Denise Tilles

How different is Research Ops in for-profit vs non-profit? What are the unique challenges of enabling UX research in government, especially where representation is critical? Stig Parfrey has answers to those questions! We discuss all things Research Ops, including: 🫶🏾 How working in the nonprofit space allows for a direct impact and the opportunity to do good. 🏢 The overlap between ReOps in government and other sectors. 📧 How recruitment in government makes a significant impact on people's lives. 🤖 The potential of AI to enhance qualitative research. Listen now on Spotify or on your favourite podcast app. 👇🏾 🎧 https://lnkd.in/gAMs94RK 🎧

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Join me and my guest, Sarah Doody, for Episode 137 of the #DesignThinking 101 #Podcast: Designing Your Career + UX for Small Business. Listen to it here: https://bit.ly/45lUCgN #CareerPlanning #UX #UserExperience

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It's heartening to see how many media sites in SpeedCurve's Page Speed Benchmarks have sub-2.5s LCP times! For some of the sites with poorer LCP, perceived #webperf / #ux isn't the issue. They're fast to start render. The main culprit is that the LCP element is just wrong. The takeaway: don't just look at the numbers for your performance metrics. Visually validate them to make sure they're measuring the right things! https://lnkd.in/gG5zEK4u #pagespeed #sitespeed #corewebvitals #webperformance

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It's time to redefine our roles. Instead of being purely implementors, we need to become evangelists and facilitators of UX best practices. Learn more in my latest post. #UX #DesignThinking

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For your viewing pleasure! Here’s my talk introducing Sentient Design. If you and your design team are trying to figure out how to create actually meaningful applications of AI in your product work, I hope this helps. I’d love to hear what you think. Sentient Design is what I call the already-here future of intelligent interfaces: experiences that feel almost self-aware in their response to user needs. Sentient Design moves past static info and presentation to embrace UX as a radically adaptive story. These experiences are conceived and compiled in real time based on your intent in the moment—AI-mediated experiences that adapt to people, instead of forcing the reverse. I think it’s a fun talk! It’s clear-eyed about what AI is crummy at, along with its special strengths and curious characteristics. Turns out that what most of us THINK generative AI is good at is actually what it's worst at. There are other, better opportunities. This is so much more (and in exciting ways, so much less) than chatbots, text prompts, and systems that can write, speak, or draw. In a nutshell, Sentient Design is all about the new opportunities to add intelligence to our interfaces (sometimes just a dash, other times a heaping spoonful). Some of this is so familiar that you might consider it just plain dull (content recommendations or prediction), but there’s a lot of surprising new possibility here, too. It’s all part of our kit as designers now—and especially powerful in combination. Sentient Design describes the form of this new user experience, but it’s also a framework and a philosophy for working with machine learning and AI as design material. And! It’s ALSO a book—or will be soon. More details to come, but I’m writing the Sentient Design book with Veronika Kindred for Rosenfeld Media. But first, the talk. It’s available at the link below in video, audio, text, and slides. (And hey: big, big thanks to Friends of Figma, Miami for hosting the talk and for providing and sharing the video.) https://lnkd.in/ecgWrG5J

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📈 Want to incorporate AI into your user research workflow? This piece from User Interviews suggests using AI to: → Draft research plans and reduce bias in questions → Generate recruiting content and interview guides → Automate transcription and real-time note-taking during interviews → Code and tag data to identify themes → Organize and cluster data for insights → Customize insights for different stakeholders Some important takeaways: → AI can serve as your research assistant, but review the AI-generated data with a critical eye and see it only as a starting point. It can't replace human expertise. *Personal Tip: Ask the AI platform for cited sources. → AI excels at identifying patterns in user behavior, but struggles to understand the underlying "why." You should analyze and make sense of the findings. → AI lacks real-world context. So, it's important to verify sources, adjust clusters, and manually add your insights. → Consider data security and compliance when using AI qualitative data analysis tools. The author also suggests checking that your data won't be used for training purposes. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eMhUUZ9P #UserResearch #AIAssistance #Efficiency #UserWorkflows

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Living documents as an AI UX pattern https://buff.ly/3KcOTQG As large language models (LLMs) take the tech world by storm, every product is suddenly sprouting an embedded chat box. But a greater opportunity exists: to weave AI capabilities into more sophisticated UIs.Source: Living documents as an AI UX pattern ()

