Processes
UX and product design processes — design sprints, double diamond, agile UX, and the workflows that turn problems into shipped products.
37 articles
Accessibility Review in the Design Process: When, Who, and How
Accessibility review happens at every stage, not just at the end. What to check in requirements, design, development, and QA, and how to run it in a sprint.
Branches and Versions in Figma: How to Test Changes Without Breaking the Main File
Figma branches let you experiment in a copy of the file and merge it back later, and version history lets you restore. Plans, workflow, and limits.
Budget Management
Understand the basics of Budget Management for design leaders. Learn how to plan, allocate, and control your team's financial resources to maximize impact.
Career Plans and Performance Evaluation
Learn how to create Career Plans (Career Ladders) and conduct effective Performance Evaluations for your design team, fostering growth and talent retention.
Continuous discovery: talking to users every week
Teresa Torres's continuous discovery is the habit of talking to customers every week, done by the product team. How to start and the opportunity solution tree.
Contributing to a Design System: The Process Step by Step
Contributing to a design system means proposing a change, backing it with a real case, and passing review. When a ticket is enough, when an RFC is needed.
Data-Driven Design Decisions
Learn how to make Data-Driven Design Decisions, combining qualitative research and quantitative data to create effective solutions and justify your work.
Design Critiques
Learn how to give and receive effective design feedback through Design Critiques. Discover how to structure these sessions to improve the quality of your work and foster a culture of collaboration.
Design Documentation That Stays Up to Date: Owners, a Single Source, and Automation
Design documentation goes stale when nobody owns it. How to pick a single source of truth, automate what changes, and keep a rhythm that survives daily work.
Design Handoff: Figma to Development
The process of communicating design decisions to developers—clear handoffs prevent misinterpretation and rework.
Design Project Kickoff: What to Agree on Before You Design
A design kickoff aligns goals, success metrics, stakeholders, and the decision-maker before work starts. The agenda to follow and how to close the meeting.
Design Proposals and Contracts: What to Include and What to Have Reviewed
What a design proposal and freelance contract should include, the usual clauses, how ownership of deliverables is decided, and when to ask for legal review.
Design QA: reviewing what was built before launch
Design QA compares what was built with the design before launch. What to review, how to log and prioritize deviations, and what to do with those you keep.
Design Sprints
Discover what a Design Sprint is and how this 5-day process allows you to validate ideas, solve major business challenges, and prototype solutions with real user feedback in a single week.
Design thinking: the process, its stages and its critics
Design thinking is a user-centred approach with stages from empathize to test. What it is, how to apply it and what Don Norman and Natasha Jen criticize.
Designing an MVP: what to cut and what to keep
Designing an MVP means cutting to the core that tests your riskiest assumption without sacrificing usability. Learn what goes in and what stays out.
DesignOps metrics: how to measure a design team's impact
DesignOps metrics measure how a design team works. Learn Nielsen Norman Group's REACH framework and how to avoid misattributing results to the program.
Dual-Track Agile: Discovery and Delivery in Parallel
Dual-track agile runs two lanes at once: discovery to decide what to build, and delivery to build it. How it works and where it usually breaks.
Estimating Design Work: Appetite, T-Shirt Sizes, and Fixed Time
How to estimate design work without faking precision: appetite versus estimate, T-shirt sizes for UX, and why design effort does not match development effort.
Executive Presentations
Learn how to create and deliver high-impact Executive Presentations. Discover how to structure your narrative, design clear slides, and communicate your design ideas to convince stakeholders.
Freelance Design Process: From First Call to Delivery
How to run a freelance design project in phases, from the first call to delivery, and the process mistakes that cost freelancers the most money.
Giving and Receiving Design Feedback: Practical Frameworks for Useful Critiques
How to give and receive design feedback with SBI and Radical Candor, how to prepare a team critique, and the mistakes designers make when critiquing.
How to Write a UX Case Study
The structure and narrative that turns design work into a compelling story—the foundation of a strong design portfolio.
Lean UX: hypotheses, experiments and learning
Lean UX organizes design around hypotheses tested with small experiments. How to write a falsifiable hypothesis, which cycle to follow and when it does not fit.
Managing Design Projects
Learn the fundamentals of UX Project Management. Discover how to plan, execute, and oversee design projects to deliver high-quality work on time and within budget.
Onboarding New Designers to the Team: 30, 60, and 90 Days
How to design onboarding for a new designer: audit the documentation, assign a buddy, document unwritten norms, and measure progress at 30, 60, and 90 days.
Optimizing Design Processes (DesignOps)
Discover what DesignOps is and how you can start Optimizing your team's Design Processes to increase efficiency, consistency, and the overall impact of design in your organization.
Post-launch review: measuring what shipped and learning from it
A post-launch review compares what shipped with the goal set beforehand. Learn when to run it, what to measure, and how to close it with owned actions.
Strategic Workshops
Learn how to facilitate high-level Strategic Workshops. Discover how to use these sessions to align leaders, define product vision, and solve the most complex business challenges.
Team Ceremonies (Daily, Planning, Retros)
Discover key agile ceremonies like the Daily Stand-up, Sprint Planning, and Retrospective, and learn how UX designers can participate and add value in each one.
The double diamond: diverging and converging in design
The Design Council double diamond has four phases (discover, define, develop, deliver) and alternates diverging and converging. How to use it and its limits.
The UX Design Process: An End-to-End Guide
The complete step-by-step workflow that transforms a problem into a user-centered solution.
User Research Activities
Learn how to plan and execute User Research Activities (UX Research) in a structured way, from defining objectives and creating a plan to synthesizing findings.
UX in agile teams: Scrum and Kanban without losing design
In Scrum and Kanban, design often falls behind or arrives late. What the 2020 Scrum Guide, NN/g and Scrum.org say, and how to integrate discovery and delivery.
Working with Developers: How to Collaborate Without Throwing Designs Over the Wall
How designers can collaborate with developers: involve them early, name the file well, document the states that don't show in mockups, and handle changes.
Working With Product Managers: The Product Trio and Healthy Tension
How to work with a product manager without handoffs or opinion wars: Teresa Torres's product trio, the problem-solution split, and how to handle disagreements.
Workshop Preparation
Discover how to design and facilitate effective workshops. Learn how to define objectives, create an agenda, prepare activities, and manage the group to achieve collaborative results.