User experience tools for lean or agile teams.

Simple techniques to get you cheap, fast user data.

Bring design thinking into your dev process.

How-to descriptions so you can do it yourself.


One week to create a User Centered Design

Fast methods your team can use to learn about their users, turn that information into designs, and plan their upcoming sprints all in one week.

Stay user-focused during development

Once you start development work, you’ll have lots of user experience questions. Here are some techniques for staying on track to deliver real user delight.

Rinse and repeat: gathering feedback for the next round

  • Staying user-focused during development
  • Find your experts: support call, sales team, forum feedback, and other second hand data (coming soon)
  • Usage metrics (coming soon)
  • Instrumentation (coming soon)

Tips to make your research more effective

What type of test can/should you use?

A cheat sheet to work out what discount method to use, and when to hire a specialist. Where you should run studies at different points in the dev cycle. Also, specific “how to” advice and things to watch out for with each discount method.

Online tools to help you run cheap, fast studies

The web can bring your users to you, if you don’t mind losing some fidelity along the way. Check out a list of sites that specialize in different types of online testing.

Learn more with my online classes

I have created classes that go into these topics in more depth. They are hosted online at LinkedIn Learning. Here’s a taster and links to the full courses:

Design Thinking: Understanding the Process (40m)
Course: Design Thinking: Understanding the Process

An overview of the activities you’ll undertake during a design thinking exercise, with discussion of the benefits of running the session in-house and unleashing the creativity of your own teams.

Design Thinking: Implementing the Process (45m)
Course: Design Thinking: Implementing the Process

A deeper dive into each step of the design thinking process, to help would-be facilitators get up to speed with the philosophy and practicalities of running your own sessions.

Facilitating Remote Design Thinking (1h 20m)
Course: Facilitating Remote Design Thinking

Need to run a Design Thinking exercise with your remote team? Here’s a companion course to my popular Design Thinking: Implementing the Process training. Includes a Miro template you can download and customize, and loads of tips on how to make such an intensive creative process work at a distance.

User Experience for Web Design (2h)
Course: User Experience for Web Design

Learn how to apply simple design principles to web sites and other interfaces. These basic principles are the foundation for all interfaces.

Interaction Design for the Web (1h 45m)
Course: Interaction Design for the Web

The psychological reasons why good UI design works. These cognitive, perception, and physical concepts will let you see why people behave they way they do, so that you can build websites and apps that work the way your users think.

UX Foundations: Usability Testing (1h 30m)
Course: UX Foundations: Usability Testing

The foundational method for user researchers. Learn how to recruit participants, create a study plan and test script, run a series of usability sessions, and then report the results back to a development team in an actionable way.

Learning to Write for the Web (1h 25m)
Course: Learning to Write for the Web

Writing for products and web sites is different to writing essays or fiction. Learn the key principles of online content creation, and the basics of layered or structured content designed for browsing and information retrieval.

If you aren’t already a LinkedIn Learning subscriber, then check with your employer or school – many have org-wide plans.