Collecting

1. Why I can’t convince executives to invest in UX (and neither can you)

   Jared Spool explains there is no silver bullet to gaining executive UX buy-in. Instead, a tactful discovery of executive convictions that could leverage a sympathy for UX

2. User personas - don’t let them die…

   Anna Miedzianowska’s advice on keeping personas alive, improving cross-team buy-in, and including them into your daily process.

3. A designer’s guide to Parkinson’s Law of Triviality

   Daniel Burka from Google Ventures shares techniques of how to manage misaligned team focus and prevent “bikeshedding”.

4. What makes a good question

   Part of Chris How’s three-parter blog post ’How to get better answers from asking better questions’, this post walks you through 8 top tips for forming better questions for customer and stakeholder interviews, and surveys.

5. The Lean Event — Day One

   Matt Jukes’ live blog notes from day one The Lean Event, Brighton, UK.

6. The Art of Storytelling

   Julie Zhuo talks of the power of story telling, timing and understanding people.

7. Unicorns don’t exist. Generalists do.

   Emmet Connolly from Intercom explains the merits of generalist and specialist designers and who and when to add to your team.

8. The User’s Journey

   Donna Lichaw describes the process of story mapping to discover the “why” of user behaviour and validate design hypothesis.

9. Five reasons why design sprints are the best way to kick off a new product initiative

   Joshua Porter explains the value of research, divergent and convergent design, prototyping and usability testing over an intensive five day design sprint.

10. 8 common dysfunctions of design teams—and what to do about them

    John Zeratsky highlights common dysfunctional practices within design teams and how to go about changing the team culture to build better products.