Imagine this… You’re playing the popular board game Settlers of Catan. Your objective is to earn enough victory points to win, and the primary means of doing so is building settlements and cities. These settlements and cities take certain resources to build; resources that you’ll need to collect and save up for. But what should you buy? What should you build? Well… what is your strategy?
Read More
Getting hired - a job interview guide
Recently, one of my colleagues came to me seeking tips and advice on how to approach job interviews so that they could have the best chance of getting a few offers to choose from. So, in reflecting on all of the advice I’ve received, read, and practiced over the years related to job searching, applying, and interviewing, I decided to combine it all down into one extensive guide that I could share with them and anyone else currently in the arduous job hunt. The sections in this guide cover my three key preparations for successful job interviews: interview skills, common job interview questions, and creative and challenging questions to ask…
Read More
Two women sitting on a couch talking, one holding some paper, a pen, and pointing at the other woman’s iPad
Reflecting on design feedback advice
At some point or another you'll be asked to review someone else's work, but there are some key differences between giving strategic level advice versus prescriptive design feedback. I recently came across a short article by Fabricio Teixeira on that specific topic, and the following key questions rang true in my head around what to consider when reviewing and providing feedback to any team…
Read More
Woman writing “Goals” on a whiteboard
Testing for customer centricity
We want to gain 5% more of the market share over the next 2 years.”
“We want to reduce our operating costs by 10%.”
“We want to be the first choice for customers.”
These kinds of ‘winning aspirations’ are a dime-a-dozen, and when you get right down to it, they’re often not that unique to you’re organisational culture, purpose, or brand. But where’s the differentiation on this? What will customers tell their friends about? How do you prioristise what to improve?
More and more organisations are calling themselves “customer-first”, yet when you look at what objectives are coming from the top down, what you hear doesn’t match what you see. What struck me today were some food-for-thought tests in determining if you're truly working in a customer-centric organisation…
Read More
Empty picture frame (image courtesy of Marco Verch, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)
Reframing for outcomes over outputs
Creating personas is not the goal. Personas are merely a good repository of user research that aids in communicating those insights.
And with this simple explanation, my UX world view was yet again forever changed…
Read More