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An insight into the relationship between various brain models, decision making and UX

Article by Sreya Majumdar
UX and decision making
  • Your brain does a lot of things when you try to make a decision, here are some of them:
    • Survival instinct — human species have evolved physically as well as mentally and always adapt to their environment to survive.
    • Wiring — the pre-existing knowledge and emotions associated with the information create deeper belief systems which dictate how the user feels, thinks and responds.
    • Biases — humans begin to learn through the loop of prediction ↔ correction and this process helps reduce uncertainties.
    • Design — designers need to tap into psychological mechanisms and predict irrationalities and decision-making patterns (without being coloured by our own biases).
    • Choice architecture — limiting choices can cause discomfort to the users.
  • When making a decision, we can:
    • Present choices in a way that would not require much cognitive effort.
    • Cater to the users’ needs and biases (conscious and subconscious).
    • Drive action.
    • Appeal to the emotion of the user.
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5 min read
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When scaling a design system, it’s necessary to consider the goals of your system, architect it for scaling, and strategically determine when and how you want to grow. Read the guide for your system scaling.

Article by Tony Walt
Scaling Your Design System
  • It’s important to think about what direction in which you take the system in order to get the most value from it.
  • Tony Walt, Senior Director leading Spectrum’s Design System, shares his perspective on scaling a design system:
    • Work smarter, nor harder — plan what kind of system you want to build and determine how to best get there in a sustainable way.
    • Flexibility of The System — look at a spectrum of flexibility from opinionated to loose.
    • Shaping Your System — there are two primary ways in which your system can grow, it can get wider by adding more consumers or deeper by adding more to the system.
    • Planning for Support — focus on self-service support, determine how to prioritize your support load, and track your unplanned work.
  • It’s necessary to consider the goals of your system, architect it for scaling, and strategically determine when and how you want to grow.
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9 min read
Scaling a design system

A process to design an MVP using behavioral design. Target behaviors identification and prioritization models.

Article by Ignacio Parietti
Behavioral Design Models — Where should you focus your MVP design?
  • The article provides a set of models (simple systems to follow) that will help you get from an idea or concept to an MVP definition:
    • What behaviors to design for
    • How long should you spend trying to solve the problems they propose
  • The objective of the Behavioral Design Models is to find some certainties in this regard and order your goals so that you set a course in an ever-shifting ocean
  • How to define target behavior:
    • List all known actors in a row
    • List all behaviors that show value to each actor in a column
    • Order the behaviors in descending order according to their value to the user. Follow the order defined by the ERG theory of needs
    • Reorder the actors in ascending order of value they receive from the product (the one that gets the least value first)
    • Numerate the behaviors from the resulting table, from left to right and top to bottom
    • The resulting list is the order of target behaviors to tackle
  • Behavioral Design Model is used to estimate and decide how long you will spend with each one of the problems
  • To define design effort within the Behavioral Design Model, estimate how complex it would be to find a suitable solution using only numbers present in the Fibonacci sequence
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8 min read
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A research synthesis as an essential step in performing user research. Follow this framework for conducting a quality Research synthesis.

Article by Alexis Neigel
Using Research Synthesis to Build Better Products
  • A research synthesis is a powerful method to uncover new insights about users and surface durable insights about customers though it is not always considered an essential step in performing user research.
  • The more streams of insight are woven into the synthesis, — that is to say, insights from market research, sales, qualitative research, and quantitative research — the better your understanding of the user and customer you’re representing with your products and experiences will be.
  • Lexi Neigel, Senior UX Research Lead at Microsoft, shares a framework for conducting a quality research synthesis:
    • Step 1. Understand your motivations and goals for conducting a research synthesis.
    • Step 2. Start generating research questions to guide the synthesis.
    • Step 3. Begin your literature search.
    • Step 4. Manage and distill your user insights.
    • Step 5. Share and communicate your user insights.
    • Step 6. Maintain your research synthesis.
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8 min read
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As a UX researcher, using a different lingo to describe what you do could be beneficial to promoting the craft

Article by Yaron Cohen
Is “research” the best word to describe what UX researchers do?
  • Learning languages can help you become a better UX professional as it matters for understanding humans.
  • There are different ways to reframe what UX researches do.
  • What’s so problematic with the word “research”?
    • It sounds academic
    • It sounds time-consuming and expensive
    • People confuse market and UX research
    • It sounds like a cost center to business managers
    • It sounds ambiguous
  • What to use instead of “generative research”:
    • Customer Discovery
    • Problem exploration
    • Benchmark/review of the current state
    • Opportunity mapping
  • What to use instead of “evaluative research”:
    • UX/Usability audit
    • Design evaluation/validation
    • Monitoring/review
  • UX researchers aren’t academic researchers so changing the lingo around what “Research” means in UX context is the means to achieve this goal.
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8 min read
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There are different ways participatory design can influence young people with cognitive disability. Read reflections on co-design methodology and ways it can help.

Article by Jacqueline Wechsler
Reflections: Co-Designing with Young People with Cognitive Disability
  • In this article, Jax Wechsler, Principal Designer at Sticky Design Studio, shares:
    • Facts about Young People with a cognitive disability that may be useful when working with this group
    • Discussion and reflections about her methodological choices
  • Things to know about Young People with cognitive disabilities:
    • Ability levels can be very nuanced, every Young Person is different
    • Life Tasting not Life Wasting!
    • The level of advocacy of parents impacts experiences and opportunities for Young People with Cognitive Disabilities
    • Social inclusion and relationships are keys to wellbeing
  • Reflections on Co-Design Methodology:
    • Recruitment is hard!
    • Using referrals and ‘snowball sampling’
    • It’s important to build rapport
    • Understanding ability and research design
    • Cultural probes/diary studies are gold
    • Parents mediating participation
    • Flexibility is key
    • Value in participation
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10 min read
Reflections : Co-Designing with Young People with Cognitive Disability

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