nard.design

process

Design orgs and the centralized, consultancy model

Design orgs and the centralized, consultancy model

Design leaders that structure and operate their teams as if they are a centralized, internal consultancy within an agile product organization will rarely make an impact. From my experience, this doesn't work for several reasons, one of them being that it makes it difficult to consistently build the

Project Discovery, Team Alignment, Co-Design & Free Lunch

Project Discovery, Team Alignment, Co-Design & Free Lunch

It goes without saying, proper planning and early team alignment helps to decrease the chances of projects going off the rails. That said, it still amazes me how little time and investment product teams actually put into having proper project kickoffs. By “proper”, I don’t mean a big groupthink

Design Informs Product Strategy

Design Informs Product Strategy

How design will play an important role in business transformation It’s no surprise, the user experience design profession is quickly evolving, shifting from a deliverables based entity to a business-oriented function that can provide a strategic differentiation for companies. Beyond the visual layer that design is well known for,

Presenting Multiple Design Options to Your Clients. Just. Don’t.

Presenting Multiple Design Options to Your Clients. Just. Don’t.

Exploring iterative design over options Very often, I hear designers talk about providing two or three mockups for a client and then ask them to choose their favorite. I totally get that point of view — by providing three varying concepts during the process, you’re letting the client know that

Designing the Design Process for Collaboration, Testing and Developer Handoff

Designing the Design Process for Collaboration, Testing and Developer Handoff

This is an older post (from 2016). A lot of tools have come out since then, such as Figma, that addresses many of these challenges. I will likely create an updated version of this (Figma version!) in the near future but some of these concepts still apply to some extent.