⚡️Zander Whitehurst

A twist on Design bootcamps / courses 👀 I put a post out last week about bootcamps and been pondering on it since with some of the responses. A key problem is their ‘cookie cutter’ nature And the lack of ‘real world’ set up So here is my question 👇 Instead of bootcamp students being given generic design briefs from orgs, what if they were given a 1 or 2 month ‘placement’ as part of an in-house design team? - Put into a squad project alongside an existing designer - Not paid (...but wouldn’t be for doing the course project either) - Given deliverables to hit - Gain ‘real world’ experience - Build industry relationships - Potential job at the end if good (?) - Mentoring experience for in-house designers Appreciate that there realistically might not be enough ‘places’ out there for all students But interested to hear thoughts nevertheless 👍 An idea with legs 👎 An absolute no go #Design #Bootcamps

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Gen Z is the most diverse generation to date because the design they respond to represents their values and tastes. Designers need to acknowledge the unique characteristics of Generation Z in order to create content that resonates with them. https://lnkd.in/euHxnyG4

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Wondering why startups should invest in UX design and why the current UX hiring market sucks? Wonder no more: https://lnkd.in/eeJzmrNH Genuinely let me know what you think, I'm trying to improve my writing constantly, as well as my understanding of why UX matters :)

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I love these examples and couldn't agree more that design thinking can benefit so many parts of your organization. I'd say this is a big reason for the longevity and success of our partnerships over the years. At Aero Interactive we tend to initially engage with orgs on their product or website design needs, but find ourselves advising on other business needs that come up organically. Understanding that user experience design goes far beyond the confines of a screen is crucial. It's about crafting an exceptional customer journey across every touchpoint. At Aero, we don't just start with the design of a digital product; we strategize around the entire customer experience journey. From the initial interaction with our digital platforms—be it through a landing page, our website, or engaging videos—to nurturing prospects into becoming loyal customers and advocates of our digital products. Our approach is rooted in a deep understanding of target audiences and the transformative paths we envision for them. This holistic strategy ensures that every digital interaction is not only seamless but also deeply resonant with users' needs and expectations. Honestly with this being such a natural part of the job, it's hard to remember every conversation, but here are a few examples of questions that have come up and solutions we've provided as a design partner: ➝ How can we better convey the value of our brand to our target audience and get them to that "aha" moment that makes users come back to our digital product? ➝ How can we take our clients on a cohesive journey with the business not just inside the digital product but across all touchpoints? ➝ What processes does our internal team find themselves repeating that could be designed and automated for efficiency?

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OK I wrote another thing. It's called 'Make Product Design Great Again' It has graphs and ranting, also a mild apology to the design recruitment industry https://lnkd.in/eU9FvzvE Enjoy! #productdesign #UX #UI #product #design #designops #designthinking

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On #BraveUX this week, Jakob Nielsen addresses some of the criticism he’s faced 🎤, calls on UXers to urgently adopt AI 🐛, and shares why he believes the commoditisation of UX is a good thing 📈. Highlights include: ⭐ Are you surprised by how much you’ve offended some people? ⭐ Why do UXers need a greater sense of urgency about adopting AI? ⭐ Were the hiring practices at your previous company elitist? ⭐ What is the state of UX today and where is the growth potential? ⭐ Will AI impede our ability to develop our professional judgement? Plus much more! - - - - - 📺 Want to watch or listen 🎧 to the episode? 👉 Find the links in the comments, or search for Brave UX with Brendan Jarvis 🇺🇦 on YouTube or on your favourite podcast platform. - - - - - Who is Jakob Nielsen, PhD? Jakob is the founder of UX Tigers 🐯, the website and associated substack he uses to bring his 41 years of UX knowledge and experience to the world, in what he has described as a plainspoken, hard-hitting and not bowing to orthodoxy kind-of-way. Before founding UX Tigers, Jakob was the co-founder and principal - for 25 years - of a rather well known UX consultancy, the Nielsen Norman Group 📜. His other notable roles include being a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems, and a member of the research staff at Bell Communications Research 🔔 - one of the world’s top three HCI labs in the 1990s. Jakob is known for many other things, among which are being the founder of the discount usability movement, the foundational 10 usability heuristics for user interface design, and the eponymously named Jakob’s Law of Internet User Experience 🏛️. He is the holder of no less than 79 United States patents and the author of 8 books, including the best-selling “Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity”, “Usability Engineering”, and the pioneering “Hypertext and Hypermedia” 📚. In 2013, Jakob received the Lifetime Achievement Award for HCI Practice from ACM SIGCHI and in 2024 he was named a “Titan of Human Factors” by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 🏆. - - - - - Don’t forget to check out the show notes on YouTube for quick-access to interview chapters, as well as where to find Jakob. #UX #UXDesign #UXAI #UXR #UXResearch #UserResearch #DesignLeadership #UXTigers

