Using Crazy 8s, Dot Voting, and Solution Sketching to Communicate, Decide, and Improve Innovative Concepts Sketching has its origins in the early Renaissance, when it was used to capture flitting ideas and give them a physical existence. Fast forward to the 20th century, when drawing emerged as a crucial component…

Bring together a cross-functional team to accomplish amazing things in just 5 days — The 5 Day Design Sprint was initially created at Google as a way to quickly come up with ideas, make prototypes, and test them in a close-to-real environment while spending minimal money. In this series, you will learn the six phases of a design sprint. Understand Gaining understanding is the first…

Agreeing on design principles with your sprint team prior to sketching can make decisions and reviews easier — Design principles have existed since the dawn of civilization, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that they began to take shape. One of the first movements to lay out a set of principles emphasizing functionalism, minimalism, and simplicity was the Bauhaus movement, which started in Germany in the 1920s.

Using Google’s HEART Framework to Identify Goals, Signals, and Metrics — The focus of this article is applying the HEART framework and the Goals-Signals-Metrics process not to convince you of it’s validity. However, I encourage you to read the original paper titled: Measuring the User Experience on a Large Scale: User-Centered Metrics for Web Applications For those that want TLDR version…

A tutorial on how to use the UX method called Affinity Diagraming to organize research findings in ideation workshops — Affinity Diagrams are a tool pioneered by User Experience Researchers modified from the KJ diagramming method (named after author Kawakita Jiro) to organize large amounts data into similar groups based on their natural relationships. Affinity diagraming is also known as affinity mapping, collaborative sorting, or snowballing. …

How to use the Rose, Bud, Thorn Framework to Analyze a Competitor’s Product — Rose, Bud, Thorn is an easy-to-use framework to quickly analyze competitors during a Design Sprint. The premise of the framework is Roses are positive, Buds are opportunities, and Thorns are negative. A more detailed application of the framework for competitive analysis is outlined below: 🌹 Roses are positive things. In…

A tutorial on using “How Might We” statements to solve product problems — I get it. You have been staring at blank screen or worse designing random prototypes in Figma just to ship a new feature that will probably bomb. We have all been there. Ask yourself this question: “Do I really know what the problem I am trying to solve is?” If…

Learn the tips and framework needed to ensure your design sprint is a success. — There is a lot of work that needs to happen before your design sprint runs smoothly. The most important of which is to define your Problem Statement for the sprint team. Problem Statements help everyone understand the purpose of the sprint. …