2 x 2
List all features and plot them on the cost versus impact axes. It's a group activity with everyone out of their seats and talking about where they would place each feature.
2014-11-08
2 x 2
2014-11-08
List all features and plot them on the cost versus impact axes. It's a group activity with everyone out of their seats and talking about where they would place each feature.
4W Problem Canvas
2014-11-14
A way to frame the problems by exploring the who, what, why and where. It starts with a 10-minute individual exploration phase, followed by 20 minutes of collaborative synthesis by plotting all ideas on the 4 W's. The method ends in a problem statement.
5s Test
2014-12-18
What impression is created by a specific screen, step or moment within the product? This test the information hierarchy of a page. Hold a design 5 seconds in front of someone and ask what they remember.
6 Thinking Hats
2015-01-07
A framework that can put your teammates in a state of mind that enables candid and productive feedback on designs. You imagine with the entire group that you are wearing one of the hats and have to act accordingly. Managing (Blue) - Information (White) - Emotions (Red) - Discernment (Black) - Optimism (Yellow) -Creativity (Green)
A/B Testing
2014-12-18
Evaluating 2+ different designs to see which one is the most effective. Alternate designs are served to different users on a live website, and user actions like click-throughs or goal conversions are tracked. Small changes can have a dramatic effect on visitor behavior.
Affinity Diagram
2015-01-07
A technique for sorting and making sense of the data. Data points are recorded on sticky notes and sorted into logical groups. It helps to expose crucial patterns in data that may not be initially apparent.
All-Knowing User
2015-01-07
Sit the design team in a room and give everyone stickies. Imagine we have one all-knowing, insightful user outside the room who will answer truthfully any question we throw at him. What would you ask? Affinity sort after.
Artifact from the Future
2014-11-06
Imagine the future is now. The design of the product is complete, and it's out in the world. What does the press release say? What does a blog post say about it?
Bathroom UX
2014-11-05
A technique for building awareness of user-centered design and keeping people interested in your work. With this technique, you can create awareness quickly, creatively and with minimal effort.
Behavioral Interviews
2015-03-11
Participants describe their actual behavior instead of their opinion or preferences. They may be asked to show how they completed a task recently, the tools used to complete it, or the friction points they experienced along the way.
Brain Dump
2014-10-01
Set yourself free - dump it all into a physical notebook, Google Doc, ... Write it down and get it out of your head. The space this opens will do wonders for your ability to focus on what you are engaging in.
Brainwriting
2014-11-13
Each member in the group brainstorms on an individual piece of paper for 10 minutes. Slide the paper to the person on your right and repeat...
Card Sorting
2014-11-07
A simple technique in UX where a group of subject experts or users, however inexperienced with design, are guided to generate a category tree or folksonomy.
Co-creation
2015-03-11
Design for the users created hand-in-hand with the user. It's an active, creative and social process, based on collaboration between producers and users. The full co-creation process involves a number of steps from research to workshop design and solution implementation.
Comparative Assessment
2014-11-24
What are the standards and best-practices that customers are likely to expect in a product like yours? By looking at products your customers are likely to encounter, you can get a feel of their expectations about yours.
Concept Model
2015-03-12
They help explain complex and interrelated ideas in a visual form. Modes containing concepts are linked with labels on lines and arrows. They help build a shared knowledge about certain complex topics.
Controlled Vocabulary
2014-12-18
A set of terms used to describe content. Typically includes preferred terms. Often the foundation for a glossary, taxonomy, and thesaurus. It guides consistent use of descriptive vocabulary in a project and organization.
Customer Journey Map
2014-11-13
An oriented graph that describes the journey of a user by representing the different touchpoints that characterize this interaction.
Design Brief
2014-10-29
At a high level, how would you describe your target design solution? What are the features and personality of the product? Who is it designed for, and what activities is it intended to encourage or enable?
Design Principles
2014-11-07
A tool to set the vision and personality for your product. It will ensure that your UX is coherent and consistent. They help you articulate the characteristics that should endow the UX with a memorable personality or feeling.
Digital Ethnography
2015-01-06
Online observation of user activities and conversation. It may also include interviews with participants. Document activities, context, environment, use of specific vocabulary, and other characteristics of digital experiences.
