Brian Miller

The UX adage “Design like you’re right, test like you’re wrong” captures the balance between confident strategic design decisions and the humility required for iterative testing, user feedback, and applying what you’ve learned. Orginal AI image created with Midjouney #userexperience #productdesign #uxresearch

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If you're a Designer or Design Leader, you should sign up to receive the upcoming Ecosystem Leadership Report: Design 2024 from friend and colleague Diego Núñez. I had the opportunity to sit down with Diego a few weeks ago to provide insights and views on what the future holds and why it is important for Designers to live life creatively. The report delivers an in-depth exploration of the transformative trends in design leadership from top industry leaders and voices sharing actionable strategies on innovation, team dynamics, and leadership in the digital age. Link to sign up to receive this report is in the comments section below! #design #designleadership #trends #creative #ux #product #business #impact #insights #ai #ethicaldesign #collaboration #ecosystems #report

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No one talks about the part of design leadership where you are just managing software licenses and renewals. It's this thing where you spend an unnecessary amount of time and mental capacity un-doing the effects of deliberate dark patterns to make sure you don't accidentally spend the equivalent of a new car just because someone in sales clicked on your design wrong. It's made worse by the fact that every vendor wants a "relationship" to meet and chat and "get to know one another" and "understand how my business goals align with the product" and I'm like, "Nah, I just want a tool, k?" I'm gonna pitch a conference talk on this, How to Manage Software Vendors and Still Do Your Job (working title...)

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Highlighting my new article on the timeliness of the Design Process and the standards that drive its evaluation. https://lnkd.in/ee_X-kqP #design #designthinking #designbuild #designstrategy #product #producctdesign #productmanagement #productstrategy #designprinciples #innovation #designers #digitaltransformation #ux #uxdesign #uiux #uidesign #designinnovation #application #software #softwaredesign #usability #userresearch #research #usercentereddesign #productleadership #uxwriting #designsystems #empathy #interfacedesign #usabilitytesting #userexperience #productdesign #accessibility #ui #ai #genai 

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Highlighting my article on Designing product solutions leveraging Data. https://lnkd.in/eAJhsZKX #design #designthinking #designbuild #designstrategy #product #producctdesign #productmanagement #productstrategy #designprinciples #innovation #designers #digitaltransformation #ux #uxdesign #uiux #uidesign #designinnovation #application #software #softwaredesign #usability #userresearch #research #usercentereddesign #productleadership #uxwriting #designsystems #empathy #interfacedesign #usabilitytesting #userexperience #productdesign #accessibility #ui

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I'm floored by the astute assessment Evan Armstrong provided in his latest post on @everyinc. As I’ve observed, we are moving from “Don't make me think” to ”Don't make me work" as a baseline for UX. [Article in the comments] As AI advances how will our expectations of it and its capabilities change? Are we holding ourselves back from moving towards a more usable future? Evan notes that AI is in a sticky place–incapable of unlocking the agentive future many of us are eager for, but capable of completing mundane tasks far easier than a human can, or in less time than a human wants to spend. This leave us in a state where AI is largely deployed through buttons and other interface selectors instead of acting on instinct or instruction. The patterns I've explored in www.shapeof.ai by and large follow a similar paradigm to what Evan is describing. • AI can't anticipate what you need, so it requires Nudges and Suggestions to get you started. • AI doesn't have the full context of your needs, so Parameters and Filters are necessary to help you tune the output • AI can't (or can't be trusted to) act on your behalf, so we need Workflows, Prompt Transparency, and other governors to keep the human in control and the AI accurate If this is the past and the now, what comes next? We're being sold a promise that AI will delight and surprise us within a few years with its capabilities. For the technical and the techno-optimists among us, perhaps that will be so. However, I can't help but think about the astute observation from a few years ago that eventually every software product becomes a dating app or a chat app. Given the combination of luddite adoption of technology, combined with the incentives of Big Business to keep the user interfacing with the screen (the home of ads and preferences) I can't help but wonder… Even if we CAN get there, will we? This article is a great read to test your mind at exploring new futures in UX. How might our interfaces and interactions change as this technology advances? What would we expect to see as signals that this future is arriving? It's also a good opportunity to wear the critic's hat: For this future Even describes, what would need to go right for it to happen? How might we accelerate usability, usefulness, and adoption? “I don’t want to do email faster; I want to never do email ever again” Bravo, Evan. Same. #aiux #ai #ux #artificialintelligence

