Chronologically

1. It’s Never a Good Time to Do Research

   @mulegirl’s take on the excuses we make not to run a research study and accepting the discomfort of asking questions.

   Why design research is postponed.

   The truth is that people tend to procrastinate and avoid activities that make them anxious in favor of those that deliver immediate satisfaction, and then justify their behavior with excuses after the fact.

   Terrific analogy for the role research in our own lives and how ridiculous it would be to use the same cadence or excuses for not doing research.

   Imagine you were going to buy a new car and I said that you couldn’t talk to anyone who had recently bought a car or read any reviews, or consider the real-world driving conditions. All you could do is run a 10-question survey of whoever volunteered to answer with no incentive and no follow-up.

2. Critique your shortcut to better designs

   @chrishow shares some inspiring advice for better design outcomes by running design critiques.

   I particularly like Chris’ feedback framing structure.

   I like how … (to pull out a positive thing to keep), and Even better if … (to suggest something to reconsider or change).

3. Ethical Maturity in User Research

   @maria_rosala from Nielsen Norman Group writes about ethical maturity in user research and their assessment.

4. The Hypothesis Prioritization Canvas

   @jboogie’s 2x matrix for prioritising hypotheses.

   The idea is that we write our ideas, not as requirements, but as our best guesses for how to deliver value and with clear success criteria to tell us whether our idea was valuable and we delivered it in a compelling way.

5. Metrics Mountain - a realistic visualisation of any customer lifecycle metrics

   @jboogie makes a suggested replacement for the funnel metaphor. Introducing the Metrics Mountain.

6. 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design

   @jakobnielsen’s 10 usability heuristics guidelines for interaction design.

7. Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility

   Stanford’s 10 guidelines for boosting a website‘s credibility.

8. @asktog’s thorough revised and expanded first principles of interaction design.

9. On Expertise, Mistakes, and Baking Bread

   A nice little post form @jseiden about making and recognising mistakes, leaning and bread making.

10. Aaker Brand Personality Dimension

    An interesting introduction into Aaker’s five dimensions of brand personality.