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We need to talk about portfolios. Why are they so secret? Why is everyone worried about getting in trouble by sharing them? So often when I'm hiring I get designers saying 'Oh I can't share that work because it's in this sector or I signed an NDA etc.' It makes it extremely difficult to rate you against other candidates without one. Your portfolio shows what types of projects you've worked on, what stakeholders you work with and how you've adapted to challenges to get to the outcomes you've listed in your CV. That's what I'm hiring. Not a list of companies and experiences. For me, CVs aren't that useful for rating designers. Most of the time people just list generic tasks I'd expect a designer to do anyway. It's an unspoken rule in design that we share work in interviews that may or may not be under NDA. Yes we need to make an effort to protect our previous employer's intellectual property, but not at the expense of our own careers. For me it's as simple as this. If a company expects you to show them a portfolio to get a job, then that sets a precedent from you being able to show your work from that company when you leave them. Your portfolio isn't about the final solution, it's about the techniques you used to get there. It's unlikely if you're writing a good portfolio you'll go into enough detail that'd reveal any trade secrets. IMO so long as you make an effort to share your work with as few people for as short a time as possible, then it's super unlikely any action would be taken against you. Here are a few ideas on how you can take steps to demonstrate you've tried to protect your work that still allows you to have a portfolio: 1. Change the logo and styles on your screens to be generic and mark it as a 'large global bank' or a 'consumer fitness app' etc. 2. Create a password protected portfolio and change the password regularly. 3. Explicitly ask employers to delete your portfolio after they have reviewed it. Do you have any more ideas?

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𝟳 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗠𝘆 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 🚀 👉 Alexandre Eisenchteter✨🛠: Alexandre is an exceptional and highly experienced facilitator with deep knowledge in AI. He's also the creator of Stormz, an innovative workshopping tool packed with features that leverage AI to make facilitation easier. Following Alexandre offers practical tips on both facilitation and AI. 👉 Rachel Davis : Rachel shares invaluable tips for facilitating great workshops. As a Butter 🧈 pro, she can help you unlock its full potential. She's also a huge fan of facilitation cards and reviews decks frequently. Check her out for insightful reviews and tips! 👉 Said Saddouk : If you want to elevate your remote workshop experience, Said is your guy! A tech wizard with tools like OBS and Stream Deck, his content makes workshops and trainings more engaging. His original and innovative (and fun, very fun) ideas are a must-follow. 👉 Jan Keck : Looking to create deep connections in your workshops? Follow Jan on LinkedIn and subscribe to his newsletter. He shares fantastic tips for breaking the ice, or as he likes to say, melting the ice. Plus, he's writing a book on the topic! 👉 Nathy Ravez : Nathy is the founder of La Workshoppeuse, a facilitation agency, and hosts the podcast "There Is a Workshop for That." She supports aspiring freelance workshop facilitators and is a great example of executing actions to achieve the life you want. Definitely follow her for inspiration. 👉 Thomas Lahnthaler : Known as the MacGyver of Facilitation, Thomas consistently shares insightful and original content on LinkedIn. His posts are a gold mine of knowledge, offering unique perspectives not found elsewhere. A must-follow for anyone in facilitation. 👉 Brittni Bowering : If you're into facilitation, you likely already know Brittni. She shares amazing resources and tips on LinkedIn and in her newsletter. Recently, she’s started sharing more on her YouTube channel. Follow her for inspiration to develop your facilitation style and create powerful moments. Thanks to Said for inspiring me to write this post! 💪 #Facilitation #Workshops #Innovation #Creativity

