Facilitative Design Leadership

Welcome to a new year! I realized that I haven’t sent an update in months, and this seems like a good time to let you know what’s up...

“No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime Membership.” — Jeff Bezos Although it is natural to assume that customer research is...

I’ve been thinking about waterfalls lately. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the flow of water as an analogy to personal and...

Have you been adopting “Best Practices” for your organization? For many years, I described the central design group that I used to work...

My grandfather was born in 1906 and died thirty years ago. I remember thinking about the changes he’d seen in his life. As a kid, most...

Every person who takes action is important in creating a change.  Every action they take adds to the impact that they make. For example,...

I was recently watching this video from Dorie Clark, who was talking with executives about how important taking time to think about...

On cold nights like this one, I nearly always think about having a fire in the fireplace. As I was thinking about the steps to starting a...

A friend recently was recently asked her to do something that was urgent for work, though she had more important things on her plate. By...

This sign once hung in a train station in England. A reminder to take a moment in the transition between things to reset and get ready....

In June, I taught a course at UXPA on Sketchstorming for Alignment and Ideation. The class was focused on UX professionals who might...

My tip of the month is for using a simple phrase when doing customer research interviews with customers. These three little words carry a...

Site visits (aka Contextual Inquiry) are an amazingly rich source for customer understanding. We typically go on site visits when we are...

1. Shadow them doing their work. As you watch them capture several things: what are the tasks that they do (and what are the steps in...

I was reflecting the other day about some of the more disconcerting lessons I’ve learned in my career. Many of them fell into the bucket...

I asked for a show of hands: "How many of you have built something that customers didn't use?" The entire room raised their hands. Some...

You've just had a brainstorm and generated a huge number of amazing ideas. How do you narrow down the options? There are a number of...

Play is good for you. It relieves stress, sparks creativity and releases endorphins. Play is highly underrated in work environments,...

Ah, starting a new business. It is all about learning and pivoting. One of the things I have been doing is offering classes to...

Every year is a new start. Every day, hour and moment is too, but with new years nearly half of Americans make “resolutions” for the next...