Heather Winkle

Worth reading through this article on the ever important topic of Accessibility. https://lnkd.in/e8JamZSS #design #designthinking #designbuild #designstrategy #product #producctdesign #productmanagement #productstrategy #designprinciples #innovation #designers #digitaltransformation #ux #uxdesign #uiux #uidesign #designinnovation #application #software #softwaredesign #usability #userresearch #research #usercentereddesign #productleadership #uxwriting #designsystems #empathy #interfacedesign #usabilitytesting #userexperience #productdesign #accessibility #ui

4

I’m noticing a peculiar design related anti-pattern of sorts in the post ZIRP economic environment. It’s where companies have the budget to staff design talent, albeit in lower numbers, but the development budget is so limited that teams are unable to implement the work designers produce. This is the third economic downturn I’ve experienced and we always get pendulum swings. In this one, there seems to be a bias toward austerity and implementing the least expensive solution.

1

Join me and my guest, George Aye, for Episode 136 of the #DesignThinking 101 #Podcast, the first DT101 Live! episode: Design Ethics. You can listen, AND watch the live recording. See link in comments. #design #ethics #EthicalDesign

27

2 Comments

Join me and my guest, Sarah Doody, for Episode 137 of the #DesignThinking 101 #Podcast: Designing Your Career + UX for Small Business. Listen to it here: https://bit.ly/45lUCgN #CareerPlanning #UX #UserExperience

5

1 Comment

This episode of the Finding Our Way podcast articulates, with such clarity, what’s been on my mind about the value proposition of design as a function. A business could leverage creating a stellar user experience as a strategic lever to succeed in the market, or NOT. The latter is totally acceptable where designers primarily focus on production tasks (like UI designs) in an org that prioritizes churning out features. Yet, it’s a bitter pill to swallow for many designers. They feel disgruntled and get exhausted speaking to the deaf ears about how great an outcome design can bring to the table and how influential they could be outside of Figma. This podcast talks about how many designer leaders are struggling to deal with this reality. As someone who is not in a leadership position, I feel the struggle too. But if I were to stay positive and constructive while prioritizing my mental sanity, these would be some options to consider. - Get hired by a company that REALLY values design (think Airbnb, Linear) - Be extremely good at your craft and find fulfillment in it, regardless of its direct impact on the bottom line—as long as you remain employed 🤷🏻‍♀️ - Elbow your way into cross-functional discussions as much as possible, at least within your team, to find opportunities to demonstrate what you can do outside of Figma. You can help expand the perspective on design that your cross-functional partners have, one person at a time. https://lnkd.in/gjheYY_f

3

I'm thrilled to share that my latest product and design discovery article is live on Mind the Product! As a consultant, I've observed that the term 'Discovery' can have varying interpretations across different teams. It's not uncommon to encounter a team deeply immersed in a solution yet lacking a shared understanding of the customer opportunity they're addressing. At Lab Zero, we meet clients where they are and advocate for discovery while maintaining flexibility. We often employ lightweight methodologies to foster a shared understanding, even when work is already underway. Teresa Torres' book “Continuous Discovery Habits” is a guide to developing the mindset and practices that enable teams to discover and deliver value to their customers throughout the product development process. Her explanation of the 'Opportunity Solution Tree' helped me articulate a process for asking questions and bridging gaps when joining a new team. The first part of this two-part series looks at reversing the 'Opportunity Solution Tree' to establish a connection between the ongoing solution, customer opportunities, and business outcomes. The second part (coming soon!) will explore strategies for identifying gaps in your team's understanding of customer needs and the necessary measures to mitigate risks before launch. This series will help consultants, new team members, or a struggling team connect with that all-important why and launch valuable experiences for their customers and their orgs. Have you tried something like this with your team? Feedback is appreciated! If you haven't explored Mind The Product's extensive content library, I highly recommend it! In addition to articles about discovery and understanding customer needs, the community has shared insightful perspectives on product leadership, business, and teams. It's a great place to see perspectives on processes and theories informed by real-world use.  #ProductDiscovery #Design #Discovery #ContinuousDiscovery #Onboarding #Risk #CustomerOpportunity #Value #BusinessOutcomes

13

6 Comments

With enough #compute, one could imagine a cloud-hosted UX research platforms like @UserTesting building specialized analytical models. But it's likely out of reach for most small UX research teams, and certainly for any #independent UXResearcher. https://lttr.ai/AR3uS #UXResearch #UXDesign #uxresearch #HundredThousandPounds #UXR #Freelance #LargeLanguageModel

1

If we're not talking about design maturity, agile process, or craft, then us designers are probably talking about ✨quality.✨ I certainly see my interviewer's eyes light up when I mention this magical word. "Design is the one that has to hold the quality bar," I tell them. But what if that didn't have to be true? For a truly high-quality product, I don't think it should be design holding the line. It has to be something baked into the organization - everyone holds the quality bar. Even though "quality" is a slippery thing to define, if we can define it and hold ourselves to it, we can reduce the tension in the org and start to think less about the mere baseline quality for the product and more about raising that bar - delighting the user. I very much enjoyed Luke Anthony Firth's take on how they folded quality into their product building process. Have a read! https://lnkd.in/g4SenmYZ #designleadership #productprocess #productdesign #productquality #designquality #opentowork

4

I'm loving this article on how designers need to elevate their thinking on integrating AI at various stages of the user journey to tackle entire processes, not just one-off tricks. ✨ Enter the "Agentic era of UX". 🤖 https://lnkd.in/eWdHbeWv #ai #agentic #design #ux #ui

