This is part 2 of a two-part post. Read part 1.
In the last installment, we talked about the distinction between Hands contractors and Brains consultants. Hands are brought in by the team as an extra resource to complete work the team already knows how to do. Brains are brought in by the team to provide expertise and insight on the best way to do something the team is struggling with.

Hands and Brains require completely different skills, have different approaches, and run into different challenges. Knowing which you want to be is important. … »

A strategy is a set of coordinated, orchestrated, planned actions, or tactics, which will take you along a journey to reach a desired future state, over an established period of time. Design objectives are conditions or outcomes that a project must meet, often of tactical nature. User experience (UX) strategy shouldn’t therefore be confused with design objectives. This article is about how to plan and coordinate actions to organisationally achieve good UX. … »

When looking at a product have you ever heard yourself saying “why would anyone buy this?” or “why would people use this?” – I have. Unfortunately, there have been many times when I look at products and experience the “I don’t get it moment”. I mean, I understand the functions being demonstrated but I don’t understand what problem the product team is trying to solve. So we put our doubts aside and start working on the product anyway as you know at some point you can help simplify, redesign and make usability improvements. But something still niggles at you. What is missing? … »

We often discuss the need for us to be designing for an experience. And we talk about the importance of experience design – and design generally – playing a strategic role in business decisions. But we’re less forthcoming when it comes to discussing what is an experience strategy?
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