Aurelius Podcast: Recent Episodes
Aurelius
Industry experts discussing design and product strategy. Hear from leaders how they are solving the right problems and building products and features that matter most.
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 70 highlights with Jessica Nelson Kohel:- How UX Research fits into both large and small company product organizations- The role of Product Manager, its evolution and common misunderstandings- Importance of “the art” of product management like communication style, culture, context and relevance- Product strategy and the critical inclusion of UX research- Measuring the success of your product strategy
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 69 highlights with Teresa Cain:- Evolution of the Product Management role over the years- Tips for collaboration between UX Research and Product Management- Vital role of UX research in product strategy- Stakeholder engagement in the prioritization and delivery of and UX Research- How to solve problems in 2 hours
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 68 highlights with Jon Fukuda:- The ROI of UX, Research and DesignOps- Triple forces of change: Economics, Technology and Culture- Mitigating business risk through UX- Future outlook of the UX, Research and Product industry
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 67 highlights with Janna Bastow:- Using UX research to inform product roadmaps- Stories about how to avoid major code and product rollbacks by simply conducting good UX research- Using customer needs to truly innovate and avoid building a better competitive copycat product - How to avoid building a Frankenstein product
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 66 highlights with Audrey Crane:- Defining Shadow Design and its potential impact on your organization- Audrey and her team’s research study on Shadow Design- Shadow IT and it’s correlation to Shadow Design- Risks and implications of Shadow Design in the product development process- How to uncover if Shadow Design is happening at your company
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 65 highlights with Ruby Pryor:- Defining the ROI of UX and UX Research- The case for building confidence in speaking about UX Research in terms of dollars- Understanding how certain recommendations you make impact the fundamental business model of where you work- Business models, understanding them and how UX Research work fits into them- Examples of how to determine and communicate the ROI of UX research- How to calculate the ROI of UX and research
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 64 highlights with Ryan Glasgow:- The story of Sprig and the gap Ryan identified in user research and market research tools- Problems and challenges with typical surveys for product research- Effectiveness and application of in-context survey research- AI in UX research and the true value a human brings as a researcher- Concerns and tips for using AI in customer research analysis- A founders perspective on customer research and the power of in-context research
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 63 highlights with Darren Hood:- UX Maturity: what UX maturity looks like at the organization and individual level- How UX maturity level impacts the planning and effectiveness of UX work- Tips for assessing your personal, team and organizational UX maturity- The impact of UX maturity on leadership and the hiring process- Challenges and the state of UX maturity as an industry in 2023- Darren’s steps for assessing and improving your own UX maturity
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 62 highlights with Jesse James Garrett:- Discussing The Elements of User Experience and its impact- Defining and communicating the value proposition of design- What being a design executive and design leader actually looks like- Steps for success in a design leadership role- The importance relationship building in design leadership
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 61 highlights with Debbie Levitt:- Differences and similarities between CX and UX- How the UX industry has shifted and where it’s going- Tips for opening conversations with cross functional teams about UX Research- How to handle conversations where people mislabel terms in UX- How does UX fit into the Agile process
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 60 highlights with Cheryl Platz:- What is AI, Machine Learning and how will it impact UX Research- What AI is currently good at and how it really works- Surprising ways you’re probably already using AI for UX Research today- Ethical considerations in the application of AI for UX Research- The impact of AI on the current UX job market- The future of UX Research and AI
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 59 highlights with Joe Natoli:- The importance of getting personal to influence decisions - Getting buy in for UX Research from stakeholders and other teams- Soft skills for making a bigger impact with research and insights- How new UX Researchers can bridge the gap in the disconnect between the learning environment and real world situations at big companies
Aurelius Podcast - Episode 58 highlights with Ari Zelmanow:- Being a strategic researcher and what that means- Learning how businesses work to speak that language and connect UX research to what matters across the organization- UX Research Democratization and Ari's thoughts about it- The role of UX research, how it's evolving and thoughts about how UX and research can adapt be more valuable
