Short Take #2: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
Summary
Curated from community-contributions, these brief video clips feature winning submissions from industry pros sharing their most important lessons on navigating the intersection of UX/Product.
Key Insights
-
•
Design can be treated as an evolving strategy where parts can be shipped incrementally.
-
•
The Judgment of Solomon metaphor helps recognize that shipping partial features is sometimes necessary.
-
•
Investing in slow, steady relationship-building with product partners deeply impacts product success.
-
•
Rapport and shared understanding among team members are key drivers for sustained incremental progress.
-
•
Product development is more about cultivating relationships than moving fast and breaking things.
-
•
UX research roles often expand to facilitating collective knowledge rather than just user data collection.
-
•
Helping a team build on prior research avoids starting from ground zero in every cycle.
-
•
A thriving product team grows its knowledge over time through synthesis and collaboration.
-
•
Research inspires positive change in both teams and end products rather than simply reporting findings.
-
•
Shifts in partnership perspectives can lead to more effective collaboration and better final products.
Notable Quotes
"They’re not living out the Judgment of Solomon every day, where the baby can be split in half."
"Sometimes it’s reasonable to consider your design as strategy and ship a piece now and other pieces later."
"I wish I knew it was okay to invest in relationships; that’s how incremental change happens."
"It’s not move fast and break things; it’s slow and steady."
"Rapport building is slow and steady synthesis that leads to really big ideas."
"I didn’t invest enough in slow and steady relationship building early on, and that led to major shifts."
"Facilitating a shared understanding among everyone on product takes a lot of time."
"It became less important to keep doing fresh research and more important to grow the collective team knowledge."
"Research helps make a positive change on the product team and our end users."
"Both of our perspectives changed, and now we’re seeing that come to fruition through the product we’re building."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"You’re not supposed to sell to the US public sector unless you’re WCAG 2.0 AA compliant."
Sheri Byrne-HaberAccessibility at Scale
June 9, 2021
"If you skip iterative testing, you risk building features nobody really wants."
Prayag Narula Hannah HudsonEmpowering Designers to do Good Research
March 11, 2022
"If you build something that's easy to use but not what people want, it doesn't matter."
Janelle EstesUX Research Trends
January 28, 2021
"User research is a validation function is a common pitfall, but its real power is uncovering meaningful insights early."
Craig Brookes Andreas Huebner Morgan Quinn"Just Make it Look Good" and Other Ways We're Misunderstood
June 11, 2021
"Respondents who feel very connected are twice as likely to say they’re making a significant impact."
Marc Fonteijn Ru ButlerIncrease your confidence, influence, and impact (through a Professional Community)
December 3, 2024
"The longer you take to recognize research ops and scale your team, the harder it becomes to amplify the value of your research investment — Carrie, Booking.com."
Kate TowseyThe State of ResearchOps: More Than Just Theory
June 20, 2019
"Psychological safety is the foundation; without it you get a culture of transaction and silence."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 9, 2022
"We have over 30 contracting teams spread across roughly 10 vendors all working on parts of the veteran experience landscape."
Shawna Hein Kevin HoffmanCreate a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
November 17, 2022
"You have to look two or three steps ahead so you're not chasing what's right in front of you — avoid target fixation."
Tricia WangSCALE: Discussion
June 15, 2018
