Figure It Out

Information is easy. Understanding is hard.

From incomprehensible tax policies to confusing medical explanations, we’re swamped with information that we can’t make sense of. Figure It Out shows us how to transform information into better presentations, better meetings, better software, and better decisions. So take heart: under the guidance of Anderson and Fast, we can, in fact, figure it out—for ourselves and for others.

Who this book is for

• Mid-career professionals who are ready to think more critically about how they work with information.
• Product Managers, Software Engineers, Project Managers, Content Strategists, Product Strategists.

Design for Care

Healthcare is constantly evolving, with ever increasing complexity and costs presenting huge challenges for policy making, decision making, and system design. Design for Care presents a sweeping overview of the design issues facing healthcare and shows how designers can work with practice professionals, patients, caregivers, and other stakeholders to make a positive difference. Case studies, design methods, and leading-edge research illuminate emerging opportunities and provide inspiration for designing better services.

Duly Noted

Better thinking makes you a better person. And few things extend your mind as quickly and powerfully as the humble note. Notes let you fulfill commitments, manage complicated projects, and make your ideas real. Digital notes take you even further. By using the right tools and a bit of discipline, you can cultivate a “personal knowledge garden” where your thinking will blossom.

Who Should Read This Book?

Anyone and everyone who wants to get control of their notes to generate better ideas, learning, and actions. Duly Noted is superb for students, academics, business people, technicians, writers, UX people, managers, leaders—virtually anyone who can benefit from taking and managing notes.

Takeaways

• Learn best-practice note-taking principles so you can take more concise notes.
• Connect your notes to one another to create a personal network of ideas (your own personal “knowledge garden”).
• Capture ideas before you lose them.
• Organize your notes so that you can find and make sense of them later.
• Learn how connected notes can spark insight and lead to new ideas and learning.
• Explore how notes can help you collaborate with other minds, including artificial ones.
• Learn how to use Obsidian, a powerful digital note-taking tool.
• Follow the how-to exercises to lead you through the note-taking maze.

Human-Centered Security

Creating great user experiences demands balancing user and stakeholder goals, limited resources, and rapidly-changing technology. Information security introduces a new, significant wrinkle for designers: managing security risk. The risk is significant. That’s because we not only rely on technology to run critical systems, we have invited technology to coexist with us in the physical world. We’ve put computers into cars, machinery, and even medical devices. In these scenarios, a security breach goes beyond stolen credentials or exposed private information—it could mean the difference between life and death. While security used to be thought of as the domain of engineers and security experts, designers play an increasingly critical role: thoughtfully designing products and experiences that maximize user-friendliness while still keeping people safe.

Customer Experience Bundle

What this bundle includes:

• The Jobs To Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs
• Life and Death Design: What Life-Saving Technology Can Teach Everyday UX Designers
• Orchestrating Experiences: A practical guide for designers and everyone struggling to create products and services in complex environments.
• Service Design: Insights, methods, and case studies to help you design, implement, and measure multichannel service experiences with greater impact.
• The User’s Journey: See how a “story first” approach can transform your product, feature, landing page, flow, campaign, content, or product strategy.
• Why We Fail: How we can learn from the past to avoid failure ourselves.

Communities of Practice for Civic Design (Videoconference)

At the April Civic Design Community call, hear from new community curator Kara Kane. She shares her experience scaling and leading the UK government’s user-centered design (UCD) communities and International Design in Government community while working at the Government Digital Service.

Kara talks about how communities of practice are central to the transformation of public services. The communities she developed built design capability, aimed to create a culture of equity and inclusion and were core to developing and delivering standards and guidance for government.

Advanced Concept Testing Approaches To Guide Product Development and Business Decisions

Learn about the concept testing methodology and various approaches available, when to use them, the types of decisions they can support, and the process to conduct good concept testing with mixed methodologies in mind.

Communication: Innovative techniques for making your voice heard [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]

Insights wither and die when they gather dust on a shelf. Join us as we workshop innovative communication practices that ensure the voice of the user is recognized and acted upon at senior levels within the organization. In this session, our speakers explore strategies that extend beyond traditional tools like presentations, readouts, and workshops. Let’s work together to make insights meaningful and actionable!

Attend all of our Advancing Research community workshops

Each free virtual workshop is made up of panelists who will share short provocations on engaging ideas to discuss as a group, as well as a leader in our field to moderate. If you’re looking for discussions that challenge the status quo and can truly advance research, look no further than our workshop series. (P.S. We’ll be drawing most of our Advancing Research 2025 conference speakers from those who present at upcoming workshops—so tune in for a sneak peek of what’s to come from #AR2025!)

Creating a More Impactful Business While Still Feeling Like a Designer with Ellen Chisa

Have you ever felt like the product people want to move too fast? You realize that speed is important, but the quality of the product is going to suffer and the results are going to disappoint.

Or have you ever wished you had a seat at the table during the initial strategy sessions of a new project, rather than being brought in mid-stream?
Do you feel intimidated when talking to the folks on the business and finance side of your organization?

If so, this episode is for you. Ellen Chisa has a background in engineering and an MB. She is a founder, venture capitalist, and partner at boldstart ventures. In short, she has to care about the business side of things. But she also cares about user-oriented product design, and she wants the voices of those in the design space to be heard.

The best place to start, she asserts, might be by listening and learning. Ellen encourages designers to familiarize themselves with their organization’s business models and financials. If you’re feeling squirmy about that prospect, Ellen lays out a workable approach that will put both you and the business analyst at ease.

Ellen’s goal is to help you create more business impact while still feeling like a designer. Ellen will be the opening keynote at the November 29 Design in Product virtual conference.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
– About Ellen Chisa’s background, her current position, and the contribution she’ll make at the Design in Product Conference 2023
– Where Ellen sees the future going—combining APIs with generative AI
– Why designers will benefit from learning about the business and financial side of their organization
– How a designer can approach a business person with ease and curiosity
– A strategy for getting a seat at the table for the initial strategy sessions of a project

Quick Reference Guide
[0:00:20] Introduction of Ellen Chisa and Design in Product Conference
[0:02:22] The double diamond approach to design
[0:04:09] Potent combinations of design tools
[0:05:02] Ellen looking ahead at where technology will go
[0:07:08] Creating more business impact while still feeling like a designer
[0:09:45] How to get a financial toolkit for designers
[0:12:08] Accessible metrics for non-business people
[0:17:32] Design Ops Summit, October 2-6, 2023
[0:19:02] Feeling like a designer and building a coalition
[0:21:12] How to slow the cadence
[0:23:04] Is it better to focus on revenue and growth or derisking?
[0:25:09] Advice for those who feel reserved about approaching others
[0:27:06] Ellen’s gift for listeners

It Takes GRIT: Lessons from the Small, but Mighty World of Civic Usability Testing

While usability testing is an often overlooked part of design in the frenzied race to get technology to market, it’s absence is especially problematic when it comes to civic-focused products and services. Even when designers want to test, options are often limited to “professional testers” or personal networks – far from the actual users they’re hoping to help. Testing with a diverse group of end users and stakeholders is the only surefire way to make sure what gets designed works for everyone, but the approach needs to be thoughtful, sensitive and impactful.

Since launching in early 2019, GRIT has delivered more than 20 such inclusive usability testing engagements with partners in the public, private and nonprofit sectors and we’re eager to share our insights with others who endeavor to engage diverse, underrepresented communities in the design of their civic products and services. Using case studies and lessons from our trove of civic design engagements, we’ll help take the guesswork out of inclusively testing your next design.