UX/Design Techniques

Design Thinking Toolkit, Activity 13 – Hopes & Fears

Welcome to our series on Design Thinking Methods and Activities. You’ll find a full list of posts in this series at the end of the page.

If you’re new to the Design Thinking Toolkit, check out the introductory post to learn more about design thinking. For those who have been along for the entire ride thus far… gold stars for you! Our next lesson explores an exercise called Hopes & Fears.
Read more on Design Thinking Toolkit, Activity 13 – Hopes & Fears…

How to Bundle & Deliver Design Assets Properly

As a software designer, it is inevitable that at some point in time, you’ll need to hand your design files off to someone else. That person may be another designer within your organization, a designer within a client’s organization, or perhaps not even a designer at all.

I’ve been fiddling with different ways to bundle up deliverables over the years, while simultaneously growing more frustrated with the state of design deliverables I’ve received from others. We can do better. Follow these tips for a seamless design asset handoff. Read more on How to Bundle & Deliver Design Assets Properly…

Hacking a Product Roadmap for Uncertain Circumstances

Product roadmaps have long been used to illustrate the direction of product development, including how much time the project will take to complete, what tasks need to be completed, and who is responsible for those tasks. In my experience, a roadmap has been the best tool to align the team and leadership around the same expectations.

During a recent mobile app project, our team wanted to align with leadership and needed a way to communicate our progress to other departments. A product roadmap would have been a perfect solution, but we knew that as soon as we had a draft, it would be out of date. Read more on Hacking a Product Roadmap for Uncertain Circumstances…

Software Feature Prioritization – Pruning the Product Tree

You’re about to launch the MVP of your product—but in the background, there’s a never-ending stream of feature requests from stakeholders who have waited months (if not longer) for their idea to reach the top of the list. Where do you begin to prioritize these requests and foster shared ownership of the outcomes? Read more on Software Feature Prioritization – Pruning the Product Tree…

Design Thinking Toolkit, Activity 9 – Rose, Bud, Thorn

Welcome to our series on Design Thinking methods and activities. You’ll find a full list of posts in this series at the end of the page.

Rose, Bud, Thorn may be the most commonly used Design Thinking activity at Atomic due to its versatility and ease of use. Read more on Design Thinking Toolkit, Activity 9 – Rose, Bud, Thorn…

The Untapped Value of Play in Design

I was listening to a Hidden Brain episode in which the host, Shankar Vedantam, and psychology professor Alison Gopnik discuss the idea of play as a tool for children to learn. In this episode, they don’t describe “play” the way that you, I, and even the Merriam-Webster dictionary do; rather, they describe it as “…trying out lots and lots of different options and get a lot of information about how the [world] works.” Read more on The Untapped Value of Play in Design…