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Get Better Results from Design Feedback with These 8 Rules

7/18/2017

 
It can be SO hard to communicate your reaction to something visual using words. Whether it's negative, or positive, the words many of us come up with are often not very useful for creative direction.  But it is possible, if you can remember just a few rules (8 of them, conveniently listed here), to get the very best outcome from the feedback you give the designers you work with.
     Very few people - including designers - give really good design feedback. Good feedback should be actionable, but not prescriptive. Good feedback will help the entire team participate in the design of a product, and share the responsibility of  success, without creating ‘design by committee,’ which is a common way designs get derailed. Feedback that is given and received well should improve the customer experience, while allowing each person to add valuable insight.

The 8 Rules for Better Design Feedback
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Send some love - photo by Jay Mantri

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Design Innovation Starting With (the right) Constraints

1/23/2017

 
Most designers will say they produce better designs when they have constraints. And yet, the guidelines we use to kick-off design thinking & innovation sessions typically encourage thinking outside the known constraints.

This article by Lisa Kay Solomon showcases a great tool to use for understanding 'loose' vs. 'tight' constraints, and how to frame those constraints so you get not only big ideas, but the most effective big ideas.
Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change
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One key to launching well-designed products?  Hint: don’t put design in an ivory tower.

7/9/2015

 
Lego Tower
When Fast Company interviewed former apple designer Mark Kawano about his insights into why apple design is so great, the article went viral in the design community. His primary message was this — design can’t just belong to designers… for great product design, everyone throughout the product lifecycle has to want, understand, and contribute to great design. What Kawano was saying was so core to UX strategists and designers around the globe, why did it sound so novel, so different than the companies many designers work at, or products we produce? My experience is that it’s fairly uncommon to find UX really integrated with business and dev, especially at larger companies. If you have it, that’s something special (and I would love to meet you!).

‘us’ vs. ‘them’ mentality 
Designers like working in design teams, and developers like working in dev teams. PMs work in business teams, and marketers have their teams too. Having centralized functional teams can make for better morale, increased talent acquisition and retention, and can also help distribute specialization across workstreams...  
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UX PROCESS: THE UX BRIEF

3/1/2013

 
Having worked with dozens of companies in my design career I've gotten to see as many different approaches to project management as there are projects. Some work better than others. (Waterile, anyone? That's some hybrid of agile and waterfall methods, but I digress.)  Across the board what I often see is a lack of a structured approach to planning the UX part of the project specifically.

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DESIGNING FOR IMPROVED SEO

2/1/2013

 
Originally posted February 2013

I recently put together a few ‘best practices’ for a client. They needed a very short list of things they could do with minimal effort to improve the SEO of their site.

Make global nav items text, not graphics

Establish target keywords
- use google analytics to find top keywords

Include keywords in text & in page attributes

Make sure URLs are friendly

Name images with friendly filenames

Create a sitemap for the search engines: there does not need to be a link to it – it can be virtually invisible to users

Improve page load times

DESIGNING TO INCREASE CONVERSION

1/15/2013

 
I put together this list of industry ‘best practices’ which I culled from various sources (listed below). Although this was for a recent client, I realized it could be helpful for many teams to use this list when they’re thinking about how to improve their product design increase conversion.

While the articles listed below are helpful to read, I know most of my clients just don’t have the time, so I put together the top items to make a ‘checklist’ when the question ‘What could we do better?’ gets put to the design team.

Improve the clarity of your main homepage message. 
A clear headline is key.- Why and How will this site benefit the user?
- To sell effectively, you have to sell solutions, not products. You also have to sell benefits, not features.

Clear action text wins over vagueness
Look at target keywords in Google analytics

Improve the placement and clarity of the call to action
Is it really obvious on each screen what you want the user to do?

Reduce the number of options on the homepage
‘Analysis Paralysis’ – multiple choices lead to confusion

Improve user flow
Help users find what they’re looking for

Design & implement your site to be accessed from anywhere
Mobile experience has to be part of any strategy to improve conversion or traffic. Users expect websites to work wherever they access them from.

Design for context
Improve understanding of where users are coming from, and what they’re looking for based on where they’re coming from.  Researching Google analytics can help

Test with users
While google analytics is invaluable to know ‘what’ users are doing, that quantitative data does not answer ‘why’ users are doing what they are doing.  Surveys & user testing can fill in the picture

Sources
smashingmagazine.com

dtelepathy.com

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31097/12-Critical-Elements-Every-Homepage-Must-Have-Infographic.aspx

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