NN/g UX Podcast

A two-part podcast episode discussing the implications of decentralized computing and mixed reality on the future of UX work. Geoff's Website: geoffrobertson.me 1-Hour Talks discussed in the episode: Blockchain 101 Blockchain & UX Related courses: Emerging Patterns in Interface Design (UX Certification eligible course) Upcoming online events: Intranet and Employee Experience Symposium: Nov 9-10 Qualitative Research Series (5-Days): Nov 15-19

Product visions can align a team and inspire a better future state. When visions stem from real user needs, the ideas that follow have the greatest potential for success. NN/g UX Specialist Anna Kaley discusses keeping users at the center of product development, and shares insights from next weeks' UX Vision and Strategy Series, presented alongside Chief Designer, Sarah Gibbons. Read more about Anna Kaley (NN/g bio) Referenced courses and training series: UX Vision and Strategy Series (Oct 18-22, 2021) with Anna Kaley and Sarah Gibbons Product and UX: Building Partnerships for Better Outcomes Being a UX Leader: Essential Skills for Any UX Practitioner Lean UX and Agile Related (free) videos & articles: UX Vision (3-min video by Anna Kaley) Create an aspirational view of the experience users will have with your product, service, or organization in the future. This isn't fluff, but will guide a unified design strategy. Here are 5 steps to creating a UX vision. UX Roadmaps: Definition and Components (article by Sarah Gibbons)

To kick off Season 2, we're releasing a special edition episode, inspired by a tweet posted by @AllisonGrayce in Feb 2021, where she asks followers, "what's a #ux hill you regularly die on?" Host Therese Fessenden asks both NN/g team members and members of the UXC and UXMC community what issues, topics, and principles they fiercely stand by, and shares their answers. Guests and submissions featured in the episode (in order): Chris Callaghan (UXMC) - UX and Optimisation Director (Manchester, UK) Twitter: @CallaghanDesign Kara Pernice - Sr. VP at Nielsen Norman Group Bio: nngroup.com/people/kara-pernice  Mary Formanek (UXMC) - Senior User Experience + Product Lead Engineer (Arizona, US) Mary's Article: "Label Your Icons: No, we can’t read your mind. Please label your icons." Tiktok: @UXwithMary Ben Shih - UX Consultant and Product Designer (Stockholm, Sweden) Portfolio: benshih.design Rachel Krause - UX Specialist at Nielsen Norman Group Bio: nngroup.com/people/rachel-krause/  Anna Kaley - UX Specialist at Nielsen Norman Group Bio: nngroup.com/people/anna-kaley You can find also information about the upcoming UX Vision and Strategy Series with Anna Kaley and Sarah Gibbons here. 

One might think user research gets easier when there are more people available to do it; but managing research initiatives at scale can be a difficult task in itself. In this episode, Kara Pernice, Senior VP at NN/g shares her experience and insights about managing UX research operations. Kara Pernice's Articles and Videos (NN/g bio)  NN/g courses and articles referenced in this episode: ResearchOps (UX certification course)  ResearchOps (article)  Research Repositories for Tracking UX Research and Growing Your ResearchOps (article)  Design Systems 101 (article) DesignOps (UX certification course)  Research repository tools mentioned: Dovetail Consider.ly Airtable  Other ResearchOps pioneers and communities: Kate Towsey's Work (articles on Medium) Leveling up your Ops and Research — a strategic look at scaling research and Ops (by Brigette Metzler) ResearchOps Community (and Slack channel) ...and if you were curious what research papers launched Kara into her UX career, here are two of them: Nielsen, J. (1990). Big paybacks from 'discount' usability engineering. IEEE Software 7, 3 (May), 107-108. Nielsen, J. (1992). Finding usability problems through heuristic evaluation. Proc. ACM CHI'92 (Monterey, CA, 3-7 May), 373-380.

Advocating for UX work is hard. It's even harder when you're the only UX professional on your team. That said, there is still hope for one-person UX teams, and Garrett Goldfield shares his recommendations on how to make the most out of limited time and resources, and how to lead the charge in shifting corporate culture toward a more human-centered future. Read more about Garrett Goldfield (NN/g bio) Resources & courses cited in this episode: Episode 1. What is UX, anyway? (feat. Dr. Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru) (previous NN/g UX Podcast episode) The One-Person UX Team (UX Certification course) The Human Mind and Usability (UX Certification course)