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I was in a conversation about the designer role in a founding team with a CTO the other day. I was shocked by the majority of technical people's understanding of design - designers are the group that makes beautiful shells of technologies. She's a tech genius who excels in her field, a well-educated, passionate entrepreneur - still understands designers as the last piece of the founding team. I argued with questioning her about how their project is ideated, conceptualized, prototyped, and shipped. Unsurprisingly, brainstorming, customer discovery, prototyping, iteration, and building. I then asked how she was trained to execute this process, and she mentioned a capstone project at the university, adding that only a small group of tech programs have this opportunity. I then argued, yes, designers are doing almost the same steps most of the time. However, designers are the group trained to conduct objective methods to obtain, observe, and consume human feedback and further frame it with the project's goals. For example, the received answers from participants may be different if the question is asked differently. Another distinct example can be the completion level of prototypes. While engineers may take up to 1 or 2 months to build prototypes to be iterated by user testing, we, as designers, can iterate the products three times with wizard-of-oz methods. From here, what we see differently is the massive cut of time wasted on a product aiming to be optimized - we all know the importance of a fast pace, especially at a start-up's early stage. Therefore, all founding teams must involve designers. This skilled group knows the optimized method to effectively work with end users to design and iterate before the development team invests a huge amount of time building it. #design #designwheneveryonedesigns #startup #entrepreneurialship

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Here's a massive misconception for you... stack your own design board alone Wrong. It's my job and duty to help guide and inform the most crucial parts of the business to work on to get the most returns, fast. It's a collaborative effort. I think people think the design subscription model is purely just a board and you're left alone to stack in your tasks. Some people do it like this and leave you to it but... You're not mystic meg, Together we can decide where to spend design and development time to get you the most bang for your buck. Joining your business insights with my design optimisation experience that places conversion, better metrics and results at the forefront priority of the business to get it making more money. DM me the word "Collab" and we can discuss what's holding your business back from it's growth the most right now and how to fix it. #startups #business #designboard

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Running your content through a design system streamlines software validation for your working code. Design systems go beyond design tools, like Figma, variables, components, etc. They're about establishing a consistent framework that allows you to test features, layouts, and experiences faster and with a unified look and feel, preventing user confusion.

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The 4 Stages of AI Image Generation: An Experience Map #GenAI #UX #productDesign https://buff.ly/3VKxjKs

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buildspace update So here's my update on devlopea. Collection feed changed to trending page - as this would be more useful from a UX perspective for the users. #buildspace #nightsandweekends #devlopea #product #collection #ux #layout

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The second episode of ‘Beyond Usability: the Sparck research podcast’ is now available, digging into thorny issues around UX research and AI. 🧠 There’s a delicate balance between making the most of new technologies like AI while also prioritising human insight. How do we use AI ethically, to deliver better services for users? Host Sayani Mitra, PhD is joined by Laura Musgrave, who was named one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics in 2022, and Mark Branigan, who has worked with AI to enhance COVID-19 testing services at the height of the pandemic. Find it at Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 🎧 Transcript: SAYANI: Hey there. Welcome to Beyond Usability, the Sparck Research podcast, which is your gateway to the ever evolving world of UX Research. I'm your host, Sayani, and together we are going to explore how UX research can supercharge your tech innovation and take your business to that next level. In today's episode, we'll be exploring how UX researchers can leverage AI while also discussing how research can provide critical human-centred insights for building ethical, useful AI futures. Our two expert guests will share top tips on utilising research to skilfully innovate in an A I led world. Welcome, Laura and Mark. MARK: Thank you for having us… #UXResearch #UserResearch #research

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interesting study of the common user patterns for scanning content https://lnkd.in/dBmTf2dA

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In his latest blog, Service Designer Liam Beattie, talks about the importance of developing in-depth user personas when conducting user-centred research. He also discusses his approach to crafting user personas, exploring how they inform every aspect of the design process and support with visual storytelling. To find out more about identifying user needs and refining user journeys, follow this link: https://lnkd.in/eJ9ej-Rw

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  Skills gap - growth hack - ideas block - time back Our contacts talk to us about #DesignRetainers for all kinds of reasons. Our approach is as bespoke as their needs. Here's the lowdown from oodler Sarah on what a Design Retainer can offer... Steve Andrew Systematic Pete Helen Tracey Jill #oodleAgency #GraphicDesign #TeamWork #LetUsHelpYou

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With multiple products, multiple branding for different tiers, inconsistent experience across different platforms, and high time to deploy to market; don't you think #DesignSystem should be mandatory for design teams at banks? Placing an example in the 1st comment on how variable modes on Figma, as part of the design system can help to scale components for these teams for multi-branded banking tiers. #design #designsystem #uidesign #scalabledesign #designsystemadvocate #growthmindset

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