Business: Innovation

According to IBM’s research, design thinking can cut development expenses by around 75% on some projects. Design thinking is all about solving problems by keeping users at the center of the design process and can reshape the entire product experience, whether a mobile app, Web platform, or software as a service (SaaS) tool.

With thousands of apps, Web sites, and services competing for users’ attention, we must exceed their expectations. User behaviors are shifting faster than ever, so keeping up with the marketplace can feel like a never-ending sprint. Imbibing a user-centered mindset through UX innovation can bring clarity and focus in the midst of that rush. Focus on what real people expect and value to avoid wasting time coding features that would fall flat. Start putting users first.

Design thinking sparks fresh concepts in UX design and each step of the process—research, prototyping, and feedback—can result in greater user engagement and a much better user experience, truly connecting users to your product. Let’s explore how a user-centric approach can encourage new ways of thinking about product design. Read More

This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Jim Kalbach’s new book The Jobs to Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs. ©2020, Rosenfeld Media.

Chapter 4: Defining Value

In this chapter, you will learn about these plays:

• How to find unmet needs
• How to create goal-based personas
• A new way to compare competing solutions
• How to define a value proposition

The product marketing manager at a company I once worked for stood up in a meeting to present his strategy. He proceeded to describe the top customer needs that we should support with our solutions. I was thrilled to see him align to a customer-centric model. Read More

If you, like most UX professionals, have worked within organizations that seem to respond to User Experience in much the same way that the human body responds to a virus and want to understand why that happens, you should read Creative Change: Why We Resist It… How We Can Embrace It, by Jennifer Mueller, PhD. If you want to understand why organizations struggle with innovation, you should read this book.

Creative Change is a great book about creativity within organizations that is grounded in solid research. Mueller has been studying creativity for almost twenty years, and her research has revealed that, even though many business leaders lament a lack of creativity and innovation within their organizations, they commonly reject creative, innovative ideas. They tend to be biased against and fail to recognize the value of creative leadership as well, believing that creative leaders lack business acumen. This does not bode well for UX leaders.

Occasionally, among the many books I read, I discover a book whose ideas are so transformative that I feel impelled to share them with UXmatters readers. This is one of those rare books. Read More