Jensen Harris

Just attended a UXR session where we discussed the state of UX Research. While it's been around for a few years, it's still in its infancy. Early adopters of the practice are already seeing a significant competitive advantage. In fact, in the next 10 years, it's likely that every company will have a UX Research team. Don't be left behind - invest in UX Research now to stay ahead of the game! #UXResearch #UserExperience #CompetitiveAdvantage

3

Portfolio tip for design leaders: Unless your values/leadership style/‘how I lead’ slides are unique or clearly showing why they make you a good fit for this specific role, skip all that in your portfolio presentation. It’s a waste of time and if it sounds like what all the other candidates are also doing(which is true 90% of the time), it will make you blend in. Not good: Generic words like empathy, team building, servant leadership etc Good: Super specific values that apply to this role Better: Super specific values that are actually then evidenced in the work you will shortly present

94

11 Comments

The second part of my article on the value of explicit design rules is here. In it I dive head first into example in layout, position, ordering padding and margins with examples from various design tools. In the end of this part there's also a treasure trove of links to other insightful people writing on adjacent subjects. Hope you find it interesting and be swayed to try tools that allow for more expressive explicit design rules. https://lnkd.in/dmGpUHU6

12

3 Comments

The intelligent work journal is coming. I've created an app called Fabric that automates work journaling, addressing the common effort issue and offering features like AI-assisted summaries and self-reflection systems. More to come! Let me know your questions and any features you'd like to see in an automated, intelligent, and safe/reliable work journal app.

227

24 Comments

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

69

9 Comments

Check out this awesome article written by Jess Sattell, Lynn Hao, and Angelie Herreria- Tagle with help from Sue Garibaldi on lessons learned from bringing Spectrum 2 from idea to reality.

110

1 Comment

Check out this episode of My Life as an ID: Best AI Tools for IDs! We took a look at Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and Vyond. What are your favorite AI tools to use for instructional design? #AIforID #InstructionalDesign #AI #ArtificialIntelligence https://lnkd.in/gVshzRuP

12

Products like Recraft are like the Perplexity for creating images with #GenAI. They are leaning into the benefits of going beyond a conversational prompt-based interface ONLY and integrating traditional, familiar GUI-based workflows with prompts to provide outcomes that creative people seek. In this example, they've notably improved the experience of creating multiple #images in a consistent style using #AI. In addition, they seem to be among the few (only one?) offering SVG export, making them a great option for #illustration. https://lnkd.in/eiGPqbKU

1

1 Comment

Who said enterprise logins need to be boring? Just finished designing this login with SSO that automatically toggles between light and dark mode depending on the users device settings. I put lots of subtle nuances into this design that help to bring it to life and make it feel vibrant. ZOOM IN. 👀 #productdesign #ux #ui

8

This quote nails it: “AI is leading us to a paradigm shift in user interfaces. Current interfaces are deterministic: a generic design is created that attempts to support all possible use cases. The result is often a complex design that puts the burden on the user. AI-driven user interfaces are probabilistic. The design is created real-time, based on the user’s intent, context and history, providing just the right options at the right time. This requires a completely new way of designing user interfaces, where we design the rules, and let AI fill in the details. This change is unavoidable in a world of AI interfaces. The question is who gets there first.”

9

Over the years I've tried many approaches to design critiques with the teams I've managed. Without fail these 4 simple principles impact the effectiveness of design critiques greater than anything else when established as ground rules. For presenters: ✦ Describe the problem you're solving ✦ State the target audience* ✦ Specify the feedback you're seeking All of the above can be done in less than a minute, either verbally or in written format. For participants: ✦ Ask questions before comments "I think you should go with blue instead of red" is less effective than first asking "Why did you choose red for this?" The additional context that comes from asking questions will lead to more effective feedback. Design critiques are the easiest and most important thing design teams can do to improve design quality. Alone they are not a silver bullet. But they are the foundation for all other improvements to design quality. If you're not holding regular design critiques (usually weekly), this is step 1 for improving design quality. If you're already holding regular design critiques but not doing the 4 principles above well, this is step 1 for improving your design critiques. Better critiques. Better quality. * "Everyone" is rarely acceptable as the target audience. Even if the feature being presented is intended for everyone, 99% of the time there's a specific segment or archetype you're aiming for. #design #critiques #quality

