Brainstorming is better with one than many

Hey folks,

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

UX tip of the week

Stop hosting UX group brainstorming workshops.

Instead, set up time for individual brainstorming to come up with more and better ideas. Then, collate them for group review.

• Studies have shown lone thinkers develop more and better ideas than group environments. 

• Make sure to create an enforced safe zone in which ideas can flourish. Ensure you have a vision from leadership. If not, start there first.

• Let the participants conduct individual brainstorming of problems and initiatives separately, namely: 

  • Core: UX designer, product manager, engineering lead

  • Extended: UX researcher, content designer, data scientist, sales/cs rep(s)

• Validate and iterate on the most promising ideas with users. Rinse and repeat.

Top 10 things worth sharing this week

1. Use a laddering technique in research to drill down on “the Why” with these materials in hand: attributes, consequences, affordances (e.g. perceptible, hidden, false) and value. Learn more here, here, and here.
   
   

2. Have you tried generating UX flowcharts and mind maps in ChatGPT? The Whimsical Plugin looks like a solid plugin to experiment with and can be compared with Show Me Diagrams and Eraser. Bonus: did you know Canva has a ChatGPT plugin too?
   
   

3. Hard to argue with studying these subjects before (or in tandem with) UX: philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, critical reasoning, statistics, and writing.
   
   

4. “Employers perpetuate the gap whenever they determine the pay of new hires based on their salary history.” What can UX practitioners do to change this? Peter Waters proposes that we design a universal job evaluation.
   
   

5. Jess Eddy created a tiny brief template which is a good start to aligning stakeholders. Cross reference it with these briefs by Asana and D5.
   
   

6. “Get the names and emails of your presentation viewers. Pick people from the list and send them an email. Piece together a story of how research [might have] led to invisible impact all across [your] workplace.” Learn more about finding your hidden UX research impact by Indeedian Eli Goldberg.
   
   

7. For those interested in service design, my favorite book on the subject is This Is Service Design Doing. “Servicedesign is a iterative and flexible process, meaning that you can change your approach as you learn more about your users and their needs.” See also: ultimate guide to service blueprints.
   
   

8. Follow Eric Bailey’s journey to uncover assumptions about using assistive technology and discuss equivalent experience. "Equivalent experiences are all about ensuring everyone can use something you’ve made with the same relative degree of effort."
   
   

9. Enjoy a brief comparison of design tools and their computer memory usage.
   
   

10. These 6 outcome indicators for leadership are a helpful refresher to focus on whats most important: clear external impact, trust from founders, lateral organization influence, team inspiration, emergence of new leaders, and hiring power. 

Thanks for reading!

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Sincerely,
Gerren