User Research, Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Collaboration
The customer is a stranger and humans are not used to paying so much attention to the needs of strangers. The organisation is a tribe, and each department or division is its own sub-tribe. It’s so much easier and more comfortable to be organization-centric. — Gerry McGovern
This reminds me of Dave Gray’s excellent Culture and Change talk at DareConf 2013. Dolphin Department vs. Shark Corp; understanding the organisation’s culture and its potential for resisting change.
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.
Sage advice from His Holiness. Know when to stay silent during user research activities to elicit the most valuable insights.
Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design — Dieter Rams
The average webpage is now the size of the original Doom. — Ronan Cremin
An excellent way to rationalise page size and its implications for web performance.
Post-it notes are the confetti of truth! — Anon.
A tongue-in-cheek Post-it note quote overheard at the London Agile Content Meetup with Sarah Richards (user stories to share responsibility for content).
Love it, and the new Post-it note website; so much inspiration.
No gossiping, no intrigue, no pussy-footing around problems and no telling people what you think they want to hear whilst privately disagreeing. We will be transparent in our dealings.
Violence in our contact with others means that we forgo more compassionate perspectives and effective strategies for meeting needs. Recognise that everyone is trying to be effective within their own context, culture and constraints. Seek to bridge gulfs in communication and mindset. If you feel frustrated, you’re doing it wrong. Rinse and repeat.
Real web design is what Google, Amazon, Twitter, and Facebook do. It’s about making the customer the hero, the center of attention. It’s about facilitating the customer to do what they want to do. Digital is not a technology. It’s a way of thinking that puts the customer first.
Those with the silo mentality allow a situation to develop where the customer is presented with a jumbled set of jigsaw pieces. One thing is for certain: customers do not visit you in order to do jigsaw puzzles.
We are all chimpanzees that got lucky. Our firmware hasn’t changed that much since we came down from the trees.
Nothing is more effective than walking over to a colleague, showing some work, discussing, sketching, exchanging ideas, understanding facial expressions and body language, and reaching a resolution on a thorny topic.
Finally got around to reading my copy of Lean UX that I won at UX London 2013 (!)