Speaking
Talks and workshops
Our users do not arrive in their best state
The people using a product are rarely at their best, so the product has to bring the calm and clarity they can’t. The eight qualities from Internal Family Systems, used as a specification for the product.
Read itWhat are you actually building?
Five products that shipped and worked, and what each team turned out to have built. A marketplace, enterprise software, a fitness app, a piece of hardware, a chat tool. Runs as a talk or as the game, on a screen, with the room answering out loud.
Read itWhat was in the way
People skip a safety step for reasons a team can design for. Six kinds of barrier, the fix each one needs and why fairness does more than watching people harder.
Read itWhat your users are up against
The people who know what could harm your users are the ones who have already been burned. How to ask them, what to listen for and why the team should hear it firsthand.
Read itClose the pathway
Most misuse runs through steps a product already allows. Writing the sequence down, changing the one step that stops it paying and planning for the next move.
Read itWho carries the complexity
Every feature comes with complexity, and somebody ends up holding it. How to leave as little of it as possible with the person using the product, through defaults, opinions, inference and careful rollouts.
Read itPower-ups don’t pass levels
AI is a power-up, and the player still has to pass the level. What stays a person’s job when a tool gets very good, and the four outcomes to check an AI feature against.
Read itCapacity comes before capability
Resistance is often a capacity problem. How to tell growth from overload, and how to expand what a team can hold.
Read itDesigning for the auditor three years later
Two users who never meet: the person filling in a report at 6 in the morning, and the auditor reading it years later.
The view is the product
In software where people read, scan, compare and decide, the arrangement of the data is what they’re actually using.
Read itDemo from inside a real account
Generating a whole working organization, with staff, data, dashboards and a real week of dates in it, then designing and selling from inside it.
- The dateOr the window you’re working within.
- The formatKeynote, session, panel or a workshop with time to practice.
- The roomWho’s in it, and what they’re responsible for.