Resources

Outsmart the Ordinary in UX & Service Design

Unconventional insights, tools and resources to fuel your craft and leadership — built by fellow UX practitioners with hard-earned experience in changemaking and digital transformation.

How to conduct effective desk research for UX and service design?

This post looks at exactly how to conduct desk research in a UX or service design research project. We’re covering the desk research planning process as well as conducting analyses like literature review and trend analysis, comparative analysis in UX, and SWOT analysis.

Why you need to adopt design thinking’s “beginner’s mindset”

This post dives into what it means to have a beginner’s mindset, how to get experts like stakeholders comfortable with adopting a beginner’s mindset, and our favourite activities for inspiring this kind of thinking!

How to use desk research in UX and service design?

Today’s post digs into how to use “desk research” in UX and service design. We answer questions like when should you use it and how does it fit into the design process. We cover internal vs. external desk research and break down examples of each, like document review, literature review, and jurisdictional scans.

10 Must-Have Soft Skills for UX Designers

UX Design is an intricate discipline that requires practitioners to possess a variety of soft and hard skills in order to succeed. This post will break down the list of the top skills we think all UX designers should have! Plus, a comprehensive list of our favourite design & prototyping tools.

How to better integrate Agile with HCD?

This post covers Agile methodology and its relationship with human-centered design. We break down the common challenges designers face with Agile and provide recommendations for better integrating Agile with UX and service design.

How to Champion HCD and Design Research to Stakeholders

Struggling to convince stakeholders of the value of human-centered design (HCD), service design, and design research? This post will teach you the importance of stakeholder management, how to overcome research resisters, and responding to common objections to doing research.

Your Guide to HCD, UX Design, and Related Disciplines.

This post provides easy-to-understand explanations and examples of UX/UI design, HCD, design/UX research, service design, and product design. Plus, see how Outwitly can help your organization through our service offerings!

UX Tips for a Successful Beta Launch and Post-Launch Support

Here are our best tips for a successful beta launch and smooth post-launch of your digital product. This post will cover MVPs and Beta Launches, why it’s important to ACTUALLY plan for the launch, and tips for your next Beta Launch and supporting users post-launch.

Project Management for Design Research and Service Design

We know that a design research project is only as successful as the foundation it’s built upon! We like to have a phase at the beginning of any project called Project Initiation. This phase is crucial for setting your project up for success! To help set your next design research project up for success, we’re covering nine core project management principles, two key activities to conduct in the initiation phase, and our favourite tools and tech for project management.

Q&A With CEO Sara Fortier on Outwitly Academy’s Design Research Mastery

We sat down to talk to our CEO and Founder of Outwitly, Sara Fortier, about the recent launch of Outwitly Academy. Outwitly Academy’s flagship course, Design Research Mastery, is now accepting its first cohort of registrants.

Design Research: Methods, Practices, and Pitfalls

This post is a “roundup” of our past posts on the topic of design research. We dive into the methods, practices, and pitfalls associated with one of our all-time favourite topics. You’ll learn how to plan and prepare for discovery research, how to get the most out of your research, why you should stay away from focus groups, and a few research methods we love, like diary studies and in-depth interviews.

Top UX Research Tips for Better Usability Test Reports

In part three of our series on user testing, we’re talking about our top tips for better usability test reports and UX research! If you’ve conducted a few usability tests with real users and are looking for new ways to analyze data and improve your reporting, you’re in the right place! We’ll cover the three data points you don’t want to forget to collect, our favourite ways to analyze data from a usability test, and five tips to use for your next report.