Image by MaggieMason via Flickr Leah Buley lives at http://ugleah.tumblr.com/
Who is team of one?
Often people assume it’s someone in a small organizations, or just starting their careers. But she’s actually thinking of a state of mind, rather than the situation.
Working with interesting constraints, that created opportunities and makes our work [of UX designers] interesting.
Humble origins, we’re standing at the crossroads at what we’re doing now, and what we’re doing in the future. The best we can do is to make the best of it.
It’s all about people, but the process matters too
Caring for people won’t make a good experience, but it’s the process.
Stakeholdeers -> Planning -> Saying No -> Looking at content
It’s not just about a process, but having a right process.
[Leah tells her life story]
Things are changing
Five tips for the team of one, involving:
Lightweight tools – get comfortable with pen and paper. Pen and paper is important, because it signals to other people that this is the part where it’s allowed other people to give feedback
Collaboration – Think big pictures. Put things on the wall, and create space for conversations to emerge – http://tinyurl.com/sketchboards
Be a good host – Open our doors to brainstorming to other people who are not UX designers. Allow other people to start sharing. Every single one has an opinion how it should be done, and it’s going to come out at one point or other. Better earlier than ever.
Decorate your space – show your work as you work on it. People think of design as a finished product and don’t understand that it’s a process and that they’re important part of the process.
Clarify UX goals – Business needs + User needs = Design criteria.
We all know that it’s not enough to have business needs, or just user needs. A great user experience it’s something that tangible and draws us to get back.
Design criteria is a tool to help with that – http://tinyurl.com/designcriteria