354

14 Comments

We're so excited to welcome over 10k attendees to Config next week! We know that people may or may not ignore pre event emails 😉 but you can't hide from me here. Here are all the absolutely must knows for Config next week if you're joining us in person! I'm about to use so many emojis (I think that's legally required on LinkedIn) so buckle up! ------- 📆 Do I have to build my agenda and grab spots at sessions ahead of time? Yes! We ask that you build your agenda before coming to Config. We'll be scanning badges at each session so if you haven't grabbed a spot ahead of time, you won't be able to go to that session. Build your agenda on the website. 🎟��� Can I cancel or transfer my ticket? You can cancel your ticket for a full refund up until June 25th at 6am PT. You are ✨not able to sell or transfer your ticket ✨ to another person. Please note that we require government issued IDs at check in. If the ID doesn't match the ticket name, you won't be able to enter. 🚪 How will I check in? Don't forget to bring a government issued ID! To check in and pick up your badge, you will need your ID and your unique Config QR code, which you can find in your ticket confirmation email. The name on your ID and the name on your Config ticket must match. Badge pick-up will begin on Tuesday, June 25th at Moscone South. Full hours below: Tuesday, June 25: 11:30AM-7:30PM PST Wednesday, June 26: 7AM-4:30PM PST Thursday, June 27: 7AM-4:30PM PST 💃🏻 What other Config events can I attend? Join us at Config Commons on Tuesday, June 25th to network, find your community, and play before Config officially kicks off on Wednesday. For more info and to check out more Config events, head to the "community events" footer on the website. 🌯 Is there food at Config? We'll be serving lunch on both days, as well as coffee and small snacks throughout the day. Please note we won't be serving breakfast. 🎧 Will there be language support? We are so excited to offer live translation support for our attendees in Korean, Japanese, French, German and Spanish. Please download the Interprefy app and bring your headphones for the best Interprefy experience. More questions answered at:

284

15 Comments

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

6

A new Studio Quick Fact is out. This article explores recent research investigating the elements that allow people to enter into a state where they're completely absorbed in what they're doing, to the point where everything else fades away (aka a flow state). Is mastery required? Is it intense critical thinking? Read on to find out!

5

I’m going through an iterative design process with a XFN team right now. We know we’re solving the right problem because we get repeadted validation that the value prop aligns to user needs, but the experience doesn’t provide that outcome in an easy/intuitive way. So we iterate and iterate some more, each time finding ways to better achieve the outcomes we’re targeting. This process is messy. You learn that your initial assumption were off so you lean on failure to improve incrementally. It means as a designer you need to be vulnerable…that it’s not about you providing all “the answers” to your team in a beautifully packaged deck/speck. You need to show what’s “behind the curtain” and bring them along during your process. Show your thinking and learn to interpret feedback. Approach everything as a hypothesis, remain curious, explore and share.

8

5 Comments

My top 3 project selection tips for design leaders doing portfolio presentations: 1. Pick projects that have a good mix of what you did directly plus what the team did. Very rarely is anyone looking for a pure people manager while hiring a design leader. Your personal contributions need to stand out in your work. It doesn’t have to be IC work (but if you do that, show it). It could be a doc you wrote, an insight you uncovered, a strategy you formulated etc. Differentiate between what you did yourself, what you directed the team to do, and things the team might have driven independently. Make this distinction clear as you present your portfolio. People want to see you can do smart stuff yourself, can direct a team well, but will also build a high functioning team that does good work. Also, if you would like I can do a separate post in these 3 modes of operation for any design leader. 2. Pick projects based on the role you’re applying for. It doesn’t have to be and most certainly won’t be a 100% match. But for example, if what the team needs is scaling a successful product, pick examples where you enabled scale. This needs to be deeper than “I’m applying for fintech so here’s another fintech project”. Your project selection should show you understand the challenges for the company and have transferrable skills. 3. Pick projects where you can show both macro and micro user insights. Scale the macro according to your seniority and level. For example, if you’re applying for a Director role, you better have projects that show you driving user insights at Director scale (for instance something that drove resourcing decisions). At the same time, the project should also show micro insights appropriate to role. For example, key interaction design flows redone by your team for the goal. Or even things like font/color selection and how that drove impact. Use these guidelines and apply the filter for what fits with your past experience and this new role. If you have the same portfolio presentation for completely different roles, something is off somewhere. You only need to present 2-3 projects in a presentation, pick the most appropriate ones. If this sounds complicated and like a lot of work, it is. Project selection is THE foundation for how your presentation will play out.

207

13 Comments

GitHub makes collaboration and communication easy when it comes to design systems. We use issues and discussions to track bugs and questions, it helps us build a knowledge base. These tools are surprisingly absent in our design tools, and this needs to change. I am going to change that. #ux #designsystems #equalityintools

4