Many of us are consultants, work for agencies, or are freelancers which means that we get to meet a lot of different clients and work on a wide range of different projects. All of these projects come with their share of opportunities, challenges, laughs and lows. Some teams you’ll get on with better than with others, and some will naturally gel straight away, whilst others will take effort and time. There will be projects that don’t go your way, and some that allow you to over-deliver and out-do yourself. There’s …

I make a list like this every so often, after I have been reminded of the sheer joy that is simply living. They help me when my mind is obscured by my own thoughts, or basically when I am in the way of life itself and need to step aside. The first part is being aware of when that is, and the second thing is to know how to step aside. I usually keep these in my trusty moleskin, but I decided to share this one. Maybe you can make …

 
It’s important to collaborate because it allows the team to become a powerful unit, full of common knowledge and questions. Each individual has a clear view of what is going on and has the power to affect the product direction and evolution. If as a designer you do not collaborate with the rest of the product team, you essentially deny yourself this right. By pairing with the QA, (front and back end) developers, BA, PM and anyone else who is part of your team, you gain all of the necessary …

 
Is this you?
I’ve seen teams start out by making big long lists of tasks and deliverables at the beginning of a project. This assumes that they know exactly what the product is going to end up being. I think that this kind of way of thinking goes entirely against a culture of creativity and innovation, and of the Agile philosophy. By deciding on all of the tasks up-front and by setting up an infrastructure for the team to work in (process, tools, tracking, tickets…), we actually restrict the potential for innovation.
What it takes to innovate:
Innovation requires serendipity …

As some of you know, Cathie Hagan, Megan Cook and I recently ran a workshop at SxSW entitled: “AXD: Agile Experience Design“. This was a good mix of skills, as Cathie is from the BA practice and Megan is a bit of a hybrid between BA and XD.
What we did:
We were allocated a 60min slot to run a workshop on Agile Experience design. There was a diverse audience of designers, developers, managers and company owners. Some were familiar with Agile, many were not. We wanted to teach some fundamental principles …