User Experience Insights

Summary: Outside-In design organizations live and breathe user experience. The main differentiator between a technology driven organization and a Human Centered design approach is in decision-making. With Outside-In design, business and technology decisions are gathered, validated, measured and infused into the Sales, Marketing, Business and Technology fabric. This post (in 2 parts) explores those key organizational behaviors we've discovered and worked with for over 15 years. We've included to-do items for managers to action these insights. 

PART 1: (1-6)

1. Gather Evidence and Data

Why it is important: Evidence based design means that opinions are grounded in customer insights, specifically behavior captured and interpreted by trained UX professionals. Data informs design. Whether conversion optimization or efficiency improvement, you can not run on assumption any longer.

Summary: Most persona development efforts are self-sabotaging because of one reason: a lack of good user research. The good news is this can be quickly turned around with an incredible impact on your software project and your overall organization's return on investment. This article explores why and how you can salvage your personas once and for all. 

Personas as Garbage, but why?

Many organizations use personas. Personas are the fun customer sketches that software development teams use to prioritize user needs. However most persona efforts are junk, owing to the origins of data used to inspire personas. We know several product managers who don't "believe" in personas.