Episode 57 highlights: - UX Research consent - GDPR and UX Research - How to gain proper consent with your participants of user research - What are the rights of potential participants of UX research - The ethics of informed consent
Show highlights: - An overview of Scott’s new book, How Design Makes the World - Remote work for design, UX and product teams - How to create a workplace for UX professionals to get their best work done - How to explain the value of design to executives and stakeholders - What to do when your product managers, executives and engineers “just don’t get” design - Builder culture, what it is and how to work within it to promote higher quality UX - Effects of industrialization on building products and how it translates to software management culture
Highlights from this episode: - The history and evolution of UX - How to present UX and design work - Empathy for stakeholders and customers/users - Using stakeholder expertise to improve your UX design and research - Being an orchestrator and not a hero UX pro
Show highlights: - How Mary got started on Tik Tok and began sharing UX knowledge there - Dark UX patterns, what they are and how to avoid them - Consent and interaction design to avoid building in dark design patterns - Examples from popular sites that use dark UX patterns
Show Highlights:
- What it means to be human centered in your professional and personal life
- Hmnty Cntrd, their mission and the work Vivianne and her team are doing
- How Vivianne went from being a grief counselor and doing trauma studies to becoming a UX researcher
- What does it really mean to be empathetic
- The role of diversity, equity and inclusion in UX and research work
- Tips for self care and improving yourself as a UX professional and person
- Doing and beginning the personal work for doing your best professional work
Show highlights: - “Zoom” levels of research and what they mean - Figuring out when to do certain types of research and which methods to use - Ways to avoid wasting resources and repeating research - What’s the difference between UX Research and ResearchOps? - How to you know when you need a dedicated ResearchOps person
Show highlights: - Diversity, equity and inclusion in UX and tech culture - Ways to recognize how tools and systems are directly contributing to inequity in our society and work - Stories and examples of how our society created inequities and how to recognize the connections to the work we do - Tips for doing more equitable UX and design research - Working to identify your own thoughts, actions and behavior to help create a more just and equitable world for all
Show highlights: - Sense-making and user research synthesis - How to find hidden insights in the research data you collect - Avoiding product backlog rot by simply reacting to things you hear about from customers - Steps to take for a better UX research process - Doing UX, research and sense-making better with product management - Should UX researchers be doing design too? - How to get into (or better at) UX, research and design
Show highlights: - Social impact of UX and research work - Remote research tips, tricks and challenges - The future of UX research in a post-pandemic world - Can you prove the ROI of UX research? - Balancing the need for delivering a great story from the research and keeping good rigor in your study - How to deal with people who don’t believe the findings from your research
Episode highlights: - Design leadership and what it means to be a UX manager - Differences between being an individual contributor and manager/leader - Tips and tricks to being an awesome UX design/research leader - Strategies for providing feedback and criticism effectively - Common challenges for folks transitioning from team member to team leader
Show highlights: - Design ethics and ways to examine if your work is doing more harm than good - Inclusion in business and design - Things you can do to make your participants feel more comfortable and welcome - Using your position and influence to make positive ethical change in your company - Alba’s work at HmntyCntrd - Tips for making social change personally and professionally
Show highlights: - The difference between leadership and management in UX - Being a UX mentor and coach - Expectations and differences between junior, mid level and senior UX practitioners - What it takes to be a great UX professional - Myths about hiring and working with a junior UX person - Tips for job hunting, applications and interviewing - Things hiring managers are looking for in UX candidates - Career progression for UX designers and researchers
Show highlights: - Komal’s research on international women’s mobility challenges - Tips for doing research across multiple countries and cultures - Culture differences and considerations when doing research in other countries - How language can make so much of a difference in research - Small but impactful steps you can take to do better UX research
- Psychology and UX Design
- How behavioral economics applies to UX design
- Common behavior patterns we can design for
- Design ethics and moral implications in UX design and research
- How do you decide your design, product or service is ethical or not?
- Examples of non-ethical design and marketing patterns
- Considerations to take for designing a more ethical product or service
- What UX designers and researchers need to know about psychology and behavioral economics
- Sharing design decisions effectively
- What is a design decision?
- Who’s responsible for design decisions?
