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Your AI Strategy Needs More Than a Chatbot: Three Levers to Guide Your AI Strategy
Define how your AI should behave before choosing interfaces. Learn the three levers—user intent, agency, and presence—that shape a trustworthy AI strategy.
Chick-fil-A vs McDonald's: Which Fast-Food App Has the Better UX?
In competitive markets, strong UX can tip the scales when users decide where to spend their money. We take a look at how Chick-Fil-A thoughtfully crafts a better app experience than McDonalds.
Most Teams Make Personas. Few Build Worlds.
Most UX teams stop at deliverables. Learn how worldbuilding turns personas, journeys, and systems into believable, testable models that guide better design.
Beyond the Keynotes: How Config 2025 Showed Us the Future of UX
We look at how new tools and AI are transforming the design landscape in this recap of the keynotes, themes, and takeaways from Config 2025.
The Green Grass Dilemma: When MVPs Fall Short
When MVPs fall short, users feel stuck—not empowered. Learn how to build Minimum Viable Products that actually lead to better outcomes and lasting value.
The Tradeoff Every Product Team Faces: Global vs Local Optimization
Product leaders face a constant tradeoff; scale with global consistency or move fast with local wins. Here’s how to reduce user mental load.
The Fingerprint of a Project: Why Great UX Looks Different on Every Project
Every project has a unique fingerprint. Learn how recognizing constraints and pushing strategically can lead to healthier teams and better UX outcomes.
How Much Does UX Cost? A Real-World Guide to Strategic UX Investment
Wondering how much UX design really costs? Learn what drives the price—from quick wins to full strategy—and how to invest wisely in human-centered design.
From Surface to Strategy: Why UX Belongs at the Leadership Table
Discover why UX design is more than just visuals. Learn about Jesse James Garrett's Elements of User Experience, from surface to strategy, and how integrating design thinking at a leadership level can transform your products and business outcomes. This comprehensive guide helps you understand the true power of human-centered design.Humans First podcast.
Overcoming Fear in Consulting: Lessons from Getting Naked
Discover how overcoming fear in consulting and leadership leads to better business outcomes. Learn key insights from Patrick Lencioni’s book, Getting Naked, in this episode of the Humans First podcast.
Domain Deep Dive & Designing for Defense & UX Challenges in Military Tech
Military and defense software lags behind in UX maturity due to security restrictions, bureaucracy, and outdated tools. Discover the biggest UX challenges, why usability is becoming a strategic advantage, and what commercial teams can learn from defense design. Read more.
The Creative Tug-of-War Generators & Synthesizers
Struggling to balance creativity and execution in product development? Learn how generators and synthesizers impact collaboration, decision-making, and innovation. Discover how to align your team for success on *Humans First*.
Your Roadmap Is Lying to You—Why Features Won’t Fix Your Product
Stuck in the feature trap? Discover how shifting from a customer-led to a design-led approach can lead to true innovation. Learn the three phases of product maturity and how to redefine your product experience to lead, not follow. Listen now!
The Three Models That Shape Every Product (And How to Use Them)
Unlock the secret to better product design by aligning the three key models: engineering, user, and design. Learn how misalignment can lead to failure and how intentional design creates seamless, user-friendly experiences. Listen to the Humans First episode now!
Domain Deep Dive & UX is the Secret Weapon in Financial Services
Explore the battle for financial data control in the age of open banking. As fintechs gain access to consumer data, traditional banks must evolve or risk losing relevance. Learn how UX, AI, and human-centered design are key to winning the data wars. Listen now!
How Long Does UX Design Take? Demystifying the UX Timeline
How long does UX take? Many companies underestimate the timeline, leading to rushed products and bad user experiences. This article breaks down the UX process, risks of short timelines, and how to set realistic expectations.
4 Must-Have Qualities in a UX Hire
Learn four key qualities to look for when hiring UX talent. Discover how empathy, problem-solving, communication, and humility play a role in building a strong UX team in this insightful podcast episode.
How IKEA Retail (Ingka Group) Built their Global Design Team
Learn how Timothy Embretson, VP of Experience Design at Ingka Group (IKEA’s largest franchisee), scaled IKEA's design team from 10 to 300 in just a few years. Explore key leadership strategies, including proactivity, empathy, and the role of diversity in driving innovation.
Why Trust Matters for Your Organization
Visual Logic partner Andy Van Fleet is joined by special guest, Dr. Stacy Van Gorp, co-founder at See What I Mean, a consulting agency who specialize in facilitating organizational change. Stacy’s earned her Ph.D. researching the strategic significance of systems trust and resistance to change. Andy and Stacy discuss how trust can help accelerate innovation, overcome friction, and how “productive conflict” occurs when a conversation is centered around user needs.
Design Maturity - Improving Your Organization's Design Influence
Learn about the 7 levels of design maturity and how organizations can assess and grow their design practices. Discover key strategies for improving UX, fostering innovation, and creating better user experiences. Listen now on *Humans First*.
