Emma Millar

Had a great night at the Dublin UX meetup! 🧠✨ Learned a bit more accessibility and the importance of creating inclusive experiences, also a practical guide to breaking down accessibility into manageable steps for Design Systems. #UXDesign #Accessibility #DesignSystem #AtomicDesign #DublinUX

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Our historical journey of discovery continues in my latest design blog where we delve into the world of UCD and service design. #ucd #servicedesign #history #designhistory #design #ux #uxdesign

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Check out this mobileLIVE blog article on the dos and don'ts of design thinking! Some of my thoughts have been added :) #designthinking #design #uxdesign #ux.

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Great design isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about solving real business problems.🎨📈 When design decisions are made in isolation, they can clash with business goals, leading to missed opportunities. By embedding business considerations into the design process, we can create products that not only look good but also drive growth and user engagement. ✨The key is to keep communication open between design and business teams, ensuring both are aligned on the same objectives and working in the same direction✨ How do you ensure your designs contribute to the business’s success? #ProductDesign #BusinessGoals #DesignStrategy #DesignForGrowth #BusinessImpact #DesignAndBusiness

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Struggling to level up as a designer? Companies I work with have design teams eager to be heard and secure a spot at the 'grown-ups' table. BUT… 1. They don’t lead teams to success. 2. They neglect problem-solving and results. 3. They focus on delivering outputs. How do I build trust and get heard? I listen and diagnose problems. My best work comes from an 80% understanding of the problem and 20% uninterrupted work. How do I tap into the specifics? 1. Get the right people involved early. 2. Complete a detailed product spec. → Why are we doing this? → Who are we targeting? → What evidence or data do we have? → How will we measure success? → What are the key risks? → Are there any known limitations? 3. Focus on solving problems and delivering results. Without a deep understanding of what we are designing, I would waste company time, money and effort, not building the trust I need to get heard. It's 10x harder that way! --- 𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰 𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲? ♻ Repost this post and comment "SPEC" (I'll send it to you)

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When giving design feedback, remember: it’s not going on your fridge. You likely aren’t the user or audience. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the colour or your wife thinks it needs to be green. Stakeholders: help your designers out by asking what specifically they are looking for feedback on. Keep your feedback objective and in context of the objective and brief. Ask questions. Designers: give context, explain your designs and how they meet the brief or user story. Help your stakeholders to help you. Ask questions.

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I'm in a UR, UX bubble, so I have a question about life outside... Do other specialisms in technology, for example Business Analysts or Solution Architects to name but two, debate the merits or otherwise of using AI in their work as much as the UR and UX folk? If they do, can someone point me to some points of view from outside my bubble. (if only I could be bothered to make an AI image of me in a bubble to illustrate this post.)

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My first blog post! Take a look at the similarities between goldsmithing and user research 👩‍🏭 👩‍💻  I'd love to hear your thoughts

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I wrote a little something for Lyft Design+. It provides a bit of insight into the our Design System team and our process. If that sort of thing tickles your fancy give it a read, like or share. Have you contributed to a design system before? If so, I’d love to hear about your biggest learnings and the challenges you faced along the way. https://lnkd.in/dfiMMBU5

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As designers we are constantly judge on our outcomes You could have taken the best decision based on your knowledge and still have a bad outcome If you get judge solely by that outcome (positive or negative) Might be a case of outcome bias... (Let's be honest we all have outcome bias 🫠) The outcome bias is a tendency to evaluate a decision based on its outcome even when those outcomes were influenced by factors beyond us That's why performance evaluations are so tricky, you could have done everything correctly and have still a bad result Sooo... how can we tackle it? ▶ Focus on the decision-making process, when, how, why x decision was taken. Learn from it regardless of how good or bad was it ▶ Change your perspective... What if the result is different, would you have done the same? ▶ Reflect on how long similar activities or decisions have taken in the past ▶ Collect and analyze data over time Let's build cultures that learns from both successes and failures 💪🏽

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Our Senior Product Designer Rosie Dent-Spargo held a superb session in February with the Product Design team to create values and principles. Using guidance from Dan Makoski's book Uplifting Design, the session was dynamic and layered. The focus wasn't solely on creation, but also how we might embed principles and values into daily work. This write up is the Rolls-Royce of "How to"s, and is a very valuable read for those looking to create and instil values and principles within any team. https://lnkd.in/e7DXm_Ca #productdesign #principles #values

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DESIGNERS: There are a lot of designers out of work at the moment. If you are fortunate to be in employment or have a decent contract, why not spend your lunch break today and think "how can I be kind and helpful?' and try to help the reach of a job applicant, or recommend someone for something, or just re-post anyone who has the 'Open to Work' banner on their page. Just one 'like', re-post, recommendation, comment for reach, one phone call, one connection, can be the difference between a designer being in or out of work. Let all help each other fill those roles and spread the kindness.