- Similarities between cultural differences and different team role differences in tech
- Getting stakeholder approval and agreement on your work
- Preparing for a design review meeting
- Quantitative vs Qualitative Research
- Starting a new UX research team and practice
- How to sell UX research to your company
- Pitfalls to avoid when starting a UX research practice at your company
- DesignOps 2.0 at Paypal
- Shifting the focus from scaling designers to scaling design itself
- Comparing DesignOps and DevOps
- Changing the responsibilities of UX designers so a small team can focus on the work that matters
- Scaling design without hiring more designers
- Tools and processes to for successful DesignOps
- The critical things you can learn about business to make you a better UX designer or researcher
- How important is UX in the success of building new products
- The business of consulting versus the business of products or software
- How to stand out as a UX person in the world of generic resumes and cover letters
- Dana’s stories about usability testing on ballot design prototypes
- Overcoming stakeholder objections for doing user research
- Challenges of local and federal elections in the United States
- Ballot design and voter experience
- Doing research for civic design and overcoming very complex roadblocks
- How to get deep domain expertise in a regulated industry as a designer
- Why our common approach to software design isn’t enough for civic design problems
- The differences and similarities between UX and product management
- How planning a heist is just like building digital products
- Who owns the responsibility of “knowing your customers”
- Using both quantitative and qualitative research to improve your designs and products
- DesignOps and ResearchOps at a large enterprise like Best Buy
- Fred’s story of how he got introduced to and a job working in DesignOps
- A day in the life of a job in DesignOps
- The part an insights repository plays in DesignOps and ResearchOps at a large company
- Dealing with the unsexy parts of UX, Research and Designops
Episode 36 highlights with Natalie Hanson
- Differences between in house and external UX teams and the unique challenges of each
- Tips for collaborating with others on your user research work
- How to encourage non-designers and non-researchers to collaborate on user research and insights
- Tips for working with stakeholders who believe they already know what needs to be designed
- Effectively communicating user research insights to inspire action from executives, developers and more
Episode 35 highlights with Rob Walling:
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How Rob started and/or acquired multiple SaaS apps over the years and some product and design lessons he’s learned from that experience
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Rob’s background as a software engineer and what made him decide to become an entrepreneur
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The story of founding Drip and how Rob and how the team made some pretty big changes in the product
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Finding the confidence to help you figure out how, and when, to make big product decisions
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Minimum Path to Awesome and how to successfully launch new features in your product
Episode 34 highlights with Jason Voiovich:
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Jason’s background in marketing and consumerism as well as what led him to become an author on the topics
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The pitfalls of focusing too much on analytics and quantitative data to understand your customers
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Why empathy is a key to the future of our work and society
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Jason’s research about empathy
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The connection between empathy and burnout… and what you can do about it
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Doing less to get better results in UX, research and marketing
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What does it mean to be scientific versus “scientism”?
Episode 33 highlights with Kate Towsey:
- Kate’s background and how she got into user research and ResearchOps
- What it was like to “research the researchers”
- The global ResearchOps community and how it all began
- Research repositories and libraries
- Leading research operations at Atlassian
- How and why the ResearchOps community grew to what it is now
- Kate’s definition for #WhatisResearchOps?
Episode 32 highlights with Gregg Bernstein:
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How Gregg and his team are doing user research at Vox Media
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Doing user research for broad audiences and industries
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Using smaller research projects to lead to larger more strategic research
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How to most effectively share your user research findings with stakeholders and your team
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Thoughts on UX research repositories and libraries
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Tools and tips for setting up your ResearchOps and process for taking in, conducting and sharing user research at your company
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Making user research more strategic to influence company focus and direction
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Avoiding the pitfalls of overthinking in the user research process
Episode 31 highlights with Hana Nagel:
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How the President of the United States did “user research” and what you can learn from that in your work as a UX designer, researcher and product maker
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Doing user research...about user research, so that you can see much more success with your organization adopting a more user centered mindset
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Focusing on the outcomes of research to create a greater impact with user research at your company
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Learning the behavior of your teams and company in order to sell user research internally
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How to empower other teams to do user research themselves in order to scale user research at your company
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How to turn user research and findings into action and recommendations
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Giving your team and company confidence in doing the right things
Episode 30 highlights with Dave Malouf:
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What is ResearchOps and DesignOps?
