PART 2 of UX Team of One workshop live tweeting (A Thread). Just back from lunch and picking up where we left off on elements of a flexible design process.
1. Flexible design process: we're starting by talking briefly about usability studies and benchmarking. usability studies can be done on your own. benchmarking is trickier. they recommend hiring a consultant to do it so you can compare start and end states with empirical data.
2. Going over some ethical negotiation techniques for advocating UX. My favorites are (A) to plan your strategic meetings on sunny days and (B) buy them a donut or muffin--higher blood sugar correlates to better negotiating outcomes!
3. On gathering inspiration. The general advice is beware sites like Dribbble& Material.io because they are full of bad UX. I kind of disagree with this one. Are we scared that designers are going to blindly copy bad UX? cont'd...
...cont'd. Maybe we shouldn't trust ourselves to make a guess at what's going to be good UX. but that's what we have usability testing for. There might be bad UX lurking, but I think these reference tools still have a place in the design process. curious what others think.
4. Articulating design decisions. As you design, try to write down why you're choosing certain UI elements. It'll help you explain yourself later on. Send out designs before meetings. Dont make your meeting the first time people are seeing it.
5. On critique and feedback. Do not say, "From a design perspective..." when you mean "Here's why I made this choice instead of the one you just suggested" -- 100% guilty of this. Sorry team. Apparently this sounds like an aggressive "I'm right, you're wrong"
6. Testing methods. Unmoderated user testing is lowest effort but isn't greatest quality for in depth tasks. Paper prototyping tests, good for early exploration. Note taking: presenter has a nice Excel spreadsheet template that records timestamps for each piece of feedback
7. Protecting your time. (A) make publicly visible work board/backlog. (B) set time limits so you don't just go in circles. Pomodoro Technique is suggested: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_…
8. Now some suggestions for how to organize your work. I like the suggestion to keep pre-project screenshots of any existing work. I always forget to do this. I'm going to go make a project template folder with all these sub folders and start using it.
9. Keep track of UX patterns, words, etc. that don't work or confused users. Make yourself a Slack channel with just yourself in it and send messages about stuff that doesn't work. Low effort solution to not forget stuff that's been tried and failed
10. Build UX allies. Don't be afraid to ask for support directly. Co-opt the medical school saying "see one, do one, teach one"--get your allies (devs, POs) doing some UX if they're interested! get them involved.
11. The end goal is to grow your UX team from one to many. Follow the 1:9 rule. AT LEAST 1 UX designer on your team per 9 developers. I wonder how many organizations would actually hit this target.
And that's the end! Right on time. Thanks for following along. #nngux Thanks to @page_level for the fantastic workshop!
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