UX and design thinking

Both UX and design thinking start from the people who use the product, and not from the product itself.

The UX section begins with Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, which put the user at the centre of design in 1988, then ten usability findings from Smashing Magazine. Small details come next: 16 pixels for body copy, labels above fields, links that never say “click here”, and how one extra field cost Expedia $12 million. A BBC visit to Google’s user research lab in London, Wells Riley on how design works and a piece on empathy in a UX project close the section.

Design thinking opens with the core skills Tim Brown lists, and the difference between divergent and convergent thinking, which a team cannot do at the same time. A more human zebra crossing shows starting from observed behaviour, and a checklist is the secret of Apple’s design process.

Then the design sprint: a talk from Google I/O 2014 and the do-it-yourself guide from Google Ventures, a five-day process from problem to tested prototype. The taxonomy of innovation sorts 36 tools into looking, understanding and making, seven lessons from game design follow, and a clip shows how AI can help with the first stage of design thinking.