Defining Design - Discovering the Underlying Human Problem
Why do UX redesigns often fail? Because they don’t address the real problem. In this episode of Humans First, we explore how great UX is about trust, not just usability. Listen now!
Introducing Humans First - Getting to Simple is Hard
UX isn’t just about design—it’s about understanding people. In this episode of Humans First, we explore the hidden complexities of UX, from military and healthcare redesigns to why business leaders struggle to define its value. Listen now!
The UX Timeline - How Design Impacts Your Delivery Date
Does UX design add time to your project timeline? Yes and no. Find out why adding three months to the front end of your project saves big time in the end.
The Deeper Value of Enterprise UX Designers
No one singularly knows the root problem behind a newly-exposed problem. The deeper value of designers is our ability to gather the people—the domain experts, the people impacted by the problem, the product decision makers—to facilitate conversation and frame the problem together.
Human-Centered Design is not Always Synonymous With ‘Tech’
I recently used a McDonald’s kiosk for the first time to place my order. While the rest of the world moves toward more human-like experiences, McDonald’s is introducing tech into their restaurants that seems to take a step backwards. Is adding new technology always the best solution when it comes to human-centered design?
Design Responsibility: A Reaction to Nike’s SCAN TO TRY Experience Concept
Big-picture thinking in product design goes beyond product lifecycle. Conversations about societal impact should be built into product and experience design processes.
How human-centered designers prevent Frankenstein’s creature
Enterprise software stitched together with an agglomeration of design elementsundermines usability and brand perception. How human-centered designers canprevent this.
How to Nurture and Sell a Great Idea
Getting a great idea into the production cycle is hard. The key is to slow down, understand what you’re trying to accomplish, tailor your communication to your audience, and create a story [together] that your team and executives can rally around.
Four Ways Your Great Idea Causes Organizational Chaos
Every idea comes with the best intentions. So why do so many good ideas have such disastrous outcomes? Learn four ways you're causing organizational chaos with your great ideas.
The Best Customer Experiences Have These 3 Qualities
Most companies have a misperception about the experience they are actually delivering to their customers.
Understanding your Users: Conducting Early UX Research
User research is what sets user experience apart from most design processes. While it’s essential to make sure a system or product is designed to look great, if it’s not functional, those looks don’t matter.
Mental Models: Mind the Gaps
It goes without saying that most businesses realize success through customer growth and loyalty. Designing our products and services to match the models users have in their head—or making our product so clear they can easily generate an accurate model of how it works—directly impacts both growth and long-term loyalty.
Consulting is Hard: Why Getting Naked is the Best Policy
As consultants, it's our job to speak up, be genuine, and own our mistakes.
Keep the ribs out of the bread basket: The importance of setting a clear team vision.
Have you ever had a vision that seemed so abundantly clear that it didn’t even cross your mind that someone else wouldn’t see it the same way? So why don't they? What happens in translation?
Conversational Content is King
Customers are the driving force behind business strategy. It’s no longer enough to have a product that functions — there is now an expectation that a product should delight. The only way to know how someone feels when using your app, walking through your store, or calling your support team, is to let them tell you. We are in the age of the customer, and it’s high time we embrace it.
UX in Agriculture: What are we trying to do?
In farming, the precision agriculture ecosystem relies heavily on agronomic advisers, and software companies aren’t capitalizing on the existing gaps. Instead, it seems as though the focus has remained on digitizing the paper filled binders and modernizing (improving the short-term user experience), but not modifying, the processes of yesterday.
Empathy is a muscle. Let's use it.
In the end, I don’t really care what you call it: sympathy, empathy, compassion, love, understanding. I’m just calling on all of us to listen more—to make people feel heard and understood. Of course this will make us better UX practitioners, but it will also make us better people.
A Lesson from Chick-fil-A: Don't Serve Chicken, Serve People
Chick-fil-A has established themselves as an organization who focuses on culture and values. They disrupt the old way of thinking about fast food as they take their customer's experience to the next level. Each of their highlighted service points can be translated to familiar steps in the UX/CUX process.
Do you know your user? The importance of user research.
Knowing your target users is the key to a great user experience. You simply can’t design a custom experience unless you have a deep understanding of the people using it. When you know your users, UX becomes a market differentiator because it gives customers the sense that the product is tailored to them.
Form is Functional: Why Design is More Than Gold Plating
The ideal user experience not only relies on usability and usefulness, but desirability. How something looks and makes us feel molds our perception of how it will work.
Frameworks: Proving the Value of High-Level Design Thinking
Invest in a good framework up front, and your customers, your designers, and your developers will benefit from it in the long run.
Why Human-Centered Design is an Expectation
A human-centered design approach helps growth minded businesses gain loyalty, grow their customer base, and realize revenues like never before.
The Unfriendly Experience of Flying the Friendly Skies
A colorful picture of air travel with a baby in-tow + free tips from a UX consultant for airports and airlines everywhere.
