This week’s UX roundup: Design Presentation, Playful Humans, 14 Design Leadership Lessons, Wireframing. Want updates? Sign up for the UX newsletter here.
[ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS]
Presenting back UX findings so that people actually care
Last year, I worked on a redesign project. Our team gathered data, recruited test participants, brainstormed new ideas, made prototypes and presented our recommendations. Almost all of the recommendations were implemented because the solutions we presented fit within the time and resources available for implementation.
When you pool in lots of resources to research, you want to be able to ensure implementation. This article talks about how to achieve this. Convince stakeholder(s) that your recommendations yield the desired results and solve the problem at hand. If you can demonstrate the importance of your changes, you can gain trust and bump up the prioritization of your project.
[DESIGN PODCAST]
Playful Humans — People Who Play for a Living
The Playful Humans podcast is a gentle push for designers to explore more fun and playful component in our day-to-day life. In this episode, host Mike Montague chats with Haden Starbuck about how she plays for a living and helps others do the same. She is a creative, visionary, and coach who believes it just takes a willingness, an awareness, and a desire to live a life custom-made for your great brilliance.
[UPCOMING EVENT]
Miro Distributed Conference — October 19–20, 2021
Miro’s back with another free virtual conference packed with keynote speakers, workshop presenters, and many networking opportunities.
[ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS]
Design Leadership: 14 things best design leaders do
- Customer obsession
- Ownership
- Super simply me
- Build without data
- Learning curiously
- Replace yourself
- Raise the bar
- Bold and challenging
- Action-biased
- Being resourceful
- Earn trust
- Discover the root cause
- Backbone
- Results over everything else
- BONUS: Good intentions
Regardless of being a leader or not, I think #5 learning curiously is a tip I 100% live by. I love trying new things and thinking outside of the box for solutions. Being able to experience keeps the fun alive and the creative juices flowing!
[SOMETHING FUN]
You know you are a UX designer when…
We see things a little differently…
[UX QUOTE]
“Design is so simple. That’s why it’s so complicated.”
- Paul Rand, Modernist Master, graphic designer
[WATCH THIS]
Wireframing for UX: What it is and how to get better at it
I’m obsessed with this kind of video where someone is doing a voiceover on a hand who’s drawing images that convey what the speaker is saying. The video dives into wireframes: what they are, the different types of wireframes you can create, and some practical advice about how to improve your wireframes. It’s a short and informative video!
[BOOK RECO]
Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
If you love Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist, you’ll love his second book too! After you master the art of being an artist, you think about how work is shared and apply those ideas to get your work out there.
A new perspective for me was around obituaries. Rather than seeing them as written deaths, they’re celebrating life. Obituaries tell you a lot about people, about their stories and achievements. This is a wonderful quick read!
[LEARNING TOOL]
Good & bad questions to ask in user interviews
9 questions where you get to choose whether the questions are good, bad, or just okay. Conducting good user interviews is based on preparation and a question set. If you don’t have good questions that are open-ended and thought-provoking, you will yield very little good data to work with.
Want a deeper dive? Check out UXB’s own 4 Types of UX Interview Questions and 10 Useful UX Interview Questions to Ask.
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