The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
From Strategy to Research: Insights from Our Community
From Strategy to Research: Insights from Our Community
By Hannah Baker
Dear Reader,
This week's newsletter will explore another "Monday Musings" from our community. The question posed:
"What are your questions about becoming a strategic designer?"
What came out of it was a fascinating connection between strategy and research.
We started by addressing a common challenge—people within organizations saying, "That's not a designer's job, though."
Have you ever heard this or worried it might crop up because your design role isn't crystal clear in your company?
So, how do we respond to this?
Here are some simple yet effective ideas from the community:
- Involve product managers and stakeholders in the research process to promote a shared understanding.
- Facilitate strategic workshops, such as pre-mortems and Goals and Anti-goals sessions, to contribute to decision-making.
- Pose business-related questions, demonstrating your constant consideration of the business aspect of design.
The conversation then quickly turned towards the design maturity of companies and their hesitance to embrace service design activities and user research.
It's no surprise that a conversation about becoming a strategic designer ended up focusing on user research.
Design strategy and user research are like two sides of the same coin. Effective design strategy relies on deeply understanding user needs and behaviors.
We know that designers don't merely focus on aesthetics; we consider how design aligns with business goals, user needs, and overall strategy.
But one of the common challenges we face is the perception that research is time-consuming.
Many of us are looking for ways to sneak in quick research moments.
It's a top reason why designers join our Continuous UX Research course. It's designed to help you build a sustainable user research practice that fits seamlessly into your busy work life.
Don't let the time myth hold you back. If you're ready to make a change, join us on October 2nd for the last run of this course in 2023.
| Check out Continuous UX Research |
Encourage Figma to reduce digital waste by making file compression default.
Sign the petition here
|
COURSE: Defining UX Strategy COURSE: Facilitating Workshops |
Until next week!
|
Hannah Baker |
The Fountain Institute
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
I Bought a Mac Mini to Try OpenClaw, the Most Hyped AI Tool of 2026 by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, You've probably heard of OpenClaw 🦞 by now. 145,000 GitHub stars. Headlines everywhere. "The AI that actually does things." This tool is the O.G. dream of AI...automation, not slop. This was the missing piece to my automation system. I had to try it. So I bought an entry-level, 2024 M4 Mac Mini for €590 (on sale in Germany, but they're reportedly selling out in the U.S.) and spent two days trying...
Why Decisions Feel So Hard Right Nows By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, Over the last few months, I’ve been talking with design and product leaders across very different organizations, large companies, smaller teams, fast-moving environments, and slower ones. And I keep hearing the same thing. Their teams are being asked to make decisions faster than ever, and yet, deciding feels heavier than it used to. Not slower, exactly. Just harder. At first, people often explain this in familiar ways: too...
When Speed Stops Being the Bottleneck by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, Quick question: What happens when the thing that used to take 12 weeks now takes 4 days? I've been watching this play out across the industry, and it's wild. Lots of companies aren't sharing their new speeds, but a few are: Code and Theory (an agency that works with Microsoft and Amazon) is building dashboards in 40 minutes that used to take a week. They report cutting time-to-prototype by 75%. Coinbase reports a 2-5x increase...