Articulating Design Decisions : Your chance to pick the brains of an expert!

News & Events
#1

If you have ever been in the position where you have struggled to explain your design decisions to managers and stakeholders, or worse still – have had a manager overrule one of your decisions, then you know how frustrating it can sometimes be. Later this month Matt will be interviewing Tom Greever, author of the recently published book [URL=“http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920037422.do”]Articulating Design Decisions.

Our goal this year is to support you to become better UX practitioners, whatever that means for you, and as part of that we want to arm you with skills and information. As part of that mission we’re giving you the opportunity to pick the brains of as many experts as we can lure, starting with Tom.

Let us know what you’d like to know, and we’ll ask Tom in the upcoming podcast. You can list your questions here.

#2

For Tom: Would love any advice you have on how to handle a HiPPo (chief engineer) who often “stonewalls” in the face of design logic. To clarify, often when I am presenting designs he might say something along the lines of, “This is not good, change it.” When I offer solid reasons as to why it should not be changed to what he wants, he will leave reason behind in order to continue defending his point of view and resort to statements such as “Your reasons don’t make sense. You are wrong.” or “I don’t care. That’s not the way it should be done.” I already have my “ringers” who try to give as much support as possible and help me when he stonewalls, but because he originally built and designed the product and thus is quite attached to his work, it still continues to happen and is not helpful in terms of coming away from meetings with sound and actionable items. Any advice on additional tactics I might employ when faced with a stonewall? Or perhaps ways to prevent the stonewalling from happening at all? Thanks!

#3

I’m a big fan for Tom’s book and love the tactics. I would love Tom’s experience on getting the team (dev, design, prod and other stakeholders) on the same page as an ongoing process, such as share work in progress, design critiques, presentations etc to a broader team, like an open meeting for anyone interested in. I’d like some advice from Tom on how to get started on this, what to share, etc. I feel that I have some hard time to put together interesting content.

#4

On behalf of Alla:

Dear Hawk, I really hope it’s not too late to address one topic during Tom’s interview - transitioning into UX field. I’m Tom’s huge fan, own the book, own the video… he’s fantastic. After observing of a strong tendency of teams to become self-organized communities, I took sabbatical from the enterprise where I managed front-end development teams, and I studied User Experience (subscriptions, meetups, conferences, NYU, got certified). It’s a tough call to find a UX job without a strong personal UX portfolio. There is no way back, UX is my thing and a long time passion.

What would Tom’s advice be on UX best practices to get into UX field if all that most hiring managers care for - having 3-5 years of experience and a personal strong portfolio.

Thank you so much! - Alla

#5

On behalf of Mark:

Hi Tom, working agency-side one of my biggest challenges is being bought into a project at the last minute, often with very short deadlines to meet. This can mean lack of time for research, having to resort to questionable 3rd party research and sometimes being unable to take any research out at all (despite pushback), relying on hypothersizing solutions that aren’t validated. Although the obvious answer is to move on I enjoy the challenge of making a change in a tricky environment. What advice would you have for this situation?

#6

Matt has needed to move his interview recording time with Tom Greever to Tuesday 26th Jan, so we now have an extra day to collect questions. Keep 'em coming!

#7

Thanks to everyone that sent in questions for Tom. Matt did the interview yesterday and had time to ask all of them, with great results.
We’ll publish the interview next month. I’ll keep you posted.

#8

And it’s live! The answers to all your questions are here. Thanks so much to those of you that submitted one. :slight_smile:

Ping @jmarie673 @MyCelestial