In Part 1 of my new book, Navigating the Politics of UX, I discuss strategies for recruiting new allies to the UX cause. Why? Because UX practitioners tend to spend most of their time with their partners in development with only limited contact with other functional areas. But what about…

Telling the Story of Your Design Journey is Key When you walk out of a design review, are you frustrated or inspired? If your design reviews are forums where product partners search for ways to criticize your work, you’re probably frustrated. …

The Solution to Everything So often, companies measure things but they don’t manage them. Product management measures customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Scores (NPS). Support measures call resolution rates, product returns and warranty costs. Sales and Marketing measure market share, sales closure rates, and retention rates. All of these metrics are driven by the…

I’ve led (and been led by) creative teams for over 25 years. This means there have been over 25 times in my career when I seriously considered quitting my job. If you’ve led a creative team for several years, you probably know what I’m talking about. The potentially job-terminating event…

When you design a product, you also design its user — What are we designing? The answer seems obvious. We design products and services, right? After decomposing outcomes into epics and then into features and further into stories, we design and develop a small fragment of a meaningful user requirement, pulled out of our sprint backlog. …

Your company cannot succeed unless your customers do — “The customer is always right” was the very first business maxim. It’s so old no one can remember who said it, but for decades companies from local gas stations to multinational conglomerates have placed it at the center of their mission statements. Sadly, “the customer is always right” has given…

Also available on my blog at ColoradoDesignLabs.com Companies need smart people — subject matter and technical experts — to design and build things. Smart people are required to solve the hundreds of technical challenges required to bring a product to market. …

Performance I’ve led (and been led by) creative teams for over 25 years. This means there have been over 25 times in my career when I seriously considered quitting my job. If you’ve led a creative team for several years, you probably know what I’m talking about. The potentially job-terminating event…

Failure I once had the honor of leading (and being led by) a team that consistently produced outstanding designs that delighted both our customers and the leadership of our organization — except one time. The one failure involved designing a completely new experience for a cohort of customers who were known…