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

Posted on by Zack Naylor
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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 13 with Andy Budd on Design Thinking, User Research Insights and Synthesis

Posted on by Zack Naylor
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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 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 16 with Andy Vitale on Applying User Research and Gaining Business and Stakeholder Trust

Posted on by Zack Naylor
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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 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 17 with Erika Hall on User Research, Collaborating with Stakeholders and Design Culture

Posted on by Zack Naylor
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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”

Why The Best Design and Product Teams Decide What, Then How

Posted on by Zack Naylor
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Creating an awesome design, product and experience is hard work. Making the RIGHT design, product or experience is even harder. The smartest teams first figure out the “What” before they decide the “How”.

Whether you’re designing a new product or experience, or improving an existing one, you have to first figure out What you’re making before you can effectively execute the How.

Defining and agreeing on What you’re doing first gives everyone much better clarity to focus on executing How to get it done.

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read more… “Why The Best Design and Product Teams Decide What, Then How”

Inside Aurelius – 002 with Joseph Szczesniak and Zack Naylor

Posted on by Zack Naylor
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iA002 episode highlights:

  • The technology stack that we built Aurelius with and how it’s evolved over time
  • Understanding common development terms to better communicate design ideas
  • An inside look at how Joseph and Zack make decisions about the product and the company
  • Behind the scenes views and opinions on making technology upgrades and feature prioritizations
  • How we build Aurelius like Wyatt Earp

People Are the Secret to Great Products

Posted on by Zack Naylor
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First who, then what. That’s the popular mantra to building massively successful and long-lasting companies. The same is true for crafting beautifully designed products and experiences. You may look to tools and processes for the secret to building a great product and user experience but in the end, the secret is people. Knowing who you are designing and building for and having a team who cares about helping those people will give you the greatest chance of success.

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read more… “People Are the Secret to Great Products”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 20 with Aarron Walter on UX Organization Models, DesignOps and User Research

Posted on by Zack Naylor
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Episode 20 highlights:

  • What does a high functioning design team look like and how are they organized?
  • The three types of successful enterprise UX organization models
  • How companies like Target, Spotify, Netflix, Google and more are doing designops and great UX design at scale
  • Creating and sharing user research findings across your organization

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 20 with Aarron Walter on UX Organization Models, DesignOps and User Research”