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Challenges of operationalizing research and design in growing organizations and how to overcome them
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Dave’s tips and insights in how to grow design and research in your company more efficiently
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Who owns “ResearchOps” and what does that person(s) do?
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How to determine when you should be thinking about DesignOps and ResearchOps
Episode 29 highlights with Jorge Arango:
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The similarities between physical architecture and UX design
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Tips we can apply from the process of architecture to digital design
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How to think about physical spaces to inform the digital information spaces you create
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Feedback loops in digital information spaces
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How the rate of change in physical buildings vs. digital spaces has changed our expectations as a culture
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The ways language greatly impact our expectations and design of digital spaces
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Design ethics in digital places where civic discourse happens and how we as designers can be more mindful in creating them
Episode 28 highlights with Jim Kalbach:
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What is the difference between user experience, customer experience and marketing
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Jim’s background in UX design and how that helped him transition to his role now in customer experience and product education
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Remembering that the “grass is never greener” and no organization is perfect in order to have a longer term impact where you work
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What is the true secret to becoming a kick ass design leader
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The long term effects of even the smallest UX and user research decisions
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Experience mapping principles and tips from Jim’s book
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Building empathy and understanding for your stakeholders and business to be a more successful designer
Listen to Episode 27 for highlights with Brianna Sylver including:
- The difference between user research and market research
-Using both market research and user research to build a better design strategy
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Why market research may not be what you think it is
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How and when you should think about doing user research more like a market researcher
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Project mindset vs. product mindset
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Tactical vs. strategic UX design
- How Jeffrey and the team at An Event Apart design the experience of the conference
- The dangers in the seduction of building “cool” stuff as opposed to the things people need
- What’s the difference between junior designers and senior designers?
- Design ethics, mindfulness and inclusiveness in UX design and product management
- How the web and design has changed since 1995
- Product management at Intercom
- Choosing the right problems to solve for your customers
- What user research looks like at Intercom
- How Michelle and the product team at Intercom chooses which projects to work on
- Where does UX design start and Product Management end?
Episode 24 Highlights: - What is creativity? - The concept of “flow” and its role in identifying and harnessing your creativity - Denise’s story of her very own zone of genius and how you can find yours - Dangers of burnout, how you got there, how to dig yourself out and also how to avoid it - Different types of motivation and what they have to do with your work - How making custom earrings helps Denise be a better writer and speaker - Using HALT to take care of yourself and foster your inner creativity
Episode 23 Highlights with Lindsey Redinger: - What is ResearchOps and how do you operationalize user research? - Making research accessible to everyone in the organization - How InVision documents and stores user research insights - Lindsey’s trick for helping all of InVision build empathy with their customers - Getting new employees at InVision up to speed with who their customers are as part of their new hire onboarding - How to get started in your ResearchOps practice or operationalizing user research and your company - Keeping individual projects aligned to broader company goals - How Lindsey and InVision uses the Jobs To Be Done framework to keep user research focused
https://blog.aureliuslab.com/lindsey-redinger-user-research-and-research-ops-podcast
Episode 22 highlights:
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Peter’s new book “Planning for Everything” and what led him to decide to write a book about planning
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What we can learn from the U.S. Marines about planning better design and research projects
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Peter’s framework of S.T.A.R.F.I.N.D.E.R and how to use it for better planning of your ux, design and research projects
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How Agile development process can help...and hinder your design and software project planning
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Are you OVER-planning? How to determine if you are and if so work at getting better at improvising
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Tips for convincing your stakeholders to do (or do more) user research
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Systems thinking and how it applies to UX design and product management
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Ways to be more self-aware in the design, features and decisions we make in our work as UX designers, researchers and product managers
more here: https://blog.aureliuslab.com/peter-morville-interview-on-ux-user-research-and-design-planning
Episode 21 Highlights: - Lou’s background, the beginning of the internet and how UX/IA all started - The stories behind Lou meeting Tim Berners Lee and Larry Page - How Lou started Rosenfeld Media, the UX book publishing company - The story of the blind men and the elephant and how it applies to building a great user experience - DesignOps, ResearchOps and how Lou began major conferences around those topics - Lou’s advice for those of us working in large organizations doing UX design
- The technology stack that we built Aurelius with and how it’s evolved over time
- Understanding common development terms to better communicate design ideas
- An inside look at how Joseph and Zack make decisions about the product and the company
- Behind the scenes views and opinions on making technology upgrades and feature prioritizations
- How we build Aurelius like Wyatt Earp
Episode 20 highlights
- What does a high functioning design team look like and how are they organized?
