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What Are UX Deliverables? 24 Methods to Deliver Great UX

UX deliverables are the tool of the user experience professional to communicate and share ideas and findings to stakeholders. UX Designers, UX Strategists, UX Engineers, User Researchers, and Interaction Designers all have UX artifacts they produce as part of their process.

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Affinity Maps versus Card Sorting: What the Difference is and How to Use Them

You may have heard of affinity mapping and card sorting before, but do you know the difference between these two UX methods?...

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An Affinity Diagram: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Steps to Creating

An affinity diagram or affinity map is a powerful tool for any UX designer. It can help you identify product features, understand the needs of your target audience, and gain insights about what might not be working in your design....

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Organizing UX with Affinity Diagrams

As a UX designer or user researcher, you know that it's important to keep track of user insights. After all, user insights are the key to creating great design solutions. User insights come from many different sources, numerous [qualitative research ...

Wireframe diagram showing a flow of mobile interfaces

What Are UX Deliverables? 24 Methods to Deliver Great UX

UX deliverables are the tool of the user experience professional to communicate and share ideas and findings to stakeholders. UX Designers, UX Strategists, UX Engineers, User Researchers, and Interaction Designers all have UX artifacts they produce a...

A red world map on old crinkled with a journey mapped by a blue dashed line

The Benefits of Creating Customer Journey Maps

A customer journey map is a document that details the steps a customer takes when interacting with a company, from awareness of a need all the way to becoming a loyal advocate. Journey maps answer how an organization can better engage customers acros...

User journey map sample

The Nitty Gritty of Creating Customer Journey Maps

A user journey map, also called a customer journey map, is a visual representation of a specific user’s overall experience (path) to reach a specific goal. They are an important tool for companies to see the experience from their user’s perspective a...

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Guide to the Customer Journey Stages

The 6 stages of the customer journey are awareness, evaluation, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy. Read on to see what each stage covers....

Service blueprint template example

What Are the Components of a Service Blueprint?

Service design is the process of organizing and planning a company’s services and resources to improve employee and customer experiences. Service blueprints are the visualization of the interaction of your company’s service components....

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10 Examples of Mental Models in UX Design

Mental models are people's perceptions and beliefs of how things work. They can be defined as “a simplified, usually conceptual representation of a system, designed to help people understand it and make decisions about their interaction with it."...

Mental model example of a runner prepping for a race.

A Guide to Mental Models

How people perceive an experience and how a system provides the experience can be vastly different. Understanding what user mental models are and how they affect decision making and user experience is key for successfully creating valuable experience...

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Creating a Service Blueprint Step-by-Step and Breakdown Silos in Your Team

Service blueprints are a tool that service designers use to map out the steps that a customer will take while interacting with a service. The blueprint encompasses all touchpoints, front stage actions, and backstage actions in the service delivery sy...

Service blueprint for BBQ restaurant during COVID

Service Blueprint for a Restaurant (During COVID)

Service blueprints are the visualization of the interaction of your company’s service components. They are a diagram of your service design efforts. In this article, we will cover an example of a blueprint for a restaurant during COVID....

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Podcasts That Will Turn You into a UX Unicorn

Get beyond visual design and development and ramp up your UX skills with these fantastic podcasts. These podcasts will get you up to speed on user behavior and design thinking with knowledge that will outlast any design tool....

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Build UX Awareness With Stakeholders In Your Company

You are ready to become more than a wireframe/mockup generator, or you are the first UX hire and are excited to bring the full benefit of UX to your company. However, you keep running into resistance in different forms from teammates and other stakeh...

Top of service blueprint with the 5 user stages highlighted: Aware, Join, Use, Develop, and Leave

What are the Stages of a Service Blueprint?

Stages in a service blueprint are used in multiple ways, however what most refer to when thinking of the stages of a service blueprint are the _phases_ of the customer journey. There are also the stage metaphors, the visibility of the service reactio...

hand holding a latte over the books "Sprint" and "Hooked"

Teach Yourself and Master UX Design with these 27 UX Books

User experience books can be incredibly useful in understanding concepts that outlast changes in fads and trends. They can also provide a foundation for beginners, as well as fill in knowledge gaps for experienced professionals....

Woman drawing user interface layouts and wireframes on a whiteboard

How to Choose the Right Design for Your UI Project: Existing User Interface Patterns, User Needs, and Branding Preferences

There are many factors to consider when designing a new user interface (UI) design. Approaching a new layout and design for an interface can be challenging for all of us....

Example of empathy map for a UX Designer

When Would You Use Empathy Mapping?

When during a project would you use empathy mapping for your projects as a UX designer?...

Empathy Map example with 6 sections Think & Feel, See?, Say or Do?, Hear?, Pain, or Gain

What is Empathy Mapping?

Empathy mapping is a widely-used visualization tool within the field of UX and HCI practice. An empathy map is a visualization that groups feedback and research from one or more users into......

Full user journey map for a new marathon runner

Journey Mapping: What Components To Include?

Journey maps can help you identify pain points and areas for improvement, as well as build an understanding of customers beyond how they interact with your organization. Several components make up a journey map, including the Persona, Scenario, Phase...

Service blueprint template example

Service Blueprinting: Best Practices, Tips, and Tricks

In this article, we will discuss some of the best practices for service blueprinting, as well as tips and tricks to make the process go more smoothly. We'll also cover some of the common mistakes that people make when doing service design, and how to...

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Mental Models vs Conceptual Models for UX Design - What is the Difference, When to Use Which?

In this article, we are going to cover Mental Models vs Conceptual Models. Mental models and conceptual models are used in user experience design for different purposes....

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13 Cognitive Biases that Impact Your Service Blueprint

Cognitive Biases impact all aspects of design and engineering. For services, there are specific biases that impact the stakeholders, service designer, and your customers. Knowing about cognitive biases will make both your service blueprint design pro...

Persona example for a runner

What Should Be in a Persona?

For user experience, personas should be targeted in scope and focus on the why and what the persona is trying to accomplish. The key sections to include in a persona are a Profile, Quotes, About, Goals, Tasks, Frustrations, and Behaviors with a bonus...

Experience map example with general phases, actions, thoughts, pain points, state of mind, and opportunities

What Is an Experience Map?

An experience map represents the big picture of all the different paths all users take to reach their goal. Experience maps help companies see possible pain points for users in a specific domain and where improvements are needed to create a strategic...

Journey map example showing general phases and design

Why Are Journey Maps Important?

Journey maps are important for multiple reasons. They help find insights that are good for the company and the customers. Through increased customer satisfaction and increased team collaboration, journey maps have a high ROI....

Pencils laying on a blueprint

16 Benefits of Service Design & Creating a Blueprint

Service Design and creating Service Blueprints as a team has tremendous ROI for many types of organizations. Here are 16 benefits we have seen from creating service blueprints for a many sizes and types of companies and non-profits....

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Can You Get a UX Job With a UX Design Certificate?

UX design work requires many learned skills and practical experience. UX design is a very technical job requiring specialized knowledge involving graphic design, psychology/sociology, creative thinking, and using a variety of software. The likelihood...

Person in t-shirt drawing a flowchart on a large white board

Concept Maps: The Art of Making Relationships

A concept map is a graph of concepts and relationships for a user or group of users. Concept maps focus on the relationships between several topics and may describe complex parent-child mappings....