Dry Cake or Cupcake
2014-11-08
Is it dry cake or a cupcake. What is the thing you're working on? Does it set itself apart? What are the elements that would make it a cupcake?
Elevator Pitch
2014-11-06
An elevator pitch helps you align around a shared description of your product/feature and what's special about it. It can help you understand what differentiates the offering, and hence, which features and characteristics should be the defining elements.
Facets
2015-01-07
Classification approach that assigns values for a set of mutually exclusive categories (or facets) to a specific content item in a group of similar objects. They allow more flexible classification and navigation. They are often used to refine search queries as well.
Failure Mode Effects Analysis
2014-12-13
It helps you understand the negative impacts of specific actions. It can highlight instances in which you can improve the product more by fixing what's broken than you can by adding features. It can show you the frequency of a problem, the severity of its impact on UX, and the difficulty of detecting.
Cause And Effect Diagrams
2014-11-25
This technique, also called the fishbone, is particularly handy at getting to root causes of problems. You're building up a fishbone by keeping asking 'Why?' for a particular problem. It will remind you that there are usually multiple causes of a problem.
Fogg Method
2015-01-24
Designing for behavior change is systematic. It's not guesswork. The Fogg Method is a universal method with 3 steps: Get specific, Make it easy & Trigger the behavior.
GAP Analysis
2014-11-26
Give some customers your list of prioritized tasks and ask them to rate them in order of importance and their level of satisfaction using the same scale. Next, use the following formula: Importance + (Importance - Satisfaction). This will reveal the 'gap' or opportunity for improvement.
GOMS Keystroke-level Model
2015-03-12
The task sequence is modeled as a sequence of a small number of operations. Each operation is assigned a duration, which is intended to model the average amount of time an experienced user would take to perform it.
HEART Framework
2014-11-07
Measure the quality of user experience in terms of happiness, engagement, adoption, retention & task success.
GPS Session
2014-10-01
A brainstorm session for 8 to 12 people which identifies 5 themes and generates ideas for them. All of this is done using the GPS brainstorm board.
Guerilla User Research
2014-12-15
What concerns are top of mind for users? How do they really behave? How are they using your product today? Think about your target users, list your research questions, go into the field and mine the data for insights.
Heuristic Markup
2014-11-14
Audit and identify any parts that don't conform the established standards and best practices. It also places more emphasis on your own gut feeling and reactions than the typical heuristic evaluation. Use to assess the necessary quality and spot opportunities.
Kano Model
2014-11-06
A theory of product development and customer satisfaction which classifies customer preferences into 5 categories. It is plotted on 2 axes: satisfaction/delight and implementation/achievement.
Learning Plan
2014-12-13
What do you know, what don't you know? How are you going to learn it? Separate certainties from assumptions, brainstorm research methods and plan your outputs.
Mind Map
2014-12-18
Use a mind map to visually organize information. They can be used for anything from note-taking to brainstorming to summarizing or just to sort out a complicated idea.
Mood Boards
2014-11-08
The purpose of a mood board is to set the tone & style of a design effort, without the distraction of flow and architecture. They include color, pattern, photography, typography, illustrative & graphic elements to inspire and to establish a vision. It is void of form and function intentionally.
Negative Brainstorm
2015-01-06
Brainstorm till everyone is stuck. Now think about why you're all stuck. Think, fantasize, exaggerate, ... Bed all these reasons by asking how it would be possible. This will create opportunity from your obstacles.
One-Page Plan System
For each of your major goals, set up a simple one-page plan. This self-imposed page limit forces you to abstract to the most important top-level details.
Opportunity Workshop
2014-12-15
What areas of the product are most in need of improvement from a UX perspective? It's a way to assess quickly what work needs to be done to improve the user experience, what's the highest priority from a business perspective, and what will have the most impact from a user perspective.
Paper Prototyping
2014-12-18
Prototypes are models of a product that help you test how it will work and feel. It helps you to validate the direction before investing the time and resources to make it completely real. Often you'll discover that an idea doesn't work quite as well as you initially imagined.
Pareto Analysis
2014-11-25
Find out what those few vital and most accounted for tasks are. Get the UX right for these first to maximize your impact.
