How to Self-Advocate for More Customer Face Time (and why it’s important)

There are many stories of design successes attributed to the right level of understanding of the customer. Product designers make decisions, daily, about how a product is going to look and perform. So, we need to really understand the customer. And, to really get the customer, engineers need to spend time with them. Sometimes, the business doesn’t want us to interact with…

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Design for User Tasks using an Urgent/Important Matrix

We’ve collected all sorts of preliminary information about our users that we’re using for a new product design. We may be faced with so much data we’re not sure where to turn first, or what design feature is a priority. There’s a simple, 2-way matrix we can use to help us sort it all out: an urgent/important…

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Types of Design Analyses possible with User Process Flowcharts

Flowcharting isn’t just useful for manufacturing processes. We can use them in lots of ways to help us with design of products and to identify quality characteristics. After all, products are used by people, and the way in which they use them is a process. compare ideal vs. actual flowcharts identify where there is disagreement…

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My product works. Why don’t they want it?

Have you ever designed a product that works but that customers just don’t want to use? We’ll review some tools and strategies to help prevent that from happening before product launch, or to help as a starting point when you plan for your version 2.0.

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