Author: Grant

User Experience has gone through a lot of changes as our discipline has integrated with business. One of the biggest, Baruch Sachs says, is that we need the time to do our jobs. This article talks about practical ways to help stakeholders understand the rational behind UX design.

Moving to a UX-Critical Culture :: UXmatters

For decades, we’ve been fighting to ensure that User Experience gets considered during product development. Now, more than ever before, I find myself fighting a different kind of fight, to ensure that teams allocate the proper time to User Experience for us to be effective.

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I found this pretty interesting take. Agile as a process to get products out the door is fine, but when you rely on it to build the right product, you’re bound to run into trouble because agile is simply not designed to innovate, only iterate.

I have been interviewing a lot of folks around the world about their current design operations (whether it is intentionally so or not, it exists). What I have heard is that the vast majority of design organizations are working in a Scrum or similar capital-A, Agile environment. There are many exceptions, but the overwhelming majority are working in 2-wk sprints, sometimes getting a sprint-0 in to do “discovery”.

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As we end the year, it is interesting to take a look back at the state of UX in 2016. Leah Buley looks at where we’ve been in three areas, People, Process, and Impact.

From “The State of UX in 2016” by Leah Buley:

We have seen big investments to buy, build or bolt-on design programmes in recent years. A few events stand out in my mind: IBM’s announcement it would earmark $100m and hire 1,000 designers in 2012; the tumult of design agency mergers and acquisitions through 2014 and 2015; Mike Bracken on stage at the O’Reilly Design Conference earlier this year reporting the jaw-dropping fact that the UK Government Digital Service has saved UK citizens £4.1billion.

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It seems intuitive, but it is not enough to say the right words. The tone of voice, body language, and words are always communicating to others your true intentions. What we believe invariably affects what we do. What we do speaks louder than words (to borrow the colloquialism). Next time you are in a crucial conversation, stop and ask yourself, “Am I honoring this person? Can I let go of hostility?”

With the shout of “Action!” John walked onto the set, hit his mark, and delivered his opening line: “You said you’d have product to me by noon, but it never arrived. What happened?” Note: the script we had written contained no inflammatory words, insults, threats, or attacks—just a simple description of the problem followed by a diagnostic question. John delivered the correct words—no problem there—but he said them with such force and disgust that the other actor nearly melted.

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Tempted to dump your content on Medium? Think that Facebook might be a good place to write content? Changes to a platform could be disastrous if you don’t maintain content on your own site.

From “Digital Sharecropping: The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Content Marketing Strategy”

It wasn’t Amazon that killed them, or the proliferation of free content on the web, or the crappy economy.

They closed the store because they were leasing their big, comfortable building … and when that lease ran out, their landlord tripled the rent.

Literally overnight, their business model quit working. Revenues simply wouldn’t exceed costs. A decision made by another party, one they had no control over, took a wonderful business and destroyed it.

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Trouble selling your company or client on your UX work? This article has some practical advice.

Now, more than ever before, I find myself fighting a different kind of fight, to ensure that teams allocate the proper time to User Experience for us to be effective.

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