Tag / development
Full-stack UXers: Who They Are and How to Find Them
Within the user experience community, there’s been an increasing push toward finding individuals whose skill sets extend beyond those of a typical UX designer. Specifically, businesses are looking for leaders who can carry a project from initial design to front-end development.
These leaders are called full-stack UXers.
But when it comes to filling this in-demand position, there’s not a lot of clarity about what qualifications a full-stack UXer should bring to the table – or how to find them.
What is a full-stack UXer? Perhaps the best entrypoint into understanding a full-stack UXer is to explain what they are not. Contrary to what the title might suggest – and what certain job postings may unrealistically demand – the role doesn’t call for someone with a deep mastery of every part of the design trajectory. In practice, there are very few UXers who are as skilled in programming languages as they are in pixel-perfect design.
While full-stack UXers don’t need to have in-depth experie..
Deliver Products People Love…Without Guessing, Part 1: Jobs To Be Done
Every month companies in the United States spend billions of dollars on market research, competitive analysis, customer segmentation studies, and the like. The goal is essentially to answer a single question: “What should we build and how should we market it to be successful?” They spend days analyzing their spreadsheets filled with the data from these studies, dictate a list of features to be built, and hope they are successful. What is the result?
About 95% of new products fail.
The sad thing is, you do not have to guess. There are 2 principles that, if followed, will remove all the guesswork and allow you to KNOW you will be successful before you invest all that time/money in researching and building your next big thing. They are Jobs To Be Done and Shared Understanding. In this article I will be focusing on Jobs To Be Done and how to apply them. In Part 2 I will be going into more detail about how Shared Understanding can help take guesswork out of product development.
What Are Job..
Deliver Products People Love…Without Guessing, Part 2: Shared Understanding
Every month companies in the United States spend billions of dollars on market research, competitive analysis, customer segmentation studies, and the like. The goal is essentially to answer a single question: “What should we build and how should we market it to be successful?” They spend days analyzing their spreadsheets filled with the data from these studies, dictate a list of features to be built, and hope they are successful. What is the result?
About 95% of new products fail.
The sad thing is, you do not have to guess. In Part 1 we talked about Jobs To Be Done and how understanding what Jobs a customer is looking to hire a product to do, the drivers that influence the job, the current approaches they take to accomplish that job, pain points that exist, and what competition is out there can help you understand the circumstances around the Job and ensure you’re solving the right problem.
Today we’re going to discuss an often-heard but not-so-often understood principle: Shared Unders..
Are UX Developers a Thing? Why Hybrid Designers Are So In-Demand Right Now
As more and more companies recognize the value of design thinking, the hiring surge within the design industry continues to gather speed. Over the last five years alone, some of the biggest names in tech have ramped up their recruiting efforts to nab more designers. IBM, for example, has increased its designer-to-developer hiring target from 1:72 to 1:8.
Designers are hot property, but what exactly are recruiters looking for? As engineering, design and development become increasingly intertwined, it seems that hiring managers are making a beeline for one type of designer in particular: the hybrid.
Hybrid designers, otherwise known as designer-developer unicorns, are not only masters of wireframing, user testing and visual design; they can also pack a punch in the programming department. For companies big and small, these kinds of designers are a major asset — and it’s not just about killing two birds with one stone.
Designers who can code are fast becoming the not-so-secret sauce for c..
The Rise of the Circular Economy
Source : http://www.wsp-pb.com/It’s funny how our sense of logic works. Built on centuries of philosophy and theology we often make decisions about how to act based on how others have acted before us — even if these methods were flawed. One of these logical beliefs is that going in a straight line is always the most effective and efficient action. But we rarely ask, what is at the end of that straight line? And do we want to be there?
Source : http://greennews.ie/This is especially true of the idea of the ‘linear economy’. This concept forms the basis of the traditional commerce model. To be in business, one has to take something, make something and sell it (take, make, dispose). The premise is simple and discrete. And in everything we do, from math to logic, humans like the attributes of discrete data. We like to know where a thing begins and ends.
“Instead of selling a product, we simply sell access to the product.”However, what if we were willing to move away from straight lines and..
A Primer to Web Accessibility for Designers
Quick wins to make your designs more inclusiveWhat is Accessibility?When was the last time you visited a website and got frustrated because you had trouble using it? Maybe the site was using Web GL technology that your browser didn’t support, you couldn’t read it’s text due to it being so small, or the mobile experience simply wouldn’t load on your iPhone. If you think back to these annoying experiences where you functionally could not navigate a site, chances are you’ve experienced inaccessibility in one form or another.
This is not to say that all frustrating experiences are inaccessible, but there are definitely overlaps between bad UX and inaccessibility. An easy way to think of this is that a bad experience for the general public is usually much worse for a disabled or impaired individual.
If you find yourself squinting to read small text on a site, for example, chances are a visually impaired person wouldn’t be able to read it at all. If you make this small text size larger, you’..
Meeting Design: Agile Style Daily Scrum
Kevin Hoffman is the master of meetings. In his new book Meeting Design from Rosenfeld Media, Kevin lays out exactly how to take on meetings as a design problem, but you don’t have to be a designer to appreciate this advice. He deftly illustrates how the designer’s toolkit—a collection of questions, activities, and conversations—can be applied to create the best outcomes for these age-old activities. We’re excited to provide the excerpt from Meeting Design below.
The daily scrum is the heart of an agile process—it’s the meeting you’ll have the most often. The name “scrum” is based on the “scrummage:” the part of a rugby game when play restarts after a foul occurs or the ball goes out of bounds. Everyone from each team grabs for the ball huddled together in a circle and then puts their heads together in interlocking fashion. Afterward, play continues from that point. In an agile scrum style meeting, everyone is grabbing for work to undertake.
Goal of an Agile Style Daily Scrum Hopeful..
Can We Keep Our Biases from Creeping into AI?
CSA Images/Printstock Collection/Getty Images Eminent industry leaders worry that the biggest risk tied to artificial intelligence is the militaristic downfall of humanity. But there’s a smaller community of people committed to addressing two more tangible risks: AI created with harmful biases built into its core, and AI that does not reflect the diversity of the users it serves. I am proud to be part of the second group of concerned practitioners. And I would argue that not addressing the issues of bias and diversity could lead to a different kind of weaponized AI.
The good news is that AI is an opportunity to build technology with less human bias and built-in inequality than has been the case in previous innovations. But that will only happen if we expand AI talent pools and explicitly test AI-driven technologies for bias.
Eliminating Biases in AI: The People Technology inevitably reflects its creators in a myriad of ways, conscious and unconscious. The tech industry remains very m..
King’s Cross Gasholders launch with Wilkinson Eyre redesign
Modern developments abound in the ongoing refresh of London’s bustling King’s Cross area; however few of them have the design flair and historical character of the famous Gasholder triplets. The existing set of three interlocking gasholders, a distinguishing part of King’s Cross industrial heritage identity, has now been carefully cleaned up and incorporated into a modern design by Wilkinson Eyre, who transformed them into a contemporary, luxury residential complex, full of bespoke details and historical character. Created for King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership, the Gasholders development has just been officially completed, featuring a wealth of open spaces for the residents, as well as a rich list of amenities, such as a gym, spa, bookable work space and party room. The outdoor areas include a generous terrace with gardens designed by award-winning specialist Dan Pearson, while a lush entrance lobby features a dramatic cascading staircase and an especially commissioned lighting ..