Author: Zack Naylor

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 22 with Peter Morville on Planning, User Research and Mindfulness

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Episode 22 highlights with Peter Morville:

  • Peter’s new book “Planning for Everything” and what led him to decide to write a book about planning
  • What we can learn from the U.S. Marines about planning better design and research projects
  • Peter’s framework of S.T.A.R.F.I.N.D.E.R and how to use it for better planning of your ux, design and research projects
  • How Agile development process can help…and hinder your design and software project planning
  • Are you OVER-planning? How to determine if you are and if so work at getting better at improvising
  • Tips for convincing your stakeholders to do (or do more) user research
  • Systems thinking and how it applies to UX design and product management
  • Ways to be more self-aware in the design, features and decisions we make in our work as UX designers, researchers and product managers

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 22 with Peter Morville on Planning, User Research and Mindfulness”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 21 with Lou Rosenfeld on DesignOps, ResearchOps and UX

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Episode 21 Highlights:

  • Lou’s background, the beginning of the internet and how UX/IA all started
  • The stories behind Lou meeting Tim Berners Lee and Larry Page
  • How Lou started Rosenfeld Media, the UX book publishing company
  • The story of the blind men and the elephant and how it applies to building a great user experience
  • DesignOps, ResearchOps and how Lou began major conferences around those topics
  • Lou’s advice for those of us working in large organizations doing UX design

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 21 with Lou Rosenfeld on DesignOps, ResearchOps and UX”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 17 with Erika Hall on User Research, Collaborating with Stakeholders and Design Culture

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Episode 17 highlights:

  • Using research and design to create products and services that are more balanced in the world
  • Where to start helping your company make a bigger impact with user research
  • “Startup” culture and how it can be very unhealthy and unproductive
  • Why some companies still aren’t doing user research (or enough) and how you can help
  • How having shared goals boosts collaboration and creativity

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 17 with Erika Hall on User Research, Collaborating with Stakeholders and Design Culture”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 19 with Mariah Hay on Working with Developers, User Research and Doing UX at Scale

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Episode 19 highlights:

  • How Mariah came into Human Centered Design from an Industrial Design background
  • Doing user research and how to include developers/technologists
  • What are customer feedback loops, how to create and act on them at scale
  • What it takes to build a truly customer centered organization
  • How Pluralsight conducts, analyzes and applies user research at scale
  • The process of Directed Discovery and how to do it
  • Doing human centered design at scale with a large and growing team
  • How to empower everyone at your organization to understand customers better

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 19 with Mariah Hay on Working with Developers, User Research and Doing UX at Scale”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 16 with Andy Vitale on Applying User Research and Gaining Business and Stakeholder Trust

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Episode 16 highlights:

  • What makes experiences valuable?
  • Getting a “seat at the table” with design…and then what to do with it
  • Growing from a designer to a design leader
  • Speaking the language of the business to sell your vision and ideas
  • How to tie design decisions to business metrics

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 16 with Andy Vitale on Applying User Research and Gaining Business and Stakeholder Trust”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 14 with Steve Portigal on User Research, Analysis and Learning from Customers

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Episode 14 highlights:

  • Why you should be doing [more] user research
  • How to convince your stakeholders that user research is important
  • 3 approaches to building brilliant products and features (and which one is best)
  • Convincing your stakeholders and leaders to do (more) user research
  • What is a user research process to make sure you’re learning the right things
  • The difference between research analysis and research synthesis

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 14 with Steve Portigal on User Research, Analysis and Learning from Customers”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 13 with Andy Budd on Design Thinking, User Research Insights and Synthesis

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Episode 13 highlights:

  • The beginnings of Clearleft
  • How the UX agency to client relationship has changed
  • Designing like a detective
  • Gathering the right evidence to do great UX design
  • The tools and application are of design thinking
  • How to go from research, synthesis and insights into actual design
  • Dangers of “research theater” and how to avoid them
  • Getting past the obvious solutions to create your most brilliant designs

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 13 with Andy Budd on Design Thinking, User Research Insights and Synthesis”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 10 with Jeff Patton on Product Discovery and User Research

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Episode 10 highlights:

  • What product discovery is and how to do it
  • The wrong way to do user research and how to avoid it
  • A process to make sure you’re building products and features that solve real problems
  • When product discovery starts and ends
  • 4 steps to conducting product discovery
  • The importance, and dangers, confidence level in design or product ideas

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 10 with Jeff Patton on Product Discovery and User Research”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 9 with Melissa Perri on Product Management & User Research

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Episode 9 highlights:

  • Melissa’s approach to product strategy
  • Setting good strategic goals for our product and user experiences
  • The difference between shipping features and shipping GOOD features
  • How to do user research to actually drive innovation
  • Case study examples from Melissa on how she used user research to increase user acquisition
  • Using product and UX goals to tie up into larger company vision and strategy

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 9 with Melissa Perri on Product Management & User Research”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 15 with Indi Young discussing Empathy, User Research, Synthesis and Thinking Styles

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Episode 15 highlights:

  • Non dominant thinking styles, diversity in product design and user research
  • Difference between problem space research and solutions research and why it matters
  • The concept of “thinking styles” in research and how to apply them in UX design
  • How machine learning and AI can create emergent experiences in the future
  • Different types of empathy (cognitive and emotional), what they are and how to use each one
  • A brilliant, tactical example of how to make sense of what you learn from user research

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 15 with Indi Young discussing Empathy, User Research, Synthesis and Thinking Styles”