10 Confessions of a Product Designer

This article isn’t being written because I advocate or advise reckless design behavior, but let’s be honest, it happens, and we’re all guilty of it. I usually write articles about design best practices, so I thought it would be fun to share the opposite, the less advertised but common bad practices. Designers aren’t perfect, and… Continue reading 10 Confessions of a Product Designer

Learning to see problems from above to create new approaches and solutions

Adopting this mindset helps to acknowledge in a better way design problems. As an old and bad habit, one of the most common mistakes designers make is rushing to have a final solution as an immediate response to any request. Although this reaction may be good (questionable) because it allows us to visualize a final… Continue reading Learning to see problems from above to create new approaches and solutions

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Figma next steps, is Design Thinking overhyped, the UX of Stable Diffusion

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. “It’s 2022. Figma has completely taken over the Product Design world over the last four years. It’s rare to see a company gain such rapid adoption across an entire industry so quickly. With that kind of growth comes a lot of problems. The product accrues debt in different areas (both… Continue reading Figma next steps, is Design Thinking overhyped, the UX of Stable Diffusion

Putting people before numbers and creating a positive impact through design

Illustration: Sam Whitney / Getty Images If you are not familiar with the term, Dark Patterns are the use of cheap user interface tricks and psychological manipulation to get users to act against their own best interests. User Experience consultant Chris Nodder wrote Evil By Design, a fantastic book that unpacks how to detect and… Continue reading Putting people before numbers and creating a positive impact through design

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How to stand out in a big team?

Break down key attributes with examples to help you stand out in your team. It is primarily focused on design teams, but can be used by… Continue reading on UX Collective »

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Creating a strategic product roadmap in 7 steps

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash Thinking about creating a strategic product roadmap? You’re not the only one. With increasing pressure to produce measurable results, an effective strategy has become the key to success in today’s competitive business world. With a strategic product roadmap, you can focus your efforts on meeting specific goals instead of… Continue reading Creating a strategic product roadmap in 7 steps

Game design, yoga for the mind

Cover image — by Shakuro Graphics Today, there are almost too many academic papers proving that gaming isn’t bad, and in small quantities, actually good for you, and your brain. But it wasn’t always viewed this way, and even today, most parents would rather not have their children on consoles. Game designers have been fighting… Continue reading Game design, yoga for the mind

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10 powerful habits for Product Managers — your first 30 days and beyond

Source In part fifteen of this series, I want to provide an effective framework to help you navigate your first 30 days as a Product Manager — these are strategies that will help you throughout your career, at any company. Here is the previous post from this series. “If you get one percent better each… Continue reading 10 powerful habits for Product Managers — your first 30 days and beyond

The big picture and the small designer

The importance of understanding and designing for a connected world I was on my train commute home and heard the familiar “tickets please”. Opposite me sat an elderly lady, with a printed paper in her hand, readily awaiting the train conductor to check it. When the train conductor glanced at the lady’s paper, she only said,… Continue reading The big picture and the small designer

In chatbots we (mostly) trust

These days, conversational agents seem to be serving up remarkably authentic responses alongside sophisticated recommendations, while also saving everyone time and money. Most people even seem to like them. So, what’s the catch — and how do we make them better? Picture this: there is a magic worker in our midst, who can help you… Continue reading In chatbots we (mostly) trust

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Peering through smoke as the planet burns

In the Shadow of Decline and Collapse: Part 2 Publication front cover When authour, environmentalist, and columnist for The Guardian, George Monbiot wrote Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, his question long preceded the recent catastrophic climate events witnessed over the past number of years. Within the book, he predicted the inevitable spate… Continue reading Peering through smoke as the planet burns

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Designing for scalable Dynamic Type in iOS

Designing for scalable Dynamic Type in iOS for accessibility When we wanted to implement accessibility settings on our iOS mobile app, I had to figure out where to start. Looking online, I could only find engineering resources. It was all about code and how to implement it with UIKit or SwiftUI with plenty of great… Continue reading Designing for scalable Dynamic Type in iOS

Beyond AI Art: Image generation for broader creative applications

Over the past year, there’s been an explosion of image generation tools, like VQGAN+CLIP, Midjourney, DALL·E, and Stable Diffusion, enabling artists to generate images from text prompts. These tools offered new and often strange forms of artistic expression — either as interesting stand-alone visuals or poetic prompt+image combinations. In the early days, the results were… Continue reading Beyond AI Art: Image generation for broader creative applications

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Measuring Empathy for Accessibility

After my previous blog on the Two Pillars of Accessibility, I was asked on LinkedIn from a peer in the accessibility field how a program could measure and report the empathy pillar of an accessibility program i.e. how much does your company care about accessibility. Measuring the impact of accessibility is relatively easy — you can track… Continue reading Measuring Empathy for Accessibility

How to build a culture of accessibility, diversity, and inclusion in companies

Raising the awareness of teams with internal and simple in order to develop more accessible products and services Image by Unsplash The great challenge of creating accessible products and services goes beyond technical difficulties and budgets: one must first focus on creating a more mature mentality about user experience in the collaborators of the product/project.… Continue reading How to build a culture of accessibility, diversity, and inclusion in companies

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Ask a UXR #2: introducing user research to an organization

On asking the existential questions about a UXR’s purpose, being a thought partner, and bringing questions, not just answers This is the second post in a bi-weekly UXR Q+A series. Submit your questions in the comments, or in this Google form, and it they may be answered in future posts. Follow “Ask a UXR” by subscribing… Continue reading Ask a UXR #2: introducing user research to an organization

How Micromanagement Hurts Creativity

A systems viewpoint and how self-organizing principles can help. Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash Micromanagement… It feels like a four-letter word. Something heavily denounced in the gospels of management self-help. A known killer to creativity and the creative team. And yet, it is still so rampant. How can this be? And, how can we… Continue reading How Micromanagement Hurts Creativity

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