Sarah Gibbons

Design Research: One from the archives I came across this post from April 2012 that feels timely to share again, especially as I see questions being raised about the relevance and value of design research. https://lnkd.in/gr-zYAhF "The patterns that we look for in our data - the connections we seek and forge between observations - are intended to deliver on that understanding. We look for what people do - the activities that fill their daily lives; the habits, rituals, jobs, and leisure. These are the more obvious of what we observe. But we also seek to understand why people do what they do. What are the drivers, influences and shapers of these activities? We look for their hopes and dreams, their cares and fears."

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𝟳 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗠𝘆 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 🚀 👉 Alexandre Eisenchteter✨🛠: Alexandre is an exceptional and highly experienced facilitator with deep knowledge in AI. He's also the creator of Stormz, an innovative workshopping tool packed with features that leverage AI to make facilitation easier. Following Alexandre offers practical tips on both facilitation and AI. 👉 Rachel Davis : Rachel shares invaluable tips for facilitating great workshops. As a Butter 🧈 pro, she can help you unlock its full potential. She's also a huge fan of facilitation cards and reviews decks frequently. Check her out for insightful reviews and tips! 👉 Said Saddouk : If you want to elevate your remote workshop experience, Said is your guy! A tech wizard with tools like OBS and Stream Deck, his content makes workshops and trainings more engaging. His original and innovative (and fun, very fun) ideas are a must-follow. 👉 Jan Keck : Looking to create deep connections in your workshops? Follow Jan on LinkedIn and subscribe to his newsletter. He shares fantastic tips for breaking the ice, or as he likes to say, melting the ice. Plus, he's writing a book on the topic! 👉 Nathy Ravez : Nathy is the founder of La Workshoppeuse, a facilitation agency, and hosts the podcast "There Is a Workshop for That." She supports aspiring freelance workshop facilitators and is a great example of executing actions to achieve the life you want. Definitely follow her for inspiration. 👉 Thomas Lahnthaler : Known as the MacGyver of Facilitation, Thomas consistently shares insightful and original content on LinkedIn. His posts are a gold mine of knowledge, offering unique perspectives not found elsewhere. A must-follow for anyone in facilitation. 👉 Brittni Bowering : If you're into facilitation, you likely already know Brittni. She shares amazing resources and tips on LinkedIn and in her newsletter. Recently, she’s started sharing more on her YouTube channel. Follow her for inspiration to develop your facilitation style and create powerful moments. Thanks to Said for inspiring me to write this post! 💪 #Facilitation #Workshops #Innovation #Creativity

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I’m noticing a peculiar design related anti-pattern of sorts in the post ZIRP economic environment. It’s where companies have the budget to staff design talent, albeit in lower numbers, but the development budget is so limited that teams are unable to implement the work designers produce. This is the third economic downturn I’ve experienced and we always get pendulum swings. In this one, there seems to be a bias toward austerity and implementing the least expensive solution.

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The second part of my article on the value of explicit design rules is here. In it I dive head first into example in layout, position, ordering padding and margins with examples from various design tools. In the end of this part there's also a treasure trove of links to other insightful people writing on adjacent subjects. Hope you find it interesting and be swayed to try tools that allow for more expressive explicit design rules. https://lnkd.in/dmGpUHU6

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If your customers are complaining, are in pain, or are angry, your best action is to listen to what they have to say with empathy and patience. Then use what you learn to make your product or service better. This is standard research practice. This is what we counsel the companies we work with as user experience professionals. That's not the feeling I get from this post—especially the part that can't help but be taken to suggest some light suing.

