Sarah Doody
One of the most important things that determine the success of your product is the amount of trust that you have with your customers.
Building trust comes through many means. Do what you say. Say what you do. Don’t be a jerk. Deliver an amazing product. Listen to customer’s requests, concerns, & ideas. Let your customers feel like they are a part of shaping the product and not just on the receiving line of the product. Continue reading
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being interviewed for the Talking Code podcast. If you’re not familiar with Talking Code, it’s really awesome. Created by Josh Smith and Venkat Dinavahi of Coderly, Talking Code aims to help decode and demystify product and technical development.
When they asked me to be on the podcast, I was thrilled because I’m a huge fan of making big topics approachable and trying to talk about things in plain English so people can really understand and learn.Continue reading
Three years ago today I quit my job at a startup in NYC and ventured off on my own. It was the best decision I ever made. It’s hard to believe I’ve been running my own user experience design consulting business for three years. As a kid, I never ever considered entrepreneurship, but the older I get, the more I realize it really suits me.
During those three years, I’ve learned a lot. How to deal with clients, how to give and receive feedback, how to set up my own retirement accounts, and many other important but not sexy things. But there’s one key business lesson that stands out to me.Continue reading
A picture is worth a thousand words. But sometimes, a picture isn’t enough. There’s a story behind every picture that often requires context that a picture alone can’t provide.
In user experience design, wireframes are our pictures. Wireframes help convey what bulky requirements documents used to convey. A lot of teams don’t even make requirements documents that are hundreds of pages long anymore. But, I’ve been doing user experience for long enough to know sometimes wireframes are not enough.
Picasso famously said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” In product design, we’re always drawing inspiration from others. If I see something I like that another product is doing, I file it in the back of my head as inspiration for later.
But as helpful as inspiration is, there’s danger associated with it.
There’s a lot of talk about storytelling in these days. But a lot of it is quite cliché. The focus of storytelling in business has become very out of balance.
Most of the ideas about storytelling in business focus on using storytelling to craft a story for your customer – a story that’s marketing focused.
For product designers, success is all about seeing the details. Every detail is an opportunity to shape the experience that someone will have when they engage in your product. But before you can design the details, you first have to see the details.
With the rise in our use of technology, our brains are simply overwhelmed with information, and though I don’t have data on this, my guess is that it makes our brains really tired. And as a result, we easily fail to see the details that actually matter.Continue reading
Ever feel like you’re stuck in the weeds and can’t see what’s right in front of you?
When I look back at my time working as a full time employee at a start up, one thing that rings loud and true is that we all suffered from what I call tunnel vision.
Tunnel vision is the inability to see the obvious because you are so focused on the scenario in front of you. You’re so deep in the weeds of your idea, product, or company that you can’t see from an unbiased perspective.Continue reading
A few weeks ago I was coming back to New York from a trip to Ireland. It was the holidays so it was quite busy, and let’s just say my carry on was pushing the limits (because I could barely carry it … oops, I had a lot of souvenirs!!) The good news is that my carry on and I made it through.
Going through security at an airport is never what I’d classify as a good user experience.Continue reading
I love learning. Thanks to the Internet, learning has become a lot easier. The Internet gives anyone who’s an expert at something the ability to share their knowledge with anyone who finds them. But, a problem I often have is actually finding those great people to learn from.
There are so many “experts” online, that it’s hard to find the needles in the haystack and honestly, it’s downright frustrating sometimes!
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