- The three types of successful enterprise UX organization models
- How companies like Target, Spotify, Netfilx, Google and more are doing designops and great UX design at scale
- Creating and sharing user research findings across your organization
First episode of our new series, Inside Aurelius where Zack Naylor and Joseph Szczesniak, co-founders at Aurelius discuss important topics and the inner workings of Aurelius. This episode's topics include:
- Why we made aurelius v2 and how we got there
- How we used user research and customer feedback to completely re-design and re-develop our product and company focus UX design, science and art
- How Joseph, our CTO took an interest in UX as a developer and how UX can enrich a developers work and satisfaction
- How and why developers should participate and have a stake in user research
- How Mariah came into Human Centered Design from an Industrial Design background
- Doing user research and how to include developers/technologists
- What are customer feedback loops, how to create and act on them at scale
- What it takes to build a truly customer centered organization
- How Pluralsight conducts, analyzes and applies user research at scale
- The process of Directed Discovery and how to do it
- Doing human centered design at scale with a large and growing team
- How to empower everyone at your organization to understand customers better
Aurelius Podcast Episode 18 Highlights
- How user research directly applies to making businesses more successful
- Doing customer research to inform pricing strategy
- Figuring out what is most valuable to your customers
- Using customer research to develop buyer personas
- How you’re probably doing surveys wrong and how to fix that
- Helping people understand what you learned from user research and put it to use
- Potential pitfalls of building and using personas and how you can avoid them
Erika Hall, co-founder at Mule Design on the Aurelius podcast
Episode 17 highlights:
- Use research and design to create products and systems that are more balanced
- Where to start helping your company make a bigger impact with user research
- “Startup” culture and why it can be very unhealthy and unproductive
- Why some companies still aren’t doing user research and how you can help
- How having shared goals boosts collaboration and creativity
Andy Vitale, Director of UX at Polaris Industries on the Aurelius podcast
Episode 16 highlights:
- What makes experiences valuable
- Getting a “seat at the table for design”
- How to grow from a designer into a design leader
- Speaking the language of business to sell your ideas
- How to tie design decisions to business metrics
Episode 15 highlights:
- Non dominant thinking styles, diversity in product design and user research
- Difference between problem space research and solutions research and why it matters
- The concept of “thinking styles” in research and how to apply them in UX design
- How machine learning and AI can create emergent experiences in the future
- Different types of empathy (cognitive and emotional), what they are and how to use each one
- A brilliant, tactical example of how to make sense of what you learn from user research
Aurelius podcast episode 14 with Steve Portigal
Full show notes here: https://goo.gl/WN2NBJ
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Why you should be doing [more] user research
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How to convince your stakeholders that user research is important
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3 approaches to building brilliant products and features (and which one is best)
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Convincing your stakeholders and leaders to do (more) user research
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What is a user research process to make sure you’re learning the right things
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The difference between research analysis and research synthesis
Episode 13 highlights: - The beginnings of Clearleft - How the UX agency to client relationship has changed - Designing like a detective - Gathering the right evidence to do great UX design - The tools and application are of design thinking - How to go from research, synthesis and insights into actual design - Dangers of “research theater” and how to avoid them - Getting past the obvious solutions to create your most brilliant designs
Episode 12 highlights:
- Tomer Sharon’s user research tool at WeWork, Polaris
- Tomer Sharon on Democratizing UX
- What is user research
- What makes up a key insight and how to create them
- How to do user research the right way
- What questions can user research answer
- Difference between finding out what customer want vs what they need
- Research nuggets, what they are and how to create them
Episode 11 highlights:
- Why understanding a business model is critical for designers
