Category Archives: Strategy
Beware of UX Charlatans
The television faith healers of the digital era. The Rise of the Charlatans A lot of companies are becoming more familiar with the terms “UX”, “User Experience”, and “Usability”, and this is great! There’s a growing community of people who are beginning to see this as an essential part of the design process. However, as… Read more
Everyone is talking UX
And if they are not then they should! Why? Because the creation and/or delivery of a customer/user experience is team work. Just think of all the skills that are involved to develop an experience that fits your end-user as a glove. Just to name a few: business analysis, coding, user research, market analysis, graphic… Read more
Not Choosing Sides: Customer Experiences vs. User Experiences
Ok, we’re all humans. It is a label that encompasses us all. But in experience research and design we rarely, if ever, create for or try to understand the human. It’s usually the different types of humans we’re interested in. Because once we understand who they are, we can list and prioritise these groups of… Read more
Grow Up!
As someone on the front end of UX projects, I spend a lot of time talking with clients and prospects about their specific project. I’ve grown into this role because I really do enjoy meeting new people, hearing about new technology and helping advise companies on service design. I can tell you that selling UX… Read more
Collaboration is a team sport
If there is one topic that stands out in my mind in the last few months, it would be the topic of collaboration. We have been asked to help others collaborate and we ourselves also desire greater collaboration in our work. Why is collaboration so needed in our workplace? Why do talent searchers look for… Read more
Making the Move Into UX
Finding the right career is no small feat. From a design background perspective, I’ll talk about the things I felt were important to keep in mind when looking for the right job. This blog post is inspired by someone who had approached me looking for advice on transitioning into UX, in her case, from a… Read more
A Brief Look Into the History of Landing Page Design
If you’ve never had a chance to look back through internet archives, I would highly recommend you do. It’s a fascinating look into the history of digital design and it’s interesting to look at the various trends that occur across time. Taking a look at some popular websites over the years, I’ve noticed a few… Read more
How to Engage Remote Work Teams
When I first joined Akendi, I had never experienced working with a remote team via Skype. I had used Skype to keep in touch with friends and family in other cities and countries, but never before for workplace meetings and conversations. Prior to Akendi, my project conversations and meetings were always face to face, but… Read more
Experience Thinking™ Maturity: 5 strategies to de-risk the experience
Predicting how many teams figure out their product requirements has been following a distinct pattern over the years for me. Many times when I find myself in a sales situation, the conversation arrives at how the organization’s team has designed and, prior to that, figured out, what the product should be or do. In short,… Read more
“Another Meeting?!” – How to Avoid This Reaction from Project Teams
When those meeting requests appear in your inbox, is your first reaction “UGH! Another one?” As a project manager, I love to organize how we are going to do things and when we are going to do them (with everyone else’s input, of course). In any workplace, the need and thrill to organize is not… Read more
Investing in UX research: increasing the quality of requirements
In my UX consulting life I go through many, sometimes brief, cycles of meeting a potential new client, talk about what their pain points are, what we offer and how we can help address their pain points. In the course of these sales journeys I see some conversations come up more than others. The pain… Read more
A shopping experience ahead of the rest
Shopping online can be daunting and frustrating, from un-useable checkout processes to boring visuals, most online shopping experiences are subpar. Personally, I now do 80% of my shopping online. I prefer it to in-store shopping because it is easy, low pressure and fast, saving me time to do other things. However, my online shopping experiences… Read more
The Power of a Good Story
It was a dark and stormy night and Lynn Weston couldn’t figure out how to turn off her computer. She had just gotten a new Windows 8 system and was concerned about it being damaged in the thunderstorm. Ever since she had heard about her neighbour’s TV being fried in a storm last year, Lynn… Read more
IS RESPONSIVE DESIGN GREAT MOBILE DESIGN?
The first time in your career that you notice things have changed since you started is a pretty exciting milestone. In a young industry like UX, this doesn’t take long. The biggest changes I have noticed have been in the mobile space. Specifically, I can remember a time when designing mobile experiences meant only designing… Read more
UX as a Silver Bullet
At some point, in your early career as a UX designer, it happens: you are working on a project with multiple, even many stakeholders that each put in their “2 cents”, their point of view on button labels, screen flows, screen element placement and color choices. Their seemingly ‘small’ suggestions turn out to be much… Read more
Why Your Designer Should Be Your Best Friend
Are you friends with your design team? If not, now may be the time to start working on your relationship! Designers who are not just colleagues – but friends – are much more likely to go the extra mile for you, enhance your team, and ultimately help you to be more successful. Just as a… Read more
5 Tips to Wireframing in Teams
Designing intentional interactions is a fun and creative activity that is rooted in research and typically expressed and iterated on using wireframes. There are several different approaches to wireframing in the interaction design world but the focus of this blog post is on how to wireframe effectively in teams. I am sure I’m not the… Read more
Back to basics: Why iteration is a critical piece of the User Centred Design Process
At Akendi, we firmly believe in the importance of engaging the user throughout the design process. The earlier, the better—better insight, better requirements, better design and less time, effort and money spent fixing things that could go wrong later. This is a key characteristic of User-Centred Design methodology and what our trademark Experience Thinking process… Read more
Lean UX: the what, the how, the where
“Are you ‘lean’?” is what somebody asked me recently. The timing for this was pretty lousy so just after Christmas and I nearly replied with a ‘not as lean as before Christmas’ when I realised that the question referred to our way of working as a company. Documentation Anyone? The answer depends on what you… Read more
Elevated User Experiences
I’m sure we have all encountered new types of interactions in public and office spaces that made us react with a ‘that is odd’, ‘I don’t know what to do’, ‘this makes me feel uncomfortable’. This next one, the ‘smart elevator’, resulted in one of those reactions. For me, this was the second time… Read more