Latest posts

  • To Ignite a Personalization Practice, Run this Prepersonalization Workshop

    To Ignite a Personalization Practice, Run this Prepersonalization Workshop

    Picture this. You’ve joined a squad at your company that’s designing new product features with an emphasis on automation or AI. Or your company has just implemented a personalization engine. Either way, you’re designing with data. Now what? When it comes to designing for personalization, there are many cautionary tales, no overnight successes, and few…

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  • The Wax and the Wane of the Web

    The Wax and the Wane of the Web

    I offer a single bit of advice to friends and family when they become new parents: When you start to think that you’ve got everything figured out, everything will change. Just as you start to get the hang of feedings, diapers, and regular naps, it’s time for solid food, potty training, and overnight sleeping. When…

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  • User Research Is Storytelling

    User Research Is Storytelling

    Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been fascinated with movies. I loved the characters and the excitement—but most of all the stories. I wanted to be an actor. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on exciting adventures. I even dreamed up ideas for movies…

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  • An Holistic Framework for Shared Design Leadership

    An Holistic Framework for Shared Design Leadership

    Picture this: You’re in a meeting room at your tech company, and two people are having what looks like the same conversation about the same design problem. One is talking about whether the team has the right skills to tackle it. The other is diving deep into whether the solution actually solves the user’s problem.…

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  • From Beta to Bedrock: Build Products that Stick.

    From Beta to Bedrock: Build Products that Stick.

    As a product builder over too many years to mention, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen promising ideas go from zero to hero in a few weeks, only to fizzle out within months. Financial products, which is the field I work in, are no exception. With people’s real hard-earned money on…

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  • How to Create Exceptional Experiences

    How to Create Exceptional Experiences

    How to Create Exceptional Experiences written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Listen to the full episode:   Overview On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Neen James, globally recognized leadership and customer experience expert, keynote speaker, and author of “Exceptional Experiences: Five Luxury Levers to Elevate…

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  • Asynchronous Design Critique: Giving Feedback

    Asynchronous Design Critique: Giving Feedback

    Feedback, in whichever form it takes, and whatever it may be called, is one of the most effective soft skills that we have at our disposal to collaboratively get our designs to a better place while growing our own skills and perspectives. Feedback is also one of the most underestimated tools, and often by assuming…

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  • Asynchronous Design Critique: Getting Feedback

    Asynchronous Design Critique: Getting Feedback

    “Any comment?” is probably one of the worst ways to ask for feedback. It’s vague and open ended, and it doesn’t provide any indication of what we’re looking for. Getting good feedback starts earlier than we might expect: it starts with the request.  It might seem counterintuitive to start the process of receiving feedback with…

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  • Designing for the Unexpected

    Designing for the Unexpected

    I’m not sure when I first heard this quote, but it’s something that has stayed with me over the years. How do you create services for situations you can’t imagine? Or design products that work on devices yet to be invented? Flash, Photoshop, and responsive design When I first started designing websites, my go-to software…

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  • Voice Content and Usability

    Voice Content and Usability

    We’ve been having conversations for thousands of years. Whether to convey information, conduct transactions, or simply to check in on one another, people have yammered away, chattering and gesticulating, through spoken conversation for countless generations. Only in the last few millennia have we begun to commit our conversations to writing, and only in the last…

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