- Using design to do more than make a great interface or a sexy advertisement
- Humanizing business and letting design/design thinking drive how business gets done
- What OKRs are, where they’re used and how to do them
- How Christina has used OKRs for both business and her own life
- Embracing business metrics as designers
- How you can be more innovative than Steve Jobs - Tools and techniques for looking at your customer feedback and research insights to get beyond your assumptions
Episode 10 highlights:
- What product discovery is and how to do it
- The wrong way to do user research and how to avoid it
- A process to make sure you’re building products and features that solve real problems
- When product discovery starts and ends
- 4 steps to conducting product discovery
- The importance, and dangers, confidence level in design or product ideas
In this episode we talk about: - Melissa’s approach to product strategy - Setting good strategic goals for our product and user experiences - The difference between shipping features and shipping GOOD features - How to do user research to actually drive innovation - Case study examples from Melissa on how she used user research to increase user acquisition - Using product and UX goals to tie up into larger company vision and strategy
Free product strategy blueprint: https://www.aureliuslab.com/blueprint Free product strategy mini-course: https://www.aureliuslab.com/free-product-strategy-mini-course Aurelius Podcast feedback survey: https://goo.gl/heDc1n
Episode 8 highlights: Audrey’s concept of “give me a napkin” Knowing how and when to step backwards from a prescribed solution to find the problem to solve Working with your team and stakeholders so you can make a meaningful contribution as a designer How we can find, and solve, the right problems as designers UX designers and product managers working together successfully Who owns the advocacy for and voice of the customer?
Audrey was so much fun to talk with. As a partner at DesignMap, she helps teams and companies distill complex problems into simple solutions. Audrey has an uncanny ability to make a brilliant point about a complicated topic with simple, subtle language. We had a chance to discuss how to do user research and apply what you learn in a smart way to all the design and product decisions you make. We also spoke at great length about how to get your organizations on board with the value of design and research to really impact the success of their business. I hope you all enjoy the conversation with Audrey as much as we did!
Episode 7 highlights:
- Jeff's definition of product strategy
- Bringing clarity to the process of building a product strategy
- The difference between brand and product strategy, and how they work together
- The single biggest factor that holds most companies back from having a great product strategy
- Building a product roadmap and strategy that actually works
- How to empower your teams to solve problems instead of only building features Who owns the product strategy? Product managers or UX Designers?
How we know we’re building the right products or features Using the “jobs to be done framework” in design and product development How Twitter did design critiques to determine they were solving the right problems The difference between presenting design decisions to your team vs stakeholders What it looks like to “have a seat at the table” as a UX designer Helping your company value design at the highest level with executives Measuring the success of UX design
Links from this episode:
Josh Brewer’s new company, Abstract: https://www.abstractapp.com/
Book, “The Ego is the Enemy”: https://www.amazon.com/Ego-Enemy-Ryan-Holiday/dp/1591847818
“Pay as much attention to the little things that you see and hear and witness when someone is using what you’ve made”
Episode 3 highlights:
- What is design strategy? What is product strategy?
- Effective design strategy methods and approach
- Where business strategy ends and design strategy begins and the difference between the two
- Where design fits into business strategy
- How design can help monetize failure
- Ways that design and product strategy can drive business strategy
- Practical ways design can help fulfill your company mission
Links mentioned in this episode: - https://hbr.org/2015/11/why-organizations-dont-learn - nerdery.com/jobs
Episode 2 highlights: - the importance of framing the problem in UX and product strategy - how to tell if you're designing and building the right features or products - measuring the impact and success of UX design and product strategy - balancing an understanding of the business strategy to make better design and product recommendations - Jared's most effective way of getting your company to prioritize UX and product strategy - who owns the user experience?
Industry experts discussing design and product strategy. Hear from leaders how they are solving the right problems and building products and features that matter most.