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Excellent read from Sam Chambers highlighting the imbalance in the PE ecosystem. Overall AURELIUS approach often aims for rejuvenation, but not all their ventures succeed. The The Body Shop collapse led to 800 job losses and 82 store closures and in 2020 it was Bertram Books (2nd largest book wholesaler), had 450 job losses. Conversely, another portfolio company, Solidus thrived, becoming a profitable supplier of fiber-based packaging and so did Briar Chemicals Limited. 🧾 Accountability in PE Few yet emerging thought leaders in this space such as Sebastien Canderle argue, “The success of PE depends on genuine improvements at companies, not just financial engineering.” This highlights the need for balancing value extraction with sustainable growth. Think of it as juggling chainsaws while riding a unicycle—tricky, but essential for survival. 💪 Activism Kudos to individuals such as Christopher Davis urging a government review of the insolvency system. This activism highlights the human cost of aggressive PE strategies and calls for ethical business practices. 📈 State of PE in the UK In 2023, the UK private equity (PE) market saw significant activity, with PE firms completing deals worth £156 billion. This level of investment demonstrates the UK's strong position in the global and European PE landscape, even amid economic challenges. UK 🇬🇧 vs. EU🇪🇺 UK: £156 billion in private equity deal value for 2023. EU: €100 billion in private equity, growth, and venture capital investments for 2023. The UK’s private equity market is a dynamic force in the economy, bringing opportunities for growth and transformation. However, the associated risks and failures underscore a critical need for strategic management and vigilant oversight. 🌟 Vision for Future Decision-Makers Decision-makers must prioritise sustainable practices and ethical standards to ensure long-term success and stability. The path forward demands a balance between aggressive growth and responsible stewardship, ensuring that the benefits of private equity extend beyond mere financial gains to create lasting value for all stakeholders. (Sources: The Times, British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), Palladium Digital, Private Equity Reporting Group, PitchBook, Bain & Company, OECD - OCDE, Invest Europe)

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I've been exploring AI moderated user studies & interviews lately, and I genuinely see a role for this approach in our UX research toolkit. Many folks I've discussed this with question what the participant experience is like - whether they'd be comfortable "talking to a computer instead of a person." There are definitely times when a human moderator is appropriate to build rapport and connection, or to bring specific subject matter expertise to the dialog. However, there are things AI moderators can do that I cannot, such as consistently run 50+ qualitative interviews around the globe in participant's native languages in under 24 hours. Here's an interesting study exploring respondents comfort with AI moderators. https://lnkd.in/ga_2A-sJ PS: Note this study was sponsored by a company who runs an AI moderation platform, but I believe the findings are still valuable & informative.

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Understanding Information Architecture: Avoiding Common Mistakes 🧭 In product development, Information Architecture (IA) is often overlooked, but it's important for helping users navigate digital products effectively. However, it's easy to get IA wrong. It’s often a huge issue in companies I work with, and fixing this issue can unlock huge value. Companies often treat IA just as visuals when it's really about making content and features easy to find. Teams can spend a lot of time on aesthetics, but if users struggle to locate what they need, it defeats the purpose. Another mistake is assuming all users think and process information the same way as the team. What seems obvious to developers may not be obvious to the user. User testing is vital to understand the user's perspective. Scalability is also important to consider. Creating an IA that works initially but can't adapt to future growth and changes leads to chaos down the line. IA isn't a one-time task but requires ongoing refinement based on evolving user needs. A "set it and forget it" approach simply won't cut it. To get IA right, teams must understand it as a core part of product strategy that requires research, collaboration across roles like UX designers, content strategists, developers, and critically, input from users themselves. Ultimately, well-designed IA should be seamless and unnoticeable to users because it just works as intended. IA deserves attention and should be built with the user's needs as the top priority. What are your thoughts on this? Have you faced challenges with Information Architecture in your own projects? Share your insights and experiences in the comments below. Uncover more about Information Architecture in our UX Fundamentals course at https://lnkd.in/ebqFyywp #InformationArchitecture #UserExperience #ProductDevelopment #ProductStrategy #UXDesign

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I had a discussion with UserTesting’s CEO, Andy MacMillan: https://lnkd.in/eVcsqhB3 (35 min. video). Our analysis revealed a paradigm shift in the careers of UX professionals, driven by AI’s potential to enhance individual productivity. This shift will lead to the emergence of “super teams” where each member is not just a part, but a driving force, highly empowered and augmented by AI tools. These teams will be the vanguards of delivering high-quality work at an unprecedented pace, igniting a sense of inspiration and excitement for the future of UX. We both agreed that much more user testing will be done in the future. So, there will be no unemployment, but a different deployment of UX resources.