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Join me and my guest, Sarah Doody, for Episode 137 of the #DesignThinking 101 #Podcast: Designing Your Career + UX for Small Business. Listen to it here: https://bit.ly/45lUCgN #CareerPlanning #UX #UserExperience

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In my 20+ year design career, I've never heard a design client say... I'm looking for someone more: • Creative • Strategic • Data-driven • Collaborative • User-centred And yet, if you open 100 design agency websites, you'll see some variation of these 5 descriptors. I noticed this discrepancy a few years ago. So, I started taking notes every time a design client complained about design and design services. The truth is, none of the above ever showed up in my notes. Instead, here are the top 5 concerns: 1. Communication Issues 2. Slow Design Cycles 3. Scope Creep 4. Disagreement on Design Decisions 5. Difficulty Measuring ROI Here's my full summary note: Communication Issues: Founders may feel that designers don't understand the technical limitations of the product or the business needs of the company. This can lead to frustration on both sides, as founders may feel like designers are designing products that can't be built, and designers may feel like founders aren't giving them the freedom they need to be creative. Slow Design Cycles: The design process can be slow, especially for founders who are used to moving quickly. This can be frustrating for founders who need to get products to market quickly. Scope Creep: SaaS products are constantly evolving, and founders may feel like designers are constantly adding new features to the product, rather than focusing on the core features that will drive user adoption. This can lead to products that are bloated and difficult to use. Disagreement on Design Decisions: Founders and designers may not always agree on the best way to design the product. This can lead to disagreements that can slow down the development process. Difficulty Measuring ROI: It can be difficult to measure the return on investment (ROI) of design decisions. This can make it hard for founders to justify the cost of hiring designers. I hope this helps you the next time you pitch your service. #design #ux #productdesign #designservice #copywriting

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Craft is work done with intuitive expertise - learned deeply by conscious practice through mentorship. Craft is expensive. The mimicry and pattern replication of AI will upend digital craft much like the Industrial Revolution did for physical craftspeople (only faster). It will likely be CFOs who crush craft like origami as they optimize balance sheets. If you love your craft, find a complex niche whose business model is based on value creation not eyeball acquisition. Government especially needs you.

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It’s impossible to write a meaningful book about transformative change through a design process without citing Dan Hill and Justin W. Cook a billion times. I have been applying much of their appraoch and thinking through my own practice. Deploying design as a conversation across some of the most challenging circumstances where design is often absent. After two decades of experience, it is clearly apparent that the most precious resources for any kind of social change is time. The time to become a part of a community, to stick around, to learn, to listen, to nurture and to foster the agency for the community to create. Society Driven Design explores a new way to sustain long form conversations beyond the time bound restrictions of project deadlines and political terms of office. The Social License. As Oliver Balch beautifully summarises, “The Social License is not only the vehicle for change but, the actual change we want (and need) to see.” The Social License is a safe and enabling collaborative approach, with no agendas, or briefs to work to . . . the Social License, legitimising our conversations. More here: Society Driven Design: Co-Creating Brighter Futures https://amzn.eu/d/4ArURLw

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Do you use experience principles in your product work? Experience principles are an unsung hero for user-centric product development. They can create instant clarity when product decisions feel murky. We use them to help us: - Keep the user in focus and high on the priority list - Spark innovative ideas rooted in the product goals - Evaluate concepts so they prioritize the team's shared goals I'd love to hear how you use them - and if you've never created experience principles, it's an awesome exercise to do with your team! Helen King wrote a fantastic article on creating sticky experience principles - this is a great place to start: https://lnkd.in/eiTtanHy What are your thoughts on experience principles? Love to hear your insights in the comments below! 👇 #ExperiencePrinciples #ProductDevelopment #UserExperience #UX #ProductDesign #Innovation #TeamCollaboration #ProductGoals #UserCentric

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Exciting to learn a new European Accessibility Act (EAA) is enforced. It is crucial for those designing products for EU market! US has Americans with Disability Act (ADA) UK has Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) Australia has Disability Services and Inclusion (DSI).Act EU now has European Accessibiliy Act (EAA) #accessibility #disabilityact

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UX Design for Specialized Domains is something we at Boston UX know a lot about. Check out this great article from my co-worker Dorothy Shamonsky!

