I rarely encounter the term emotional labor in the world of design, and that troubles me. In this brief post, I’ll explain why it needs to be part of our vocabulary. I’m using the word design to encompass UI, UX, experience, service, brand, behavior, and org design. …

This is a rough transcript of my Big Design conference talk Don’t Make a Journey Map: when good tools go bad. Expectation setting This is not going to be • Aspirational • A formula or rules to follow • How to make journey maps This is going to be • Utilitarian • A review…

I get asked this question often. Over years of answering it to various degrees of confusion, I’ve arrived at the following personal definition. May you find it helpful. Note: If you are a Design Thinker please start at the Appendix, then come back to the beginning of this article. If…

Is this something you’ve been wanting to do? Here’s how these three tools fit together, in one diagram (and some supporting paragraphs of text). I’ve tried to keep this as jargon-free as possible. What’s the difference? Personas provide humanizing context. What kind of emotional experiences does the person want? What is their social…

I often tell people that I’m passionate about designing value exchange, and I am often met with blank stares. Here’s why this little-known but powerful principle matters. At every encounter between your brand, business, product, or service — across channels and over time — you have an opportunity to capture…

In the wake of Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini’s “How Apple is Giving Design a Bad Name” I think it’s time to revisit a shift we all need to be more cognizant of. Apple is no longer a hardware and/or software company. Apple is a fashion company, and in fashion companies, the role of design is style definition. When they released iOS7 in 2013, Apple signaled a major change in how UI and digital experience…

You understand your customer’s experience and your back of house service delivery processes. Maybe you’ve even created a service blueprint or a value chain map. You’re ready to take on the world! Or rather, the service system. Use this handy checklist to make sure you don’t miss any major opportunities. …

A customer journey map is a versatile tool that can serve many purposes: mapping how a current customer experience unfolds over time, planning the orchestration of a future experience across touchpoints, or uncovering business opportunities in the form of unmet customer needs. …

I made up a useful word a while ago, though I doubt I’m the first to have done so. The word is solutionize, and it means “to come up with a solution for a problem that hasn’t been defined (and might not even exist).” …