In Berkun’s talk picked by the audience of Puget Sound SIGCHI, he ran through the biggest issues and advice. He goes into details on the mistakes in the post, so instead, here’s a table to see both the mistakes and the advice at the same time.

I thought it particularly interesting how he approached the talk:

Rather than talk about tactical mistakes, such as in prototyping and running studies, I focused on the ones we overlook the most, about attitude and culture.

So what do you think? What other mistakes do UX designers make?

Ever asked yourself how you can make more impact on your projects? Instead of reacting to poor product decisions, being in a position to drive real change? To be able to sit with a product team and make recommendations positively, that are implemented in a place that supports you? Now some of this relates to your ability to communicate clearly, the culture you work in, the receptiveness of what you do, your own knowledge and leadership. There are different flavours of leadership covering but not limited to – leading a design effort, managing a project team and providing a strategic direction. A world looking for better leaders has led me to read more about the topic (see references below and please add your own). We all have an opportunity to reassess how we “create” and perhaps an opportunity to lead away from the traditional technology driven approaches to something else?

So the question is:

What are the ingredients to become a great leader?

References:

• Making Movies is Hard Fun: Building Tools for Telling Stories- http://2010.uxlondon.com/programme/2010-05-19/hardfun/
• Becoming a design leader – http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/becoming-a-design-leader.html
• Using Stories for Design Ideas – http://johnnyholland.org/2010/06/15/using-stories-for-design-ideas/
• A Model for UX Career Growth – http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2010/06/11/a-model-for-ux-career-growth/
• Achieving Design Focus: An Approach to Design Workshops – http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/05/achieving-design-focus-an-approach-to-design-workshops.php
• UX Leadership – http://uxleadership.com/
• The 3 Steps for Creating an Experience Vision – http://www.uie.com/articles/experience_vision/
• Becoming a Customer Experience-Driven Business – http://blogs.hbr.org/merholz/2009/02/becoming-a-customer-experience.html
• What is an Experience Strategy? – http://johnnyholland.org/2009/06/04/what-is-an-experience-strategy/