UX Tools For Better Thinking

UX Tools For Better Thinking (https://untools.co), a wonderful collection of tools and frameworks to help you solve design problems, make better decisions, resolve conflicts and communicate better — with templates, sheets and useful resources, all neatly put together in one single place by Adam Amran.

Also highly recommended: Playbook For Universal Design (https://lnkd.in/eyXKNJ2D), a fantastic little helper with inclusive design methods for UX workshops, with practical guidelines on how to accommodate participants with diverse abilities — and each method includes step-by-step guidelines, video introductions, facilitating guides, materials and PDF/Powerpoint templates.

Quite a goldmine to keep nearby, neatly put together and maintained by Dagny Valgeirsdottir, Astrid Kofod Trudslev and Maria Væver Olsen.

Useful resources:

UX Methods and Projects (Airtable), maintained by Vernon Fowler
https://lnkd.in/eAHaiaSm

Library of Visual Frameworks, by Dave Gray
https://lnkd.in/eMAP3BS4

Hyperisland UX Methods Resource Kit
https://lnkd.in/eshvKWuK

18F Method Cards
https://methods.18f.gov/

How To Design Better UX Workshops, by Slava Shestopalov
https://lnkd.in/dtmQgT7X

Useful Resources to Find UX Methods, by Stéphanie Walter
https://lnkd.in/e5j6-2yy

Comprehensive Guide To UX Methods and Deliverables, by Fabricio Teixeira
https://lnkd.in/eKsgvCYM

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Vitaly Friedman on LinkedIn

Strategy vs Planning

Here’s the key difference:

→ Strategy is the logic behind how an organization creates and captures value, while planning is the process.

To put it differently:

→ Strategy defines goals, while planning helps achieve them.

A strategy delineates the rationale behind an organization’s value creation and capture process.

In Jeroen‘s book, “The One-Hour Strategy,” it is described that strategy encompasses:

a) The identification of target customers and competitors (Market), 
b) The selection of products and services offered (Magic), 
c) The utilization of assets and capabilities (Means), 
d) The methods employed to generate revenues (Money), 
e) The strategies for leveraging the environment (Momentum),
f) The underlying reasons for pursuing these actions (Meaning).

Igor Buinevici based on thoughts by Jeroen Kraaijenbrink

Design manager types

The four types of managers based on their loyalty and giving/taking credit characteristics. Model by Bas Wallet.

“How We Brainstorm And Choose UX Ideas” (+ Miro template) (https://lnkd.in/eN32hH2x), a practical guide by Booking.com on how to run a rapid UX ideation session with silent brainstorming and “How Might We” (HMW) statements — by clustering data points into themes, reframing each theme and then prioritizing impactful ideas. Shared by Evan Karageorgos, Tori Holmes, Alexandre Benitah.

Booking.com UX Ideation Template (Miro)
https://lnkd.in/eipdgPuC (password: bookingcom)

🚫 Ideas shouldn’t come from assumptions but UX research.
✅ Study past research and conduct a new study if needed.
✅ Cluster data in user needs, business goals, competitive insights.
✅ Best ideas emerge at the intersections of these 3 pillars.
✅ Cluster all data points into themes, prioritize with colors.

✅ Reframe each theme as a “How Might We” (HMW) statement.
✅ Start with the problems (or insights) you’ve uncovered.
✅ Focus on the desired outcomes, rather than symptoms.
✅ Collect and group ideas by relevance for every theme.
✅ Prioritize and visualize ideas with visuals and storytelling.

Many brainstorming sessions are an avalanche of unstructured ideas, based on hunches and assumptions. Just like in design work we need constraints to be intentional in our decisions, we need at least some structure to mold realistic and viable ideas.

I absolutely love the idea of frame the perspective through the lens of ideation clusters: user needs, business problems and insights. Reframing emerging themes as “How-Might-We”-statements is a neat way to help teams focus on a specific problem at hand and a desired outcome.

A simple but very helpful approach — without too much rigidity but just enough structure to generate, prioritize and eventually visualize effective ideas with the entire team. Invite non-designers in the sessions as well, and I wouldn’t be surprised how much value a 2h session might deliver.

Useful resources:

The Rules of Productive Brainstorming, by Slava Shestopalov
https://lnkd.in/eyYZjAz3

On “How Might We” Questions, by Maria Rosala, NN/g
https://lnkd.in/ejDnmsRr

Ideation for Everyday Design Challenges, by Aurora Harley, NN/g
https://lnkd.in/emGtnMyy

Brainstorming Exercises for Introverts, by Allison Press
https://lnkd.in/eta6YsFJ

How To Run Successful Product Design Workshops, by Gustavs Cirulis, Cindy Chang
https://lnkd.in/eMtX-xwD

Whiteboard Templates For Brainstorming, by Zvonimir Juranko
https://lnkd.in/eRDJm4Ea

Useful Miro Templates For UX Designers, by yours truly
https://lnkd.in/eQVxM_Nq

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Vitaly Friedman on LinkedIn

Names in form design

“Sorry, But Your Name Has Invalid Characters.” Things to keep in mind to prevent poor error messages, lock-outs and dead ends — due to false assumptions about names.

✅ People often have multiple full names.
✅ People’s names do change over time.
✅ People don’t always have 1 full name which they go by.
✅ Systems often use different names for the same person.
✅ There are dozens of various naming schemes worldwide.

🚫 Names aren’t always written in a single character set.
🚫 Don’t impose space or character limitations.
🚫 Not everyone has a last name, family name or middle name.
🚫 First names and last names aren’t always different.

✅ Always allow people to type their name as they prefer.
✅ Use “Full name” instead of “First”, “Middle”, “Last” names.
✅ Names may include numbers and punctuation.
✅ Names also include prefixes, suffixes, everything-in-between.
✅ If you must, ask additionally how a user prefers to be addressed.

We shouldn’t make any assumptions about people’s names. There are literally dozens of different naming schemes around the world, and validating any names is usually a dangerous path to take.

Usually it’s done due to security, to prevent SQL injections or similar attacks by submitting malicious data. Yet very often validation rules are overly restrictive, blocking any special characters, including apostrophes and diacritics. And unfortunately, those rules are often wrong, breaking UX for many people.

Review the rules with your engineers. There is no such thing as invalid characters in a person’s name. People whose names break validation aren’t outliers. They are real people with real names that don’t match our validation restrictions.

The way out is easy: accept any name that a user provides, whatever characters they include, and whatever way they choose to type it.

Useful articles:

40 False Assumptions About Names In Interfaces, by Patrick McKenzie
https://lnkd.in/esFQZBch

How To Ask Users For Names, Gov.uk
https://lnkd.in/eYTQutVh

Designing Forms for Gender Diversity and Inclusion, by Sabrina Fonseca