VALUES
“Design isn’t finished until somebody is using it.”
— Brenda Laurel, PhD, Independent Scholar
Design isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s the art of making things usable — be it an app, a gadget or a simple everyday object like a chair. UX design is nothing without human interaction, and if a product isn’t fully able to serve its purpose, the design process is incomplete. This is why user research and usability testing are so crucial, and as a UX designer, you need to be prepared to iterate and reiterate your designs over and over again.
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Product Strategy & Design
Solving problems for people with software.
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Make sure you’re solving a real problem. How do you know it's a problem? Is it valuable enough that someone would pay for this solution? Make sure you understand how it relates to someone’s broader goal. What's the outcome they want? What's preventing that today? Know beforehand what result you're aiming for. How will you know you've solved it? Aligning business and customer goals tend to create the strongest product strategy.
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User Experience
Making the things we use not suck.
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Understand who you’re solving for. What data do you have or need? How can you get behavioral data and insights in a high-quantity and high-quality way? Understand the current landscape. What's available for this problem today? What do those options look like? Understand and visualize the current experience. Provide concepts that aim to solve the problem. Apply standard visual and interaction models. Test, learn, adjust, test, rollout, measure, learn, adjust…
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Information & System Architecture
Making sense of the world, one design system at a time.
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Everything is designed. Some things are designed with intention. Few things are designed well. And not enough things are designed with words first. The ability to define, describe, and name what you're doing should always be first. What is it? What is it not? Why does it exist? How is it different? How do these things relate? How do people usually talk about it? To make something easy to use, it has to be easy to understand. And it has to be clear how it all fits together.
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Management & Leadership
Figuring out the right questions to ask.
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Understand and share what's expected of your team. Are the goals and outcomes clear? How do they tie back to impact? Help your team grow and help grow your team. What are their strengths and skills? How can you provide opportunities for them to shine and to stretch? Is the team set up for success? Communicate, communicate, communicate. Are you communicating enough? Too much? In the best way? How are you encouraging and enabling feedback?
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Product Ownership
The 3-Legged Stool of Product Development.
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The trio of design, product management, and engineering should have shared ownership over what gets built. Regardless of who comes up with the winning idea, all three parts of the trio need to be involved starting at the concept phase, through product release. The ownership has shared accountability for both ups and downs.