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When is the right time to hire a designer? What does 'practical design' really mean? Do I really walk my cat on a leash? You can find out the answers to all of these questions on the latest episode of the Calling Operator podcast with Laura Nicol! It was wonderful to share my own journey through startups over the last 8 years, talk about what I'm doing now as an independent Product Designer, and also how I approach my work. If you're a founder, a designer or even looking for some movie recommendations, then this is the ideal episode for you! Links to the podcast are in the comments 😊

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Something I’ve only just come to appreciate is how far Design Thinking has infiltrated user-centred design practises. Take Experience Mapping. Under UCD this was a great way to communicate a lot of pretty complicated qualitive and quantative data and share insight. It took significant amounts of time to put together. Design Thinking has essentially turned Experience Mapping into an ideation workshop where we get a bunch of people with variable knowledge of the customer to imagine and “empathise” so we can come up with new design opportunities. This now seems to be the prevalent understanding of what Experience Mapping is. But it’s just a way of capturing informed guesses, it’s not really UCD. I’m not “against” Design Thinking but it’s important to be intentional. If we have little time, low risk and we’re exposing our work to the customer somewhere else in the process it might be ok but don’t mistake this approach for proper evaluative research.

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Hey Services Designers! Ever wonder why those brilliant features you designed don’t get the reaction you expected? Users behaving in ways you never saw coming? Especially with features that need decision-making? You might find your answers in Behavioural Economics (BE)! -Turns out, when given the chance, many honest people will cheat? Yep, you heard it right! Dan Ariely says, "when given the opportunity, many honest people will cheat." Cheating in your gamified product? Totally predictable! -BE assumes that humans don’t always act rationally. Dan Ariely also points out that people act in "predictably irrational" ways. There are patterns in how people behave in certain situations. Which is good news. - BE looks at behaviour through the lens of decision-making. It believes that humans make decisions based on mental shortcuts (heuristics) that often lead to 'irrational' choices. So, next time you're puzzled by why users always pick the default option or why your gamified feature leads to some sneaky cheating, remember: people are predictably irrational. And guess what? These are patterns you can design for! When you have a feature in your product or services that requires the user to make a decision, you can incorporate Behavioural Economics lens in your design process.

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Looking forward some imparting some of my experience and hearing some great insights from my fellow panelists in this roundtable discussion on 11th June 1-2pm. Join us for some tips and chat about Getting Hired in UX and Product Design #ux #product #career School of Media at TUDublin

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The prevailing mood amongst product designers right now is: They are: - Annoyed - Bored - Considering leaving the profession Why annoyed? - Hangover from the massive cuts to design teams in the last few years. - A sense we have “gone backwards” in the perennial quest for a seat at the table. - AI is scaring some designers into thinking the era of the designer is over. - The crop of “Bootcamp” designers struggling to adapt to real design roles. Why bored? - A sense that design systems have made everything the same. - A reset to traditional low autonomy design roles This is a very real sentiment I’m seeing here and in other social channels. I don't think everything on this list is true but thats not the point. The point is that the current mood is putting off a lot of young designers from entering the industry and pushing existing designers out.

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If you get frustrated with my designs being a couple of pixels off, remember this... I prioritise open-mindedness, speed and performing products over pixel-obsessed designing. Finding a balance means allowing yourself to break out of the technicalities of a tool to be creative but still knowing that you have the skills to produce 'pixel-perfect' results when it's necessary. What's your approach? PSA: Clients, work with a designer who matches your beliefs. Designers, own your processes even if they don't look like your peer's. #uxui #uxdesigner #freelancetips #freelanceuxdesigner

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