Assessing risk in automating users' decision making

Hey folks,

Here are the top 10 things I found worth sharing and your UX tip of the week.

UX tip of the week

If you're negotiating with product on adding automation or AI, lead the team through two exercises —  risk matrix and cost/value equation.

• Tally up the number of hazards and the likelihood and impact of these risks with a risk-assessment exercise.

• Leverage the user’s decision-making equation to capture user costs and the value/benefits.

• Review them side-by-side. Do the risks and costs outweigh the potential benefit?

Top 10 things worth sharing this week

1. How do you prevent bad actors from using products to harm others or themselves? Look back at Apple's AirTags case study and examine how bad actors use your product or competitors' platforms to find the gaps.
   
   

2. For the love of fonts: Get open source Bricolage Grotesque for free. Check out Nick Pattison's top 10 paid foundries and their fonts. And, revisit past identified fonts in popular culture volumes 1 and 2.
   
   

3. Read 8 stories from individuals who navigated the IC career path to staff/lead level promotions.
   
   

4. Studies show that psychological safety allows for taking moderate risks, speaking your mind, and being creative — just the types of behavior that lead to market breakthroughs. Related:  High-performing teams need psychological safety and leadership can exhibit this in vulnerability as a strength.
   
   

5. On value: Indi Young shared thoughts on the need to define value beyond faster-easier-efficient-scalable. Akshay Devazya unpacks product value through the lens of absolute, relative, and customer perspective.
   
   

6. Don’t know how to achieve WCAG2.1 accessibility requirements in your design library? Indeed’s Stephanie Hagedorn talked about how to approach this successfully. "According to a report from IBM, the price of addressing violations after release can be up to 30 times more than if they’re discovered while still in the design phase.” Related: better accessibility needs user research.
   
   

7. On story telling: Leverage Pixar’s guide to storytelling (alt) and improve your craft of telling a compelling story for your portfolio.
   
   

8. Need help motivating your team? Leverage the Motivation Matrix by Robyn Rap.
   
   

9. With design’s shift from outputs to outcomes, it is prudent to place outcome measures for users’ top task in the business driver tree and to advocate for the right level of automation use.
   
   

10. “Your emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual well-being will impact your professional responsibilities, so you must prioritize maintaining and promoting a holistic understanding of your well-being.” Vivianne Castillo shares insights into the emotional toll of working in UX. Related: Work on yourself first, then improve empathy at work. 

Thanks for reading!

This newsletter is a free hand-crafted resource for the UX community and beyond. If you like it, subscribe here and consider forwarding it to a friend.

Sincerely,
Gerren