If you want to design the best product or experience for your team, you might want to read Communicating the UX Vision by Martina Hodges-Schell and James O’Brien. It isn’t a book about design thinking, or user research, or interaction design, but a collection of anti-patterns that we designers often exhibit that prevent us from working in the most effective way with the team. Below are my learnings from the book and I’d like to share them with you.
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5 Examples of Clever Use of Cognitive Biases in Product Design
How can we go beyond visuals when designing digital products?
So far in my blog, I’ve covered two ways to do that: One is to understand the user mental model. Another is to be more cognizant of the relationship between design and metrics. There’s a third way, which is to leverage cognitive biases.
According to verywellmind.com, cognitive biases are systematic errors in our thinking. They are the attempts of our brains to simplify information processing. They serve as heuristics, or rules of thumb, that can help us make decisions faster.
If you’re new to cognitive biases, here are five real-life examples I’ve collected that beautifully illustrate how they can be used in product design. Definitions of the biases below are pulled from Wikipedia.
Continue readingWin the Number Game: Strategies for Data-Driven Design
You are excited about your new design. It certainly looks more beautiful than the production, but when it comes time to A/B test, it doesn’t fare well. Key metrics drop and your craft cannot be shipped.
If you’re a product designer, does this resonate with you? Has something like this happened to you before?
Continue readingLet Ideas Collide with Reality: Learnings from Reading That Will Never Work
That Will Never Work may not be a book for designers at first glance. As I delved deeper into the journey that Marc Randolph went through to found Netflix, I realized that the book is actually full of amazing real-life examples of product thinking and idea testing. It’s a great read for not just aspiring entrepreneurs, but also product designers and managers.
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Tips on Creating Meaningful Designs - Fast
As product designers, one of the challenges we often face is to come up with new products or features quickly, whether that’s at work or during a job hunt. More often than not, the prompts of these assignments tend to be brief and the problems are likely open-ended. Without a lot of specifics, how can we create something meaningful without designing haphazardly and feeling overwhelmed? Having gone through multiple projects like this, I’ve learned to stick to the 3 principles below so I can navigate these situations more easily. I’m sharing them here and hope you’ll find them helpful.
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