How design helped shape the Riot Games + Xbox Game Pass player experience during business development On June 13, 2022, Microsoft and Riot Games announced a groundbreaking new partnership — Riot would be bringing our free-to-play games to Xbox Game Pass members. Not as a perk, but as a membership…

What will become of the great wave of digital assistants in the face of huge layoffs and a cooling economy? — We’re a long way from the heady days of the Alexa announcements in 2014, when we seemed destined for a world of potato-chip-can speakers hiding in the corners of homes across the world. …

Every company’s design track shakes out a little differently — here’s what a design career looks like in our world. — While the titles for user experience roles at different companies may LOOK similar, we’ve all seen firsthand that they can differ wildly. If you’re curious about what it’s like to work on user experience in the video game industry, join us on a tour of the user experience career track…

Deconstructing an unexpectedly boundary-pushing multimodal experience for lessons we can all apply — Ever since the publication of my book Design Beyond Devices, I’m asked frequently for my favorite examples of GOOD multimodal experiences — think experiences where you can speak, touch, wave frantically at the screen, or beyond. Like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, but less epic, at least for now…

A history of “shadow” suppression and poor moderation at TikTok grows louder, dismantling communities and silencing marginalized voices — TikTok has been a lifeline for many during this long, strange pandemic. A formerly exclusive playground of the young and connected welcomed a flood of new perspectives from every age and walk of life (myself included). …

Time is everything when you’re making your flight. But do airlines always see it that way? — When you’re in the airport, two times hover at the front of your brain, the part probably reserved in pre-civilized times for “home” and “water source” — the boarding time and the departure time. As passengers, we assume these times are fixed, especially the departure time. There’s a word for…

Empowered user experience engagements as a UX generalist — What happens when you can ride the design “double diamond” all the way to the end? In many organizations, it’s more of an aspiration than a plan. It’s rare that you encounter organizations mature enough to place value on the entire process, and rarer still that you find yourself empowered…

Many theaters experimented with digital broadcast during the pandemic — but what might sustainable online theater look like? — A worst-case scenario. We’d been operating non-stop for over 36 years, and overnight our doors closed for over a year, along with every other theater in the country. How could our art form survive? Come with me as we explore the nascent world of live online theater. I’m a professional…

When you run a round of dot voting, are you sure everyone’s using the same criteria? Try a new lens on this classic technique. — If you’ve been in a design thinking workshop, odds are you’ve participated in some form of voting to ascertain a group’s interest in ideas. The LUMA Institute refers to this technique as “Visualize the Vote.” “Harnessing a group’s collective intelligence is not always easy, but doing so can prove to…

How can a relationship with a brand go from great to terrible in just 3 short interactions… and what can YOU do differently? — Those of us fortunate enough to have access to COVID vaccinations often have a choice of venues for those vaccinations. I first became eligible in the comorbidities high-risk wave in early April here in Washington state, but availability was still low. After a few days of looking for options, I…

As our success increases, our ability to make contextually informed choices decreases. What are we overlooking? — This week’s announcements from Meta (née Facebook) and their vision of a VR-supercharged workplace have once again forced VR-as-productivity into the collective consciousness. In the fallout, the witty Joe Sondow made this observation on Twitter: “I love how every few years of my lifetime some rich guy starts jumping up…

When the tools we use in the workplace don’t support our diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, we may turn to hacking the system. Simple changes can make a big difference. — As more working professionals become comfortable talking more directly about gender identity — particularly with regard to non-binary and gender-fluid identities —one finds that workplace systems aren’t optimized to support these interactions. When people take it upon themselves to work around outdated systems, unexpected things start to break. …

Why voice? Why now? We examine why voice technology is leaping from a decades-long slumber to mainstream success. — In the past few years, voice user experiences have reached critical mass. Cortana. Alexa. Google. Like many technologies that seem fresh off the presses (virtual reality, anyone?), voice user interfaces have been in the public consciousness for decades and in research circles even longer. …

An improv-inspired framework for better customer understanding and better product design — User experience designers are most likely to thrive when we can tell our customers’ stories compellingly. We are constantly defending the importance of costly features and investments by connecting our stakeholders to the real impact those changes would have on our customers. But in many cases, just saying “This will…

Turn blue sky ideas into a clear product vision, one frame at a time. — How do you tackle the early stages of a new product idea? How can you avoid jumping to conclusions and ignoring the impact of your customer’s context? Storyboarding is an oft-overlooked and critical step in our evolving multi-device design toolbox. In September 2014, I became the third employee on a…

We shouldn’t focus on having the right answers — it’s about asking the right questions. — It took me time and separation to understand this, but some of the best career advice I received to date was from my manager on the Windows Automotive team: “I need you to be right less of the time.” When this line was first delivered, I will admit that a…

How do we stop leaving household members behind in the march towards smarter homes? — A recent New York Times piece took a new look at some unintended effects of the smart home revolution. Entitled “Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse”, the article raises unsettling questions about how the Internet of Things can upset the balance of power in a home, and…

Artificial intelligence leads to uncertain outcomes. What does this mean for our approach to product design? — Some days, it feels as if we’ve awakened in the early scenes of a Terminator film. Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere: on the news, in our phones, even in our light bulbs. …

Discovering our innate human aversion to obstacles, and reflections on coping with “stay at home” orders — A colleague on a conference call during the coronavirus shelter-in-place orders shared her perspective: “I’m basically working from home all the time anyway, but now I haven’t been past my driveway in a week. It’s getting to me.” Her story, and many others like it, have called up memories of…

Four themes woven throughout my new book on multimodal and cross-device design — On December 1, 2020, my first book Design Beyond Devices will ship worldwide. As so many authors do, I wrote this book partially because I wish it had existed when I was tackling the big unknowns on projects like Alexa Notifications, the Echo Look, the Echo Show, and Windows Automotive. …