As a User Experience practitioner, you learn about UX in school (even if it wasn't called UX), you improve your skills in practice by being part of project teams, and you update your knowledge at a UX conference or training. But what about the people around you? Where do Project Managers, Product Managers, Developers, Sales, QA, Strategists, and Managers learn about User Experience?
After an appearance at last year’s UX Week, Cameron Gray, Vice President of Engineering at online training experts Mindflash will return to our stage at this year’s MX Conference with a talk about Agile and UX.
As a design process freak, I jumped at the chance to interview Cameron and ask him about the way he is integrating UX in Mindflash’s Agile development methodology.
[Peter Boersma] You (re)joined Mindflash almost 4 years ago, after a 4-year stint at another company, and run the development team. What have you changed to the way that team is managed? What…
Recently, I lead a project that included “designing the future of X”. Any time you have these kinds of projects, the sky can be the limit. But, without limits, the chances of success are often low.
Our first step was to conduct a brainstorming session. The goal was to get all the ideas out of our heads and onto the wall. No judgements, just sketch and write as many ideas that came to us. We rewarded quantity over quality at that point as it helped ensure that everyone was heard and nothing was shot down yet.
After an hour, this…
The hand-drawn loveliness above is a homemade attribute card made ‘specially for me by my colleague and friend, Kate Rutter. What is an attribute card, you ask? It’s one of my favorite team building tools, that’s what.
Developed by Google’s Margaret Gould Stewart, attribute cards list an adjective such as “resourceful,” “organized,” or “strategic.”
I use these cards at the beginning of projects to help my team identify what they need from one another to succeed. Here’s how:
Spread the cards out on the table, face up.
One team member closes their eyes.
While…
In this video, Peter Merholz shares a project plan for designing products 3-5 years into the future. This is the second installment of Whiteboard Confessionals, in which we share what’s happening on our office white boards.
It’s been said that the two hardest parts of a project are the beginning and the end. In the middle, it’s often perfectly clear what should have gone differently at the start. But when you’re kicking off a project, you’re often so preoccupied trying to establish cordial working relationships and understand the nature of the project that some of the trivial but essential details get neglected. That’s too bad, because it’s often the trivial essentials that build trust.
Below, I share my list of things to do at the beginning of each project. Most…
An interview with Scott Berkun, author and public speaker on
Show Length: 20 minutes
In 1956 a documentary called The Mystery of Picasso was released, showing two hours of Pablo Picasso doing what he did best: making paintings. This film gave the public a first-hand glimpse directly into this infamous artist’s creative process. Public speaker and writer Scott Berkun and I got together for tea to talk about the film and our own experiences around creativity. As both managers of creative teams and creators of work ourselves, we looked at how our processes aligned with Picasso’s…or where we could…
I just finished working on a project where half of my team was in our Austin office and half was here in San Francisco, which meant 2 different time zones. In addition, our client was in yet another city. Since this was my first time working with such a split team, my learning curve around remote communication, meeting facilitation, and maintaining a strong team dynamic was pretty steep. I thought I’d take a moment to compile those learnings and share.
Tackling Time Zones
Adjust daily schedule for both offices: A couple of days per week, work on…
Earlier this week I got to see what Brian Cronin will be sharing at the end of our Managing Design Projects event, coming up on February 5, 2009, and I got really excited at the end of his presentation. This past year or so I’ve spent some time talking to experts in the field about managing visual design, and sharing ideas about project management. But in my conversation with Brian, he had me commit to something that I’m going to do to expand my practice of program management, and I’ve been bubbling with excitement ever since (yes, I said…
Last month we announced Managing Design Projects, a ‘grassroots’ Adaptive Path conference, coming up on February 5th 2009. Since we announced the event, we’ve had people from around the world register. We’re thrilled to create this new community of people that help make design work happen behind the scenes.
We also announced that Scott Berkun will be keynoting at the event. He is not only author of Myths of Innovation, and Making Things Happen, but a kick-ass speaker with great stories from his experience managing projects at Microsoft.
Lynne Waldera, founder and CEO of InMomentum, Inc, a management consultancy,...