Reducing Choice Overload by Anticipating Your Users Goals
We encounter thousands of choices each day, some large and some small. We love having options—they’re empowering and give a sense of control. But sometimes too many choices can become overwhelming. Anticipatory design in UX can help reduce the number of choices users are faced with each day.
UX Design Can Help You Break the Curse of Knowledge
The curse of knowledge can choke out empathy toward users, allow jargon to creep its way into your product, and create a tendency to build out complicated (and expensive) features that few will use.
User Research Tips: 2 Ways To Maximize User Research and User Testing Budgets
Define product scope based on what users do; not what they say.
What Makes a Great Company Culture? A Guide to Creating a Desirable Workplace
“Company Culture” is quickly rising on the corporate buzzword watchlist. See how it’s proven to play a key role in strengthening employee engagement.
Desirable UX: The Power of Personality
The desirability of a product can make or break consumer following. What makes a product desirable? I’d argue personality. Relatable. Real. Human.
3 Things to Look For in a UX Agency
Learn how to find a professional UX agency in a sea of marketing firms and design shops trying to cash in at a prime time on the UX adoption curve.
Responsible Innovation: Safety in Product Design
As UX designers, it’s part of our job to make sure that the experiences we create are safe for people to use. It's important to design for the habits and goals of customers, as long as it doesn't come at the cost of user safety.
Make the Case for User Testing: 7 Excuses You’ll Hear, and How to Change Their Minds
Customers are the driving force behind business strategy. It’s no longer enough to have a product that functions — there is now an expectation that a product should delight. The only way to know how someone feels when using your app, walking through your store, or calling your support team, is to let them tell you. We are in the age of the customer, and it’s high time we embrace it.
Scientific Rigor and User Testing: How to Remain Unbiased in a World that Wants Results
A little while back, a study was published that examined the results of studies from cognitive and social psychology, revealing that only 36% of original studies, when replicated, yield near-same...
UX on the Move: How Can I Optimize UX across platforms?
From the moment you wake up to the minute you plug in your phone for the night, you’re surrounded by technology. It’s in your pocket, on your desktop, in your car, and maybe even on your wrist. It’s...
Does Customer Age Matter For My Product?
Age is a sensitive subject. It strikes chords and conjures preconceptions about a person’s worldview and, frankly, their capabilities. But is there value in age-related stereotypes?...
The UX Brain: How To Understand Users
The human brain is made up of separate parts, each responsible for performing its unique function: the hippocampus regulates emotions, the frontal lobe helps with problem solving and storing...
A Good Story Helps Unify Product Teams
Stories were told long before words were ever written to help people make sense of life (think cave drawings), and they have persisted as a universal tool used to pass on
Is UX a form of marketing?
Our short answer? Yes. And here are our thoughts behind it. If you’re in marketing, you may not pay a lot of attention to user experience design. It might seem like something that should be confined...
Is It Too Late to Bring in UX?
Is your customer service call center flooded with calls? Is your product getting bad reviews online? Does it have a low retention rate? You’re not alone. It’s not uncommon for a company to find...
I know I need UX But My Team Doesn't
You see UX as a necessity. In a perfect world, you’d be given a healthy budget for it for every project you work on. You’re well acquainted with all of the benefits that UX provides for a product,...
GiveBox: How I Learned that UX Matters
Eight months ago, I walked into the offices of Visual Logic Group and began my uncertain journey as a UX intern. Before I stepped into the office, I knew nothing about what went into making a user...
What's Your Number: How UX Rating Systems work
Two thumbs up. 4 stars. A+. Our world revolves around different rating systems. Whether you’re looking at different reviews online for a product, which hotel to book your stay, or even your own...
5 Steps to choosing user-friendly colors
You’re designing a new product. It’s time to show your true colors! Unless your true colors aren’t legible. If the colors you’ve chosen force people to wince at a screen and shade it from the sun, it...
How do I choose a UX firm?
Choosing a UX partner is no easy task. Like any partnership, being a good fit while working together is important. Of course the UX firm you partner with has to bring you results, but you also need a...
The ROI of UX - Is it Worth the Investment?
Why establish a UX budget? Because a good user experience is the expectation, research and testing exposes opportunities and corrects misconceptions, and the ROI is significant.
User experience personas: Now, it's personal
When it’s time to solve a usability issue, it’s important to know who the frustrated person is on the other side of the problem. To solve their problem, you have to know their pain points. You have...
Eliminating the Gap Between Design and Development
Digital product development is a challenge. It takes combined effort between creative and technical people. For that to work, you need the right people. You know you need developers. They’re the...
UX Design is Not Art
UX design is not about what you like. It's about what works best for the end user.
Paired Design: Iron Sharpens Iron
A seamless user experience requires thorough, deep thought. That level of thinking is best accomplished with two types of design thinkers: generators and synthesizers.
When I was a young information designer...
When I was a young information designer card sorting was all the rage. I first heard about it from the work being done at Sun Microsystems by Jakob Nielson and Darrel Sano. Even then it struck me as...