Using Breakup Letters to zoom in on the low points of customer experiences — Are researchers allowed to have favourite methods? I have at least three, but there’s one I almost never use — Love Letters and Breakup Letters. (I consider those a single method because they work best as a pair.) I’ll leave Love Letters for another time, but Breakup Letters are on…

A lesson from a great teacher — Have you ever had a teacher who taught a subject but actually taught you life? I was lucky enough to have a teacher like that. Her name was Linda Carson. She taught me fine art and art history, but she also taught me a lot of other things along the…

An exercise to identify the essentials, create space to grow, and uplift your teams in the process — I’ve been thinking about scaling a lot lately. My teams have been growing, demand for our work increasing, and our practices maturing. These are all good things. But as a leader, these good things translate to load. To continue being there for my teams and our partners, I need to…

It’s end of year for many companies. That makes it that most dreaded of seasons — performance review season. This year I’m reminded of something I’ve learned along the way: Surprises at year end are no fun. Avoid surprises. Consider a story: Many many years ago I worked remotely for…

A ‘To Do’ list for the occasionally overwhelmed Sooner or later we all feel it: Overwhelmed. Life and work combine in unanticipated ways to crush us under the weight of everything we need to do. Our ‘To Do’ lists become undifferentiated laundry lists of Needful Things, and just looking at…

This is the year smart speakers boomed. What’s a smart speaker? Wikipedia describes them as “a type of wireless speaker and voice command device with an integrated virtual assistant.” Think Amazon Alexa, Google Home (and Assistant), or Apple Homepod (and Siri). According to TechCrunch smart speaker ownership almost doubled in…

These are the things I wish someone had shared with me before I launched my first persona research project. There are lots of articles on doing persona research, but what I learned through a couple of amazing, perspective-altering projects is that doing the research is just the tip of the…

The UX space is saturated with tools. A couple years ago most designers used Axure or Omnigraffle or even Illustrator, but then Sketch arrived and kicked off a boom in tools for UX design, prototyping, and even coding. Now there are dozens of feature-rich options. But UX designers aren’t the…

There’s something about public transit systems that creates a never-ending source of drama in city-dwellers’ lives. Whether it’s the London Tube, the Paris Metro, or New York’s MTA, anywhere you go you’ll find commuters frothing over service, cost, reach, or a host of other transit-focused issues. Toronto’s no exception. Our…