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Censorship is just one of many ways policing manifests in design and research. 🔹️Designers implement features of surveillance which gather and log personal information, location data, etc. User profiles are often set to automatically opt in without informed consent. 🔹️Developers engineer algorithms that determine what content gets moderated, without transparency in how content moderation decisions are made. 🔹️Researchers gatekeep participant contributions and interpret insights based on what fits their immediate need. Policing is one of 10 dimensions of coloniality in design and research that we will be diving in to at our session on Deconstructing Coloniality in Design and Research. Understanding how coloniality manifests through our work is a critical first step in creating more liberatory, relational and responsible practices. Join us in July to learn more. Info in comments

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Lindsay Reynolds shines a light on the pervasive influence of cognitive biases in UX design. "Making snap decisions or trusting your gut may sometimes seem right, but it can lead to errors in user experience design," she notes. By recognizing and counteracting these biases, designers can create more objective and user-centric digital environments. 🎯 Common Biases in UX: Cognitive biases like confirmation bias, recency bias, and the framing effect can distort the design process, leading to less effective user interfaces. 🛠️ Strategies for Objective Design: Implementing structured and diverse user testing, gathering broad feedback, and embracing iterative design processes can help designers avoid the pitfalls of cognitive bias. 🔄 Positive Use of Cognitive Biases: Interestingly, when understood and applied deliberately, cognitive biases can be used to improve user engagement and satisfaction. For example, leveraging the framing effect can help present choices in a way that resonates more effectively with users. Explore Lindsay's comprehensive analysis on using cognitive biases to your advantage in UX design, ensuring that products not only appeal to users but also foster an intuitive and engaging user experience. #UserExperience #UXDesign #CognitivePsychology #DigitalInnovation

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Design Systems folks — when was the last time you shipped something that really felt impactful? Design Systems is in a quandary right now: somehow both a necessary part of building UI, and recognized as "not delivering value." DS teams were heavily impacted by layoffs, and as Noelle Lansford said in her great article recently (link in thread): > The teams I spoke with emphasized that there was a significant deficit between what the design system team advertised and what was delivered. However, perhaps the more concerning point they made was: Even if all of the success criteria was met, when it came to downsizing, the design system appeared redundant at best. Yikes. How can we know design systems are a powerful tool for delivering consistency, velocity, and efficiency, and also know that we’re not delivering on that promise? And forget "impact as business value" for a second — doesn’t it just feel good when someone uses your work and turns to you and says, wow, that made my work so much easier, thank you. The reality for a lot of DS practitioners is more like grinding for weeks on a component that maybe one team half-heartedly used – incorrectly? Or writing thousands of words of documentation that nobody looks at. I don't think we're "not shipping impactful work" because we're collectively bad at our jobs, or because design systems don't actually help teams move faster. I think we're focused on the wrong things.

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GitHub makes collaboration and communication easy when it comes to design systems. We use issues and discussions to track bugs and questions, it helps us build a knowledge base. These tools are surprisingly absent in our design tools, and this needs to change. I am going to change that. #ux #designsystems #equalityintools

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Following up on yesterdays Design Leadership Chat, and thanks again Dee (Denise) Sadler - the shift to engaging with what AI actually *does* for us, rather than its mere existence, is fundamentally, a design problem. Right now, engineers are dominating AI implementations, to all our detriment. “A.I.-policy conversations are dominated by terms like “alignment” (is what an A.I. “wants” aligned with what humans want?), “safety” (can we foresee guardrails that will foil a bad A.I.?), and “fairness” (can we forestall all the ways a program might treat certain people with disfavor?).” https://lnkd.in/g_zmh7MF