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Interesting article on the topic of Customer Experience and leveraging more than Net Promoter Scores to improve client experiences. https://lnkd.in/ezeN_NDC #design #designthinking #designbuild #designstrategy #product #producctdesign #productmanagement #productstrategy #designprinciples #innovation #designers #digitaltransformation #ux #uxdesign #uiux #uidesign #designinnovation #application #software #softwaredesign #usability #userresearch #research #usercentereddesign #productleadership #uxwriting #designsystems #empathy #interfacedesign #usabilitytesting #userexperience #productdesign #accessibility #ui #ai #genai 

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Only one-third of CEOs could detail what their CDO oversaw at the company. In other words, 66% of CEOs couldn’t say what their CDO actually did, or how that success should be measured. No wonder only 10% of CEOs reported that a senior designer played a meaningful role in the company’s strategy. And only 17% of design leaders thought they were in the right position to give a company their full value. McKinsey concludes that 90% of companies aren’t using design talent to their full potential. https://lnkd.in/ePHAS4S3

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🐌 I’m slow (and I think that’s ok). As our features team speeds up, our design system team is trying to figure out how fast or slow it should be moving to support continuous client requests and user needs. It’s been refreshing that the answer may not be what I feared. Sometimes, it “is” better to slow down. → We continue to learn about new business rules and exceptions with each implementation → Feature teams uncover nuanced use cases and content based on stakeholder input and local community needs → As much as we fight the good fight, sometimes clients want what they want despite what's in the design system I’ve been enjoying reading about how other teams have begun to rethink how design systems and features teams should work together and avoid what could be bottlenecks: 🚢 Ship Faster by Building Design Systems Slower by Josh Clark offers a fresh perspective on how teams can coordinate efforts. Once you accept that each of your teams moves at different speeds, you can allow features teams to “cook their own recipes” allowing your systems team to curate any output into stable systems contributions. https://lnkd.in/g4jx3n8m 🐇 How to turn ‘slow’ into fast by Beau Ulrey provides a similar perspective with options for systems teams to be more involved in an iterative fashion. Through a stepped approach systems, teams can utilize MVPs and coordinated production “boosts” for high-value initiatives to be more strategic partners with their features teams. https://lnkd.in/gtYm9MUc 🐢 The Art of Slow: Leadership Strategies for Sustainable Design Systems by Richard Banfield suggests an “intentional” path to considering systems teams’ priorities. If systems teams can ground themselves in the problems or their specific customers and products, they can shift from complexity to a mindset of “What can we do with the time we have?” https://lnkd.in/gWjfR6en As our team at Exygy evolves how we collaborate, lessons that stand out from these resources include: 💎 Allow your feature and design system teams to work at their paces of speed and quality 💎 Foster collaboration between teams with strategic investments from the systems team to support elements of high value to the features team 💎 Focus on the health of the team and direct needs of the communities you serve to avoid burnout #designsystems #governance #ui #design #teams

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✨ It's not about the artifact, it's about the insight. ✨ Heidi Trost shares her experience with personas that made an impact. 📝 Instead of complex deliverables, she focused on capturing core insights in a few simple phrases in an infographic. These insights tied behaviors to business goals – and that’s what resonated. 📊 It wasn’t about how it looked, but how well it communicated across the team. 🌟 #UXResearch #BusinessGoals #EffectiveCommunication

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For an organization committed to the practice of user experience design, the Interaction Design Foundation doesn’t seem to value their own ideology. I’ve been a member for years and recently served as a local leader (of which I resigned a year ago and they have yet to remove me from the role). I’m finding their billing processes to be on the verge of questionable UX practices: ·     My membership increased 31% with no notification before billing. I was told that a single notification had been sent a year ago buried in an email with a subject line of “We have updated our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and Pricing Structure.” Do they not realize that subject lines such as this are white noise in people’s inboxes and begs to be deleted without reading? ·     To prevent the upcoming charge, the user must contact the main office and have them remove the store payment details. There is no ability for the user to do this themselves. ·     There is also no option to opt out of recurring charges. This is akin the dark practice of subscription services that lure users with trial period in hopes the user will forget to cancel before the period expires.   ·     The user can cancel their membership. However, the user loses access to all materials, content, and account details even though the user has prepaid for the upcoming year. This entices the user to delay cancelling only to encounter the same pain points the following year. ·     User is sent an invoice AFTER the charge has been applied. No notification of upcoming billings. ·     When asked to refund the membership charge, the admin basically responded with “The reason we’re unable to offer a refund guarantee on the renewal of memberships is that we already have a money-back guarantee after sign-up . . . we’d have to charge higher prices if we offered unlimited refunds and that’s why we make our policies crystal-clear, doing everything in our power to ensure members understand our fair terms.” This statement basically has the overtone of: It’s not that our communication and user experience is insufficient, it’s the user’s fault. IDF needs to reassess their membership and billing practices if they want to maintain any integrity in the field. As a hiring manager, I do not look at organizational memberships as having any influence in hiring decisions.  My advice for those wanting to increase their knowledge and break into design, rather than pay a yearly $264 membership fee, there are many free resources, podcasts, and articles that will help you achieve the same results. Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

