Process: Tools

The more senior your customers are in their profession, the harder it is to get them to talk to your UX researchers. Fortunately, these customers are already communicating with your company via other avenues and constantly feed insights to your sales team, customer-success managers, and marketing specialists.

Businesses receive a lot of exploratory feedback through all these channels: customers report their problems and blockers, make requests, ask questions about sales demos, and express their doubts during business-development qualification calls. All of this is valuable information, but without a robust system in place, businesses fail to capture and use it effectively. Read More

Committing to Web accessibility can shift the outlook of your entire business. When you design your Web site while keeping accessibility in mind, you not only benefit users with disabilities but also help in building a better experience for all your users and consequently improving brand perception.

So, if you want to develop a new Web site for your business, you must build a team that is proficient in making Web sites that are fully accessible for all users. In this article, I’ll describe accessible design elements and how to incorporate them into your Web site to make it easily accessible to all. Read More

When you’re participating in large stakeholder meetings, using analog UX strategy tools can often be a helpful and fun means of clarifying and working through a product, problem, user goals, or business goals. In this article, I’ll explain some benefits of using analog tools during large meetings and workshops, as well as how to encourage people’s participation and develop a shared understanding among everyone who is involved.

Discovering Analog Tools

From concept to execution, using hands-on tools throughout the UX design process can improve collaboration, communication, and the organization of your ideas in ways that digital tools cannot. For example, when kicking off a project, using simple sticky notes to post your ideas on a wall can offer huge benefits. In his book Change by Design, Tim Brown, CEO of the design and innovation company IDEO, recommends using sticky notes because they allow a group of people to agree on solutions when many possibilities exist. People bring their unique knowledge and expertise to the table, and using sticky notes lets you organize large amounts of information concisely, while keeping a meeting fun and interesting. Read More