Sharpen your d*mn axe.
a One-hour conference talk.
Most design books and talks and conferences take an internal-team, product approach. An artifact approach. We have so much time and so much money and so many people and all that leadership committed to design thinking and customer experience. Let’s do all the things! Yay!
It’s bullshit.
We probably all agree, research is critical to the design process. But for freelancers, small companies, startups, and agencies, we don’t have the time or the money or all the people and all the resources we want to make research a part of our process. Even when we have clients invested in design thinking or customer experience, their schedules and budgets don’t give us the flexibility for anything that isn’t actionable or directly relatable to ROI. We’re going to need a deliverable approach.
Three key takeaways
Creating space in your process for research and discovery (especially when projects and clients really don’t want to give you any).
Making research actionable and meaningful for clients and teams.
The iceberg approach to following up research with a big ole’ tease of your design solutions.