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I hope we are all past asking juvenile questions like, "Will I lose my job to AI?" The competition is between a UX professional equipped with some AI skills and one who is not. ⚠ Interestingly, there are currently no AI tools popularly used by UX designers globally and across different types of organizations. However, it is only a matter of time before such tools start emerging. #1 Awareness and Preparation On most days, preparation beats luck. So if you want to stay in the game, prepare yourself well. How? 1. Understand AI Capabilities 👩‍💻 Familiarize yourself with what AI can and cannot do to better your processes and design outcomes. AI can surely improve efficiency. Learn processes and tools which can deliver with this improved efficiency. A good read would be this article from UX Tigers ‘What AI Can and Cannot Do for UX’ (https://lnkd.in/gcghXvKK) 2. Know where to not use AI 🙅‍♀️ Some parts of the design process might be too risky to be completely automated like conducting Primary Research with AI tools. Here is an interesting article from NN Group ‘AI UX-Design Tools Are Not Ready for Primetime: Status Update’ (https://lnkd.in/gPYpienz) 3. Keep User Empathy in Focus ☝ Always consider the human perspective. 4. Learn Data Analysis 📊 Develop skills in data analysis to leverage AI insights. 5. Iterate with Feedback 🚦 Use both automated data and user feedback to continuously improve your designs. 6. Maintain Human Oversight 👮‍♀‍ Ensure there's always a layer of human oversight to catch nuances that AI might miss. 7. Scalability and Flexibility are Important ✨ Create design systems that can scale and adapt in a given context. 8. Keep Learning 👀 🎧 📚 Stay updated with the latest in AI technology and UX best practices to remain relevant and effective. Here is a good article about The top 8 AI tools for UX (https://lnkd.in/gYDjbzJv). If you are in for a long read, here is also this article ‘8 Best AI Tools for UX Designers’ from IxDA (https://lnkd.in/gpyypYcq) #aiforux #ai #ux #aiinux #uxdhuddle Note: This is a series to share my thoughts with the UX community on how young UX designers can thrive in the AI era. Have you made your own explorations with different AI tools? Have you incorporated AI tools into your day-to-day work? Share with us now—it might help and impact more people than you could imagine!

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Lucy Woodcock spends much of her time at work 'doing' diverse usability testing. She has recently blogged "#UserTesting Unveiled: A Step-by-Step Exploration" and aims to demystify the process. Here are #KeyTakeaways from her blog: 1. Importance of #InclusiveDesign and #Accessibility: Inclusive design and accessibility are crucial factors in shaping user experiences. User testing with people with disabilities can help reach a broader audience and cater to diverse needs. 2. Meticulous Planning: User testing begins with meticulous planning, including setting dates, arranging calls, and recruiting diverse participants. A clear research plan aligned with client objectives ensures a valuable and inclusive testing project. 3. Remote Usability Testing: Remote usability testing provides flexibility for testers and clients alike. It gives clients the opportunity to observe sessions first-hand, turning the testing day into a collaborative experience. 4. Analysis of Results: Analysis of user testing results is a crucial part of the process, highlighting key issues and forming recommendations. Different tools and methods may be used for analysis, but the goal remains insightful insights and recommendations. 5. Comprehensive User Testing Report: The user testing report is the end deliverable for clients, containing evidenced insights and relevant recommendations closely linked to client objectives. A clear, justified, and measurable report increases implementation and improves accessibility. 6. Continuous Improvement: A #retrospective allows the team to review successes and identify areas for improvement, ensuring #adaptability to evolving client needs and making each project a stepping stone to future success. 7. Enquiring about User Testing Service: User testing services with companies like Accessible Me Ltd, eLaHub Ltd, or AbilityNet ensure you asking the right people the right questions at the right time and making the best use of their feedback. 8. Self-Conducting User Testing: Learning how to conduct user testing can provide reassurance in making accessibility improvements and focusing resources in the right areas. Like AbilityNet, Accessible Me Ltd offers training courses (both online and offline) for those interested in starting their own #AccessibilityTesting. Accessible Me Ltd's focus is in the #eLearning, #LearningAndDevelopment, and #BrandMarketing areas; helping to make learning accessible to everyone. These takeaways highlight the importance of meticulous planning, remote usability testing, thorough analysis, and continuous improvement in creating inclusive and accessible user experiences through user testing.

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