One of the biggest problems facing designers is how to create a more humane future. This has probably been the case for as long as there’s been a design profession. However, Design’s scale, influence, and reach has never been more profound—or more dangerous. ... Read the full article
The traits of strategic designers and how they varyWhile I naturally ask myself many questions around ‘What design is today’ and ‘The impact of design thinking for businesses and design’, these must of course be considered hand-in-hand with ‘Who and what is the designer of today*?’ … ... Read the full article
Musings of a conflicted designerWhenever people ask me what I do, and I say I’m a designer, I dread the difficult, complex narrative, I know I’m going to have to spool, to answer that inevitable, subsequent question, “What sort of design do you do?” This is commonly accompanied by (trying to ... Read the full article
As consumerism grows and consumer technology advances in parallel, user expectations of the services in their lives continue to increase. ... Read the full article
Yesterday and today I finally had a chance of testing a Tesla Model 3. More than the driving experience, I was interested in the UX relatively to the 15 inches touchscreen that dominates the dashboard. FIFTEEN INCHES TOUCHSCREEN, let that sink for a moment. ... Read the full article
We hear a lot about Design Thinking, Strategic Design and Service Design. I’m not going to go into the potential danger that this democratisation of design is bringing to the wider Design industry —… ... Read the full article
In past years, the greatest usability barrier was the preponderance of cool design. Most projects were ruled by usability opponents who preferred complexity over simplicity. As a result, billions of dollars were wasted on flashy designs that were difficult to use. ... Read the full article
User interviews are an important generative method for UX. Generative methods (like interviews and focus groups) produce knowledge. In contrast, evaluative methods (like a usability test of a draft design) test hypotheses. When interviews are done well, we learn about our users’: ... Read the full article
Explores ethical issues where designers have the best intention, but inadvertently encounter ethically questionable situations ... Read the full article
Culture is probably the biggest differentiator between the lab and the parent organization. Labs must produce radically new ideas, and a creative culture that can produce such ideas looks very different from a culture built to optimize. ... Read the full article
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Thomas Otto is a User Experience Designer in Berlin, Germany. As an experienced designer he is working on digital projects in the fields of user research, interaction design and data strategy.