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There’s still time for folks to sign up for my Fundamentals of User Experience Design class at SVA which runs three weeks, meeting twice a week, starting next Tuesday. That's six weeks of UX goodness packed into three. More information below if you're interested or want to pass this on to someone else who may be. #UX #UXdesign #IA

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🚩 Red flag in a pitch for a new marketplace: it is all about UX. "We can make the experience so much cleaner/simpler/easier!" Below is the eBay homepage in 1999 when it was absolutely on fire. It is decidedly not clean, simple, or easy. In the early days, the only thing that matters is liquidity: making it more reliable for buyers to find sellers and for sellers to find buyers. Successful new marketplaces start with an insight about how liquidity could be much better. For example, how to tap into supply that was previously under-utilized, or how to aggregate fragmented buyers in a new way. UX becomes important for marketplaces at later stages, but only once liquidity has been solved.

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Check out the 4 step exercise at the end of the article. Excellent advice.

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How would you like to be a Senior UX Researcher at Estée Lauder? Or a Senior UX Researcher at Microsoft? Maybe SurveyMonkey's next VP of Design & Research? Or a Senior UX Researcher for D&D Beyond at Hasbro? There are 39 freshly-reviewed, up-to-date, legitimately-available, hand-selected, Senior, Remote, UX Research positions on the List, including more from Google, Adobe, Figma, Gametime, Meta and Stripe As of today (May 31st, 2024), all of them are still open and accepting applications. A few things I've noticed over the past few months: 👉 More senior positions are opening at a faster rate 👉 Positions seem to stay open and accepting applications for about 30 days, so check the list often (or sign up for instant updates) 👉 About 15 positions have closed in the last month or so 👉 Remote work at a *senior* level is alive and well Go get 'em! https://lnkd.in/eJkpDx7J

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This. I mostly do strategic facilitation these days, which evolved out of my team’s research and discovery practice. The gap was so stark in effective strategy development that as a facilitator, more and more clients would ask us to facilitate the strategy setting phase as a way to ensure the research findings were put to meaningful use. Strategic planning is difficult and requires effective stakeholder engagement and thoughtful interpretation and deliberation on discovery findings. Most leaders and teams do not have this capability or capacity, and UX or other research teams should learn to guide them through this process, but it requires us to develop those skills in effective strategic planning facilitation and leadership advising. Design research insights by nature will have broader business relevance. If a leadership team is open to it, building this capability can profoundly improve their product market fit, value proposition, and impact. But it does require developing competence in strategy development, not just research. #strategy #leadership #research #servicedesign

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🤖 This is an absolute must-read/watch for any designer/design leader navigating this wild new AI world: https://lnkd.in/ezxmvYfi Josh Clark is second to none at demystifying this new crop of technologies, demonstrating how to wield AI as a design material, and thoughtfully balancing optimism & opportunity with skepticism & care. I'm so excited to see the ideas presented in this talk transform into book form. Looking forward to reading Sentient Design, Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred! #ai #generativeai #design #ux #ui #machinelearning #development #webdevelopment

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Useful post from Jakob Nielsen on the evolution of human computer interaction. He characterizes the era we are entering as 'intent based.' It is worth pausing here to think about what 'intent' means and what it means to be intentional. I am still thinking about this, but one way to get at this is that it is the opposite or rote work. We often hear people say that AI automates work and replaces rote work. This is not what is happening with generative AI. Generative AI is responding to our intentions, it seems to infer what we intend to do. One of the things I appreciate about Perplexity.ai is the way it parses a prompt and can ask for clarification. 1. Batch processing: very efficient in CPU, but terrible for users. 2. Line-mode UI: still very efficient CPU use, still terrible usability, but a little better than batch processing. 3. Full-screen UI: this interface style required more computation, mainly on the back end, which had to keep track of everything on the screen instead of just the last few characters typed by the user. Full-screen terminals also needed more electronics to render the full-screen UI and allow for form-filling across this expanse, compared to earlier terminals that simply scrolled the previous lines of text up the screen. 4. Graphical user interfaces (GUI): very computationally intensive, both in terms of calculating what should be shown where, and in terms of rendering these pixels on the screen. 5. Intent-based outcome specification: the new AI-driven interaction style where users specify what they want to happen rather than the detailed commands needed to achieve this outcome. Super-demanding of compute power for AI inference. (Also, as a one-time expense, even more demanding of the AI learning compute to build the foundation model driving the inference.) https://lnkd.in/dYfFaxyh #AI #UI #UX #intentionalcomputing

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Really like this definition of Designer as Facilitator. A facilitator is someone that supports others to accessibly understand, mediate, collaborate, and/or create. My design teams have done this historically. A number of times they leaned into a tech-heavy/tech-exclusive problem and helped everyone get on the same page about the problem, potential paths forward, and rough out the plan to get it. Often times when the designers themselves didn't have even a basic understanding of the technical issues. That's what designers do though: align groups around a core problem, break it down into its base components, and tackle it piece by piece. #UX #Design https://lnkd.in/ewyU8Gqd

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