Persona Validation
2014-11-14
Validate your personas in your pool of users. Do they still match your users and their roles? This is an early warning system that something might be wrong with your personas if time and time again you cannot match a persona.
Project Brief
2014-11-12
What are the expected outcomes for the user-centered design project? The brief capitalizes on the cardinal virtue of brevity to distinctly and clearly summarize the overall plan for the project/feature.
Proto-Personas
2014-11-08
A technique to provoke empathic, customer-oriented thinking without necessarily requiring you to do exhaustive customer research. It helps you to get a clearer picture of your target users.
Pyramid Evangelism
2015-01-16
You make it a priority to connect to people at every level of the organizational pyramid. Build an army of supporters throughout the organization. Connect to people, introduce yourself, tell them you're interested in UX, ask them about their work, ...
Quality Function Deployment
2014-12-13
Integrate the customer's voice with the company's voice. Start with a prioritized list of tasks (from a top tasks analysis) and combine this with a list of functions (from the company). A QFD ranks the features that best meets the needs of the customers.
Quick & Dirty Usability Test
Can people us this product as intended? Let go of recruiting and scheduling time with real users and test the designs with anyone who is available. Use it at any point during the design process when you want to do a quality check on the designs.
Sketchboards
You've done a bunch of sketches and are ready to narrow it down. You need input from the team to move further into detailed design. This way of working settles design decisions.
Sketching
2014-11-06
What are the different forms a design could take? Sit down with pen and paper and allow yourself to start drawing out your ideas.
Storytelling
2014-12-13
Stories allow for the most complex of ideas to be effectively conveyed to a variety of people. This designed experience can then offer meaning and emotion for its users.
Strategy Workshop
2014-10-29
Align everyone involved, create a cohesive whole from a pool of features, prioritize or even articulate what differentiates you from your competition. Develop a shared vision about the product's future.
Survey
2015-01-06
A simple tool for gathering information. It consists of a set of questions used to assess a participant's preferences, attitudes, characteristics and opinions on a given topic. They allow us to count or quantify concepts and apply the findings to the broader audience.
Tandem UX'n
2014-12-18
Work on UX in a pair where one is taking the lead and the other is participating. A bit like pair programming.
Task Flows
2014-10-31
What are the most likely scenarios & sequences a user will follow? What are the potential side-doors? Use when you need a complete picture of how the broader UX hangs together for yourself and for your team.
Taxonomy
2014-12-18
A taxonomy is a classification according to a pre-determined system, whose resulting catalog is used to provide a conceptual framework for discussion or analysis. It classifies entities into ordered categories.
The Core Model
2014-11-12
The essence of the core model design process is that you focus primarily on the top tasks/pages and identify the flow, user tasks, business goals and everything around it. Do this exercise with the user or stakeholders.
Top Tasks Analysis
2014-11-26
In the users' language, identity features, content, and functionality you ant them to consider. Present them in a random order and ask them to pick 5. Graph the results and analyze.
Triads
2014-11-07
Triads help you explore the identity of your product, starting with a simple word-listing exercise. 3 words are matched and worked out further (related nouns, verbs & adjectives).
Usability Test
2014-12-18
Evaluating a product or service by testing it with representative users. Participants will complete tasks while observers watch, listen and take notes. The goal is to identify any usability problems.
UX Health Check
2014-11-05
Measures the baseline quality of a user experience and assesses changes in quality over time.
UX Listening Tour
2014-12-13
What are the team's priorities, and how much awareness and support for UX currently exists? A listening tour is time set up to gather information and learn what matters to your colleagues.
UX Project Plan
2014-11-12
What practices will you employ to design a great UX? Once you're confident you understand the project goals, what is your plan for the UX? Brainstorm methods, estimate duration, place milestones & document.
UX Questionnaire
2014-11-24
A standard list of questions for you to ask yourself about a product or UX at the start of any engagement. It can help you spot things early on. It should make you think about a range of things you normally don't think about.
Wireframes
2014-12-13
A wireframe is a skeletal depiction of what a product should look like. It shows you how the whole system hangs together to create a complete, interconnected structure that stands together as a whole.
Z-order Differentiators Persona Validation
2014-11-14
Overlay all the attributes of all your personas to determine whether they are actually different enough to be of value.