People-centered Design

Usability considered harmful …?

UX strategy or Design Strategy?

THE HAZARDS OF USER DATA AND FEEDBACK …

What is the role for data and AI?

Don’t write interview guides

A map of whose journey?

Customer Encounters

Finding new ways to encounter customers is a vital part of a healthy people centred design culture.

At Harmony, staff were required to listen in on Technical Support phone calls for a minimum of hours every month. This was very effective in shifting the culture.

Going out into the world to see people interacting with products in the wild is also often underrated – whether the product is a shopping cart, stroller (pushchair) or kitchen gadgets.

Writing a good conversation guide

The trick to creating a good conversation is appear as though you do not have a conversation guide (even though you do) and to be prepared to be authentic and allow the conversation to wander wherever it goes. One way to assess the authenticity of a conversation would be in terms of the number of times you (and your conversationalist) are surprised by it, or find new ideas in it. In an authentic conversation the participants are equally able to lead (or block) any avenue of exploration. Your conversation guide must then provide you with a good idea of the avenues you want to go down and why.

UX Prototyping

Protopie enables one to build connected prototypes that enable one to explore the experiences of many connected people at the same time.

Unfocus Groups

Using the ideas of participatory design workshops, combined with IDEO's focus on the more extreme and less typical users, Unfocus Groups bring people together to express their needs through construction and participation rather than through words.

Look, Listen, Try, Feel

The IDEO Methods cards were initially created as an internal tool, to help everyone see that design research was not a singular methodology, and that there were many, many options.

Journey Maps, etc

Journey maps are an extremely valuable tool and they are particularly effective at helping a broader team understand something of the bigger picture beyond the current narrow focus of the product release, feature, or UI screen. But there is a challenge of being sure that you are capturing the right journey of the right person. In a healthcare context, the journey of a patient is very different than that of the doctor, which is different than that of the nurse or therapist.