In our previous article, we used Teresa Torres’s “Opportunity Solution Tree” to understand the "why" behind a solution in progress. As we uncovered insights, outcomes, and assumptions, we likely found gaps in our tree.
Discovery is my favorite part of the job.
A tech conference centered around trans and nonbinary designers, technologists, and creators? With free tickets?? Of course I’m attending! So this March, my colleague Nico and I settled in for a mix of inspirational and practical talks on the fusion of design, technology, inclusivity, and diversity.
Provisioning and managing cloud resources present security challenges. Manually configuring these services is error prone and leads to security risks. Managing your infrastructure becomes even harder as team size grows. Without a proper infrastructure development process, your team’s ability to meet infrastructure requirements will slow to a crawl.
All organizations make trade-offs to get where they are. To meet its near-term goals, your organization had to make tough choices about what to prioritize vs. defer, which best practices to follow vs. shortcuts to take, and when to invest in the team vs. make do. Your team has made progress, and that’s good. It’s also accrued tech, design, product, or organizational debt that’s standing in the way of its next success. Organizations evolve, and it’s not always obvious that what worked before isn't working now.
Last summer, Figma introduced variables as a beta release, giving us designers a major leg up when building prototypes. However, it can still be hard to get a handle on just how to use these new features. While Figma has produced some good guides and a helpful playground file, I’d like to share a more practical example from a recent project.
We at Lab Zero always strive to keep abreast of industry trends. And what could be trendier than JavaScript, the web-centric language that the community seems to reinvent once every couple of months! That’s why it’s been so helpful to have a pet project on which to test these new developments: Lunch, the restaurant voting app for teams.
You’ve built your business on a large rock, it has served you well over the years, buuuut... technical debt has accumulated everywhere around your applications.
As designers getting up to speed on a new client project, we often feel the tension of designing quickly to earn trust, and designing to provide lasting value to users and the business. We want to be partners, not just another resource to be called upon when desired. But how can we smoothly transition into this partnership?
Product vision can be a powerful thing. It tells a story of what’s possible and pulls people toward that change. A lack of vision can be insidious. At its best, it leads to missed potential. At its worst, it can lead to unmotivated, burned-out teams and a disjointed product that fails to deliver customer value.