To celebrate our first podcast milestone, we flipped the script. NN/g UX Specialist Rachel Krause guest-hosts this episode, and interviews host Therese Fessenden about the concept of "delight" in user experience: what it is, why the pursuit of delight can often be a short-sighted and misunderstood endeavor, and how a more holistic approach to interpreting and anticipating user needs can more reliably lead to an experience that delights beyond a single interaction. Read more about the hosts:  Therese Fessenden's Articles & Videos (NN/g bio) Rachel Krause's Articles & Videos (NN/g bio) Free resources cited in this episode: A Theory of User Delight: Why Usability Is the Foundation for Delightful Experiences (free article) Design for Emotion (by Daniel Ruston, UX Lead at Google Design) Principles of Emotional Design (Intuit case study by Garron Engstrom) How Delightful! 4 Principles for Designing Experience-Centric Products (Autodesk MLP case study by Maria Giudice) Research: Perspective-Taking Doesn’t Help You Understand What Others Want (HBR article by Tal Eyal, Mary Steffel, Nicholas Epley) Harvard Psychiatrist Identifies 7 Skills to Help You Get Along With Anybody (Inc. article by Carmine Gallo about Helen Riess' work) Other resources cited in this episode: Emerging Patterns in Interface Design (UX Certification course) Persuasive and Emotional Design (UX Certification course) DesignOps: Scaling UX Design and User Research (UX Certification course) Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter (book) 

Does having more experience in the UX industry enable you to make better design decisions by intuition? Does user research ever become a waste of time if some research already exists in academic papers? The answer, it seems, is not that simple. In this episode, UX Specialists Alita Joyce and Therese Fessenden discuss why, after all these years doing independent user research, you should still test your interfaces and research with your own customers. Read more: Alita Joyce's Articles & Videos (NN/g bio) Free resources cited in this episode: Viral video (by @tired_actor) "The Square Hole" (TikTok video) The False-Consensus Effect (free article) The “False Consensus Effect”: An Egocentric Bias in Social Perception and Attribution Processes (PDF of full study by Ross, Greene, and House) 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design (free article) How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation (free article)  10 Usability Heuristics Applied to Video Games (free article) Don Norman - Changing Role of the Designer Part 2: Community Based Design (4 min video) Adam Grant - The "I’m Not Biased" Bias (Tweet about NBC Sunday Spotlight feature)  Other resources cited in this episode: The Human Mind and Usability (UX Certification course)  Persuasive and Emotional Design (UX Certification course)  Democratizing Innovation by Eric Von Hippel (book) Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (book)

What does it take to create a great customer experience? As it turns out: a lot more than just a series of great interactions. Kim Salazar, Sr. UX Specialist, shares her expertise on what omnichannel experiences are, why they matter for CX, and how having a mature CX means fundamentally changing how we view and handle UX work. Resources cited in this episode Ep. 1 - What is UX, anyway? (feat. Dr. Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru) (our inaugural podcast episode) Operationalizing CX: Organizational Strategies for Delivering Superior Omnichannel Experiences (142-page report) CX Transformation (full-day course) Journey Mapping to Understand Customer Needs (full-day course) Kim's Articles & Videos (NN/g bio) Other related articles & videos What is Omnichannel UX? (2-min video) User Experience vs. Customer Experience: What’s The Difference? (free article + 4 min video) Good Customer Experience Demands Organizational Fluidity (free article)

"Keep it simple," is one of many great UX mantras... but how exactly does someone "keep it simple" when working with complex applications? In this episode, Page Laubheimer, Senior UX Specialist with NN/g, shares his expertise in information architecture (IA) and complex app design, recommends a few ideas to "lessen digital misery" on business-to-business (B2B) and enterprise applications, and offers advice for when you have to redesign a legacy application that is part of a user's everyday life. Resources cited in this episode: Designing Complex Apps for Specialized Domains (full-day course) Data Visualizations for Dashboards (4-min video) Dashboards: Making Charts and Graphs Easier to Understand (NN/g article) Why I Now Use “Four-Threshold” Flags On Dashboards (Nick Desbarats' article) Tesler's Law (Wikipedia article) Page's NN/g Articles and Videos (bio page)

Aren't all "user-centered" designs ethical by default if we're giving people what they want? Not exactly. Maria Rosala, UX Specialist at NN/g, shares her thoughts about how we can be better researchers and designers by asking critical questions about our research and design decisions, evaluating important tradeoffs, and ensuring we include the right people in our research and design process. Resources Cited in this Episode: User Interviews (UX Certification course) Design Tradeoffs and UX Decision Frameworks (UX Certification course) Ethics in User Research (1-hr online seminar) You Are Not The User: The False-Consensus Effect (free article) TED Talk: How I'm fighting bias in algorithms | Joy Buolamwini (9 min YouTube video) Also related: How Inclusive Design Expands Business Value (1-hr online seminar)