TLDR; When prototyping, we’re always working with a given set of constraints. When these change, like e.g. when a team member leaves, this doesn’t mean we can’t continue to make progress. It just means we need to consider a new design situation, with a new set of design constraints.

I am very fortunate to be working in a game prototyping team. We prototype mobile game concepts using the Unity game engine, meaning that we need a somewhat specialized skillset: game designers, 3d art, ux designers, and a coder.

Recently, we lost the coder on our team, making it much harder…

TL;DR — internal structure, organisation and language at companies frequently “shine through” to the outside world, causing poor user experience and confusion. As UX designers, it’s our responsibility to tackle this and make sure we don’t get bogged down in internal thinking.

About a year ago, we didn’t have hot water at my house. Turn on the taps — cold water would come out. So I checked the bills to find out who supplies water to our house. I didn’t know because, let’s face it, who cares which company supplies the water? It’s water. …

TL;DR — Sketching is the ideal tool when you want to explore possible solutions to a design problem. But: It doesn’t just visualise ideas, it is actively a part of creating them. As such, the act of sketching is a must-have tool in your design toolbox. It’s important, damn it!

For the first 8 years of my design career, I was a self-taught designer. I think I was also someone who used his intuition a lot. One of the things my intuition told me to do, was to sketch. A lot! Later, when I actually went to design school, I…

TL;DR — Prototypes are created because you need to find the answers to design questions. As soon as you have one answer, it sparks new questions and ideas, and so you may need to iterate on your prototype so that it embodies these new questions for your next test loop. That’s why it’s important to set yourself up for easy iteration so you can go through as many loops as possible when building a prototype.

What is a prototype? Some familiar sayings that crop up are…

“A prototype is a question, embodied”
“A prototype is worth a thousand meetings”

Certainly…

TL;DR — Words and language are ambiguous and misunderstandings happen all the time. That’s why we need a shared 3rd as a middleman: something both people in a conversation can see, modify and own. Sketches are ideal for this purpose, and an indispensable collaboration tool.

Most of us have been in unproductive discussions. They don’t go anywhere, and cause frustration or conflict — sometimes things can get quite heated. Many times I’ve seen such situations being defused through a very simple act: drawing a few lines on a piece of paper. …

TL;DR — Sketching is exploration. It is a way to peek into the future and enable yourself to reflect, ask new questions, and evalute. It can be done through any suitable medium, be it pen and paper, audio, written words, or something else.

You might think of a sketch as a drawing on paper. Often, this is also the case — but that’s not really what a sketch is. That’s not the core definition of a sketch. Pen and paper is merely one medium in which you can choose to sketch.

Various dictionary definitions of a sketch sound like this:

…

TL;DR — AR is a way to add computational processing to the physical world, which has the potential to augment our human cognitive abilities: problem-solving, cognition, decision making, physical senses, language capabilities, and information processing.

Augmented Reality (or AR) is a cool technology for adding computation to the world. But rather than augmenting reality, I think it’s worth making the disctinction that this isn’t what we are doing. We are augmenting ourselves.

”Augment: to make greater, more numerous, larger, or more intense” … “to improve, enhance or extend”

I would argue that we don’t augment reality per se. Reality around…

TL;DR — with a 3d-printer you are in total control of an entire production cycle. This puts a product into your hands in a short time, but more importantly, it quickly lets you see whether your design choices were good or bad. This speed and control is a great way to cultivate a “fail fast” mindset and a way of working where you work smart and test assumptions quickly.

All product people should have a 3d printer

I’m a geek at heart, and love fidgeting around with stuff, taking stuff apart and repairing them. So I got a 3d printer earlier this year — I know, I’m late…