming in to the working world.
10 Awesome UX Design Podcasts
If you are new to Podcasts or have already discovered this amazing technology for design literacy already.
I’ll admit there are a large number of podcast episodes framed to showcase content authors on a book tour, but the nuances of communication unlocked by longer conversations surface some often greater insights beyond the usual scope of Tweets, Medium articles, and books. I strongly recommend you give the following shows a try if you’re interested in the conversation surrounding UX/UI Design and business.
High Resolution
Design thinking and product design discussions with design and business leaders.
UI Breakfast
Practical interview with cutting edge and inspiring designers, developers, researchers and business leaders. Great way of finding inspiring work, products and workflows from talented people.
Design Matters
Debbie Millman asks industry leaders smart questions about their process, workflow, and experience.
User Defenders
The host teases our great stories from epic designer guests. Production quality and use of time are both impressive.
Method Podcast
Huge variety of design topics covered by Google in this podcast. Great way to stay up to date with the most cutting edge best practices and perspectives in design today.
DesignBetter.co Podcast
Cool conversations with design and business leaders with emphasis on organization and leadership concepts.
A Responsive Web Design Podcast
Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte get into project workflow details and valuable lessons learned following impressive responsive website redesign projects. Bummer this podcast had to end–some great insight especially regarding content strategy and design system interplay.
O’Reilly Design Podcast
Always relevant and future thinking interviews and Q&A with cutting edge designers. Good way to find new inspiring people to follow.
Invision Design Talks (YouTube)
Super relevant discussions from Invision whose content (like their products) is always well thought and a great use of time. Audio versions of these talks are available through some podcast apps.
5 Great Design Books for Your UX Library
Starting a UX library in your studio? Here’s a list of some of my favorite UX books and a few key takeaways. Enjoy!
A Project Guide to UX Design
By Carolyn Chandler, Russ Unger
There are a ton of well-reviewed books and readers for the general UX practitioner available. However, this one still stands out on my shelf as a great primer to get your head around UX for most projects. The project guide illustrates how UX Design connects multiple design disciplines including business strategy, research, interaction design, and engineering.
Explore Book (GoodReads)
Now, Discover Your Strengths
By Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton
I first learned of this book listening to a video blog from UX designer, Sarah Doody. The book is a well researched albeit prescriptive method devised to make you aware of your innate professional talents and intuitions and learn how to best harness them in the workplace. Arguably, It's most sustainable to build your career around your natural superpowers and curiosities above pure ambition and will. Check out this book and accompanying assessment (worth it) and you might be enlightened.
Explore Book (GoodReads)
Lean UX
By Jeff Gothelf
An extension to the canonical book, The Lean Startup, Lean UX provides an ultra-concise, principled overview of UX Design’s role in agile projects. It also provides thoughtful, sustainable action steps for integrating the lean approach to organizations of various shapes and sizes.
Few of my favorite takeaways:
Progress = outcomes, not output.
Create the first version of the thing rather than spending half the day debating its merits in a conference room.
Emphasize learning first and scaling second.
Figure out what you’re trying to learn, and the fastest way you can learn it.
Created a shared understanding of design problems and solutions.
Collaborate: creating together increases the design IQ of the entire team.
Explore Book (GoodReads)
Everybody Writes
By Ann Handley
The more screens I design, the more I appreciate the value of written communication as a digital designer’s skillset. Understanding the people who use the product your designing should include comprehending how to communicate with them naturally, contextually and with relevance to their needs through the business lens. This book will help you write with intention and consistency for the web and in business communication in general. I picked up this book up on a whim and am so glad I did.
Explore Book (GoodReads)
Universal Methods of Design
By Bella Martin, Bruce M. Hanington
100 design techniques to try when approaching a design challenge. Concise summary of each method and good perspective on usage.
Explore Book (GoodReads)
Conclusion
Tangible books may be a slowly dying technology as digital formats take over. Thankfully, all of these titles are available in digital format. Either way you prefer to read, I suggest taking notes in the margins of books or on sticky notes. And once you’ve completed any great book, try synthesizing your notes to help a friend or colleague understand a few of the most valuable highlights. Educating someone else is a great way to retain newly gathered information.
Happy Reading!
7 Best Practices for building a Design System
- Do the UI inventory first.
- Discover top 10 components to address, and stick to those.
- Make type clear and accessible.
- Use color, illustration and shape for creative expression.
- Check typefaces and all UI elements on non retina and retina devices.
- Checkout Salesforce lightning framework for inspiration.
- Design systems are principally for for the agency’s internal design and engineering teams’ organization for design consistency. Your client cares more about the page mockups and how those modules look together for important pages in the funnel.