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Really looking forward to Product Design Week this year. I'm doing a talk - Why Talent & Culture Are Still Your Greatest Asset - on Day 1 of Design Leaders + (12:30-1:00 on November 11th). https://lnkd.in/gH_YVJR8 Anyone working in customer experience, design, product or strategy right now will know that we are living in - ahem - interesting times. The challenges facing leaders within brands, agencies and consultancies are more complex and fast-evolving than ever before. The experience design road has never been a smooth one, but it feels particularly rocky, potholed and full of hidden hairpins at the moment! Watching the conversations play out on LinkedIn you might safely assume that many are currently feeling pretty doom and gloom. But look at any disruptive cycle of technology-led adjustment in history and you will always see growth and positive progress right in there with the painful stuff. Personally I think that real opportunity can be found in the intersection between innovative, enabling technologies and the design of human-centred experiences - and after 30 years in the digital experience business I'm still convinced that's right where it's always lived. Teams who can combine the ability to deliver compelling customer experiences with the competencies to harness data, AI and genuine insight are going to be the real unlockers of value. And organisations that are able to access and attract those people - and provide the right environment and culture to empower and retain them - will achieve true competitive advantage and return on investment. My talk on the 11th is going to focus on those factors. Ultimately, technology comes and goes. It arrives all shiny and shouty, then it gets all habitual and legacy on you. What doesn't change is the importance of the skilled talent that can build magic from base metals - and making sure that that talent is supported by an environment in which it can create and deliver that magic. Hope to see you there! #PDW24 #Talent #Culture #Experience #Design #Leadership #Technology

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When you're hiring a design leader we need to remember that we should be hiring people who view themselves as business executives, not just design. The boardroom is where you solve business challenges, and use design acumen to support other functions to solve problems. A lot of my clients who are often executive board members or CEO's say "we need a business executive who can bring design into the discussion" This is why I believe executive search in design is critical, it needs the same respect and rigour as other disciplines.

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When you're hiring a design leader we need to remember that we should be hiring people who view themselves as business executives, not just design. The boardroom is where you solve business challenges, and use design acumen to support other functions to solve problems. A lot of my clients who are often executive board members or CEO's say "we need a business executive who can bring design into the discussion" This is why I believe executive search in design is critical, it needs the same respect and rigour as other disciplines.

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My new article on the Obsoletion of a Design Language is out ow. Please check it here: https://lnkd.in/edZzyprC #design #designthinking #designbuild #designstrategy #product #producctdesign #productmanagement #productstrategy #designprinciples #innovation #designers #digitaltransformation #ux #uxdesign #uiux #uidesign #designinnovation #application #software #softwaredesign #usability #userresearch #research #usercentereddesign #productleadership #uxwriting #designsystems #empathy #interfacedesign #usabilitytesting #userexperience #productdesign #accessibility #ui

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The more that designers can think with a business mindset, the more effective they can be at influencing key stakeholders and driving desired outcomes.

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I talk to a lot of designers, frustrated with the state of executive representation. And, look, I get it. But the rallying cry for this particular frustration seems to be, "design should have a seat at the table." While that's undoubtedly true, it's also not a rallying cry that will inspire change. The problem to highlight is not what designers are missing out on, its what companies are missing out on by keeping design leaders (and other leaders who champion design) out of the C-Suite. And that problem is resulting in companies that lack vision. Creating value that resonates with consumers of the future should be underway RIGHT NOW, because what consumers need and what they're willing to pay for is evolving at breakneck speed. I created two RACI examples to illustrate just what's missing when design comes into the digital innovation process from the start vs. at the point of solution development. Without people responsible for producing deliverables that help steer companies into new opportunities and envision valuable solutions for customers, how can business and technology leaders feel confident in the impact of their innovation roadmaps? #digitalinnovation #design #designleadership #vision

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