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

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”

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 16 with Andy Vitale on Applying User Research and Gaining Business and Stakeholder Trust

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 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”

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

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.

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

People Are the Secret to Great Products

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.

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

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

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

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”

Inside Aurelius: Episode 001 with co-founders Zack Naylor and Joseph Szczesniak

In our very first episode of Inside Aurelius, we discuss a number of topics with highlights including:

  • Why we made Aurelius v2 and how we got there
  • How we used user research and customer feedback to completely re-design and re-develop our product and company focus
  • UX design, science and art
  • How Joseph, our CTO took an interest in UX as a developer and how UX can enrich a developers work and satisfaction
  • How and why developers should participate and have a stake in user research

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 2 with Jared Spool

Episode 2 highlights:

  • the importance of framing the problem in UX and product strategy
  • how to tell if you’re designing and building the right features or products
  • measuring the impact and success of UX design and product strategy
  • balancing an understanding of the business strategy to make better design and product recommendations
  • Jared’s most effective way of getting your company to prioritize UX and product strategy
  • who owns the user experience?

read more… “Aurelius Podcast: Episode 2 with Jared Spool”