The Essential Guide to User Research Notes

User research notes are the building blocks of customer insights. Without useful and effective note-taking, we can’t hope to uncover true user needs and deliver an experience that solves their problem or meets those needs.

This post is a recap of our webinar with special guest Bethany Stolle, Design Research Lead at Blackboard. Read the post below to view the slides and full recording of our session!

The Essential Guide to User Research Notes – full webinar recording
read more… “The Essential Guide to User Research Notes”

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

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 17 with Erika Hall on User Research, Collaborating with Stakeholders and Design Culture

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 10 with Jeff Patton on Product Discovery and User Research

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

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 11 with Christina Wodtke on OKRs and User Research

Episode 11 highlights:

  • Why understanding a business model is critical for designers

  • Using design to do more than make a great interface or a sexy advertisement

  • Humanizing business and letting design/design thinking drive how business gets done

  • What OKRs are, where they’re used and how to do them

  • How Christina has used OKRs for both business and her own life

  • Embracing business metrics as designers

  • How you can be more innovative than Steve Jobs 
  • 
Tools and techniques for looking at your customer feedback and research insights to get beyond your assumptions



read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 11 with Christina Wodtke on OKRs and User Research”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 6 with Peter Merholz on Product & Design Strategy

Episode 6 highlights:

  • Some history of Adaptive Path and how they got into design and product strategy
  • Pitfalls to avoid when making a product and design strategy
  • How to be more than a UX design “stylist” or “executionist”
  • The role of UX and design in business strategy
  • Differences between UX and product management
  • Design like a lawyer and get everyone on board with your decisions and recommendations

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 6 with Peter Merholz on Product & Design Strategy”

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 8 with Audrey Crane on UX Design, Research & Napkins

Episode 8 highlights:
  • Audrey’s concept of “give me a napkin”
  • Knowing how and when to step backwards from a prescribed solution to find the problem to solve
  • Working with your team and stakeholders so you can make a meaningful contribution as a designer
  • How we can find, and solve, the right problems as designers
  • UX designers and product managers working together successfully
  • Who owns the advocacy for and voice of the customer?

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 8 with Audrey Crane on UX Design, Research & Napkins”

I Found a Remarkable Way to Kill Politics in my Design and Product Strategy

Can I get a show of hands from how many people have ever had an awesome idea shot down due to politics or flimsy opinions?

Yep, I’ll bet you’ve been in client or stakeholder meetings finding yourself hit with a bunch of questions and critique about the decisions or recommendations you’ve made. Heck, you might even have a great story to tell and well thought out reasons for why you did what you did. Yet, there you sit, watching all that great work get flushed down the drain right before your very eyes by the highest paid, or the loudest (or both!) person in the room. Often, the discussion turns to things about the product or service that fly in the face of customer needs or even our own company objectives. Watching well crafted ideas get argued away in a single meeting is like squabbling over what to have for dinner while the house burns down around you.

Here’s the good news: killing politics and emotions in your design or product strategy doesn’t have to be an impossible task. By setting clear, well defined goals for your strategy, you can easily sell great ideas, decisions and recommendations without banging your head against the wall.

Download the free 4 point product strategy goal checklist, and we’ll walk through how to use it right here in this post. When we’re done, you’ll be on your way to building a brilliant design and product strategy that solves the right problems for your company and its customers.

read more… “I Found a Remarkable Way to Kill Politics in my Design and Product Strategy”