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”

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

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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

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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