Consulting offers intellectual challenge and expertise building, but lacks long-term team bonding and showcasing the full project lifecycle
Being a multi skilled UX-er can drive you crazy, here is how to continually drive your creativity and how to pick and choose that slice of the cake that most challenges you.
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TLDR: Recently, I had the privilege of leading a Design Thinking on-site 3-Day UX workshop for a global financial news organisation, a pioneering force in the industry. These workshops marked the launch of the discovery phase for a groundbreaking new product, and I was thrilled to guide the team through an immersive and productive experience.
Before I begin, let’s be clear, planning and preparation are you best friends. Be aware, planning creative sessions like these take time. Allow double the preparation time to the actual workshop time, so this three-day think tank translates to six days of dedicated planning. Having this knowledge is golden, don’t set yourself up to fail because you haven’t done your homework. Avoid the pitfalls of a hastily assembled workshop and set the stage for a truly groundbreaking experience.
(more…)Back in the day I consulted with a company on early concepts for NFC. Now, some years later it is interesting to re-visit those concepts and see that I wasn’t far off (where other concepts were way off!).
Ditching your travel card, your loyalty card and your credit card and replacing it with your trusty phone is a scary prospect for the legions of our ever-so-forgetful society that loose their phone once a year. But in reality, giving up these collection of work security cards, Eurostar tickets and debit / payment cards is an easy choice – just allow your phone to mange it all.
Back in 2008 I worked with a prominent high street loan provider, on their mobile roadmap for the next two years. Believe me, there were some very high-flying ideas floating around that boardroom… here is a high level run-though of some of the concepts.
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TLDR: Understanding your users through persona building and experience mapping helps uncover critical user needs across the customer lifecycle.
TLDR: Analyse competitor apps selling wedding cakes, you identified promotions and discount opportunities, bundles and samples to nudge customers towards Pre-made packages to increase premium sales.
I was recently challenged by a prominent UK-based high street retailer to conceptualise and design an App based upselling mechanic for wedding cakes, looking for an effective solution to drive sales to a more premium product.
(more…)TL;DR; A large automotive client wanted to improve their dealer portal but the client needed guidance on understanding their audience’s needs and wants. Personas generation is a great to focus the team’s expectations and contributes to a better product and service.
I was recently asked to provide insight for a dealer portal for a very large automotive client. There was a definite opportunity in their market to improve their internal front end offering – but very early on it was clear there was a lack of understanding of who their audience was. How their needs and wants differed and what, as customers, they were looking for.
So, before deep-diving in the UX, I produced a selection of personas to focus down the teams expectations and unite the groups thinking. I’m taking for granted that we are all aware that personas represent a typical user, based on user research and incorporate user goals, needs, and interests. Here I created four (4) personas, Hilary, Gary, Donald and Bernie;