21

🕸️ “How do you style the spaces in between?“ As our team assembles components into patterns and layouts, we lack shared mental models for how we talk about spacing and layout. We're trying to figure out how we can be more intentional about creating rhythm and structure at the same time. → Grid systems have been around forever as an ideal, but in the real world things get complicated when nesting components and moving between breakpoints → New layout systems like flexbox and CSS grid let engineers do amazing things, but how can our designers start playing with these concepts → While utilizing the same components across different use cases like admin dashboards and public marketing sites, we have different needs for white space around our content and components 📐 Designing Grids by Mark Boulton was one of the early talks that really blew my mind when it came to thinking about grid design and the web. Highly recommend the history lessons including the reminder of the essential link between your typography sizing and your layout system.  https://lnkd.in/gjqyg_2a 🧮 Why UI designers should understand Flexbox and CSS Grid by Christine Vallaure 🟦 🟠 �� provides a stellar overview of the principles of emerging layout systems. Concepts critical for designers include fractional units, one and two dimensional layouts as well as rethinking our use of breakpoints.  https://lnkd.in/gEY64ruu 📜 Density in Material Design is a great example of how a system can support designers to think about the space between content as a variable within components and layouts. Depending on your application your users may benefit from either tighter proximity of elements or more white space. https://lnkd.in/g_V6w-T7 💎 Laying things out is hard. When working with patterns there are a couple of things my team tries to keep in mind, based on these amazing resources. Hope these reminders can be helpful to your team: → When assembling multiple components consider the relationship between your type scale and your layout spacing → Collaborate with engineers and experiment with CSS grid and flexbox to develop a common language so folks know what to use and when → Consider multiple density modes when styling page margins, grid gaps and vertical rhythm to compliment your context and use case #space #ui #design #designsystems #grid #density #figma

28

3 Comments

It’s difficult to fix what you don’t see. Male defaults are so prevalent that they’re nearly invisible unless you know how to look for them. With gender-intentional design, IDEO is pushing back against these practices, and challenging the reign of male defaults in digital products and beyond. https://lnkd.in/ghPyAbDg

55

3 Comments

More UX and Product leaders need to hear Diana DeMarco Brown (she/her)'s wisdom. Diana is a pioneer in the UX field who takes a thoughtful and nuanced approach to assessing the current state of the tech industry. In our recent conversation, Diana shared many insights, including: - How to evaluate a company's culture during the hiring process - Why private equity ownership can result in design divestment - How Product and UX leaders can effectively influence business decisions - Why we don't need to panic with the rise of AI, but we need to think critically and prioritize regulation during this early stage Link to our full conversation: https://lnkd.in/eemDimVb

42

6 Comments

AI chatbots are transforming healthcare, disrupting everything from disease diagnosis to patient support. I have taken a look at Flo, a leading female health app using a chatbot to collect symptoms, guide users along their health journey, and provide informational support. A few insights: - Flo uses clear & simple navigation with pre-programmed categories; - They use prior user data such as symptoms logged to tailor conversation starters; - Flo keeps users engaged with infographics, and illustrations that explain complex topics clearly. More: https://lnkd.in/ePY-Yu96

8

4 Comments

It’s impossible to write a meaningful book about transformative change through a design process without citing Dan Hill and Justin W. Cook a billion times. I have been applying much of their appraoch and thinking through my own practice. Deploying design as a conversation across some of the most challenging circumstances where design is often absent. After two decades of experience, it is clearly apparent that the most precious resources for any kind of social change is time. The time to become a part of a community, to stick around, to learn, to listen, to nurture and to foster the agency for the community to create. Society Driven Design explores a new way to sustain long form conversations beyond the time bound restrictions of project deadlines and political terms of office. The Social License. As Oliver Balch beautifully summarises, “The Social License is not only the vehicle for change but, the actual change we want (and need) to see.” The Social License is a safe and enabling collaborative approach, with no agendas, or briefs to work to . . . the Social License, legitimising our conversations. More here: Society Driven Design: Co-Creating Brighter Futures https://amzn.eu/d/4ArURLw

134

5 Comments

Product designers are busy people. They've got endless folks asking for endless things... endlessly. And then the design systems team is all up in their joint asking them to use components... It's not a surprise that people can get a little fatigued. It seems quite reasonable if you ask me. In our latest episode, Davy Fung and I discuss fatigue, its causes and ways to either avoid or blunt it. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/g7TZWiqv #design #designsystems #fatigue

58

3 Comments

The UXPA Boston conference felt really energizing this year. It was so great to see multiple presentations around accessible design and research. It was also wonderful seeing so many familiar faces. Thanks to everyone who attended our talk on building an accessibility team. You can find the slides here: https://lnkd.in/gcTd9wiS #UXPABOS #UXPABOS24

20

2 Comments

The second part of my article on the value of explicit design rules is here. In it I dive head first into example in layout, position, ordering padding and margins with examples from various design tools. In the end of this part there's also a treasure trove of links to other insightful people writing on adjacent subjects. Hope you find it interesting and be swayed to try tools that allow for more expressive explicit design rules. https://lnkd.in/dmGpUHU6

12

3 Comments

Nine contributions designers are making to health system transformation.

4

Worth re-reading this article on Commitment Levels that users have with products/services. https://lnkd.in/e4NSce83 #design #designthinking #designbuild #designstrategy #product #producctdesign #productmanagement #productstrategy #designprinciples #innovation #designers #digitaltransformation #ux #uxdesign #uiux #uidesign #designinnovation #application #software #softwaredesign #usability #userresearch #research #usercentereddesign #productleadership #uxwriting #designsystems #empathy #interfacedesign #usabilitytesting #userexperience #productdesign #accessibility #ui

6