Ch 1: Shooting Ourselves in the Foot “the simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.” – Robert Conquest From time to time, it is necessary to turn our attention to the processes of our Read more…
DRAFT This living essay is still in draft form. It is a continuation from my Design and Neoliberalism Introduction – I would suggest reading that one first. Please mind the typos, half-finished thoughts, and informal language. If you have comments, please email them to me. The purpose of this essay Read more…
You know that investing time and cash in development without really knowing the situation you’re building for is dangerous. You need to know more about your user, but do you need a serious, large-scale design research project, or some quick user validation? It’s really not too hard to find out. Read more…
In my previous post, I talked a little bit about the psychological theories that relate to design research. In this article, I explain how we put these into practice. If you haven’t yet, it may be helpful to go back and real my previous posts for context about what design Read more…
em·pa·thy ˈempəTHē/ noun The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In a fantastic new video, New Venture Mentor, Cate Costa, describes an interesting quagmire about asking customers the “right questions” when trying to make a decision that affects your business. “Let’s say you’re doing some market research Read more…
You’ve done some hard thinking to see whether design research is right for your project and spent some time preparing your design research team with the information that they’ll need to be successful. Now it’s time for the fun part: riding along with the team to hear from your prospective Read more…
In my last post, I gave a quick introduction to design research. In this article, I’ll focus on what you can do as a business to prepare your team for the field. My next post gives some practical advice for the interview if you get to ride along with the research team! Read more…
Your developers have been coding furiously for days working on the “Minimum Viable Product” perfectly tuned for the most lucrative market (according to the pricey quant study that just came back). When demo day comes you proudly show off the latest features – a marvel, to be certain; all of the Read more…