Project Leadership part 2: Probe for Details
If you have a good sense of what needs to be done in the beginning of the project, congratulations! I assume you've gathered the key information of the project that allows you to write up a plan for your team. But if you haven't, what are some important details you need to know up front? Here in this post, I'm going to share some of the information that I deem as maker-or-breaker factors. The Framework: 5W1H (with a twist) Let's start with a simple framework of project information gathering, then we can drill down into some fun stuff like where's the pitfall, what techniques could be useful.
Project Leadership part 1: Diagnose Your Project
These days lots of people talk about UX strategy. Whether you are a researcher, strategist, interaction designer, IA, UX, VD, prototyper, being "strategic" seems to be the buzzword everywhere. How could us designer up our game to get better chance of project success? I'd like to share what I learned from project management field and translate it from a designer's standpoint, in the hope that this could benefit our way of project engagement. Based on Eddie Obeng's book All Change! The project leaders' secret handbook, there are mainly four types of project as figure below. Each type of project have its own specific nature, success criteria,
Conversational UI: Design Principles
Conversational user interface (CUI) design is probably one of the hottest topics in the design world these days. Unlike typical GUI (graphical user interface), the experience of CUI might or might not involve any visual prompt. Take Alexa for example, all you have is the Amazon Echo device (or other compatible device) which responds to you with voice, and very little visual clues like the light color change on the device. So how should UX designers rethink our roles in a world that’s lack of visual clues? Here I listed out the 10 If we review the typical heuristic evaluation criteria from Nielsen Norman group, in
Lead a Project with Its North Star: Design Principle
Many of us develop special interests in certain area as the inspirational source of our day-to-day design job, as Julie Zhou mentioned in her recent blog post. I'm very much inspired by automobile design, and I have been enjoying the popular BBC TV show: Top Gear on Netflix. In 22 seasons of the show, the three hosts test drive different types cars, talk about their design, their performance, and the driving pleasure that comes out of it. I found that there's so much a UX designer can learn about from the art of automobile design. And here's one I'd love to share with you. Where Lamborghini Goes
Super Toys Unlock Your UX Superpower
There are many well-known design tips you can find online, I'm not going to bored you with them. What I'm going to share is some less-known, but very helpful tips that I use on a daily basis. Brainstorm with Star Wars Characters Running out of ideas? Feeling stuck in a brainstorming session? Star Wars figurine is here to help! I was inspired by the book of "Great Idea", and I developed a brainstorming technique which I named "Telepathy". The idea is to generate new ideas through empathy, by putting yourself in other's shoes so that you can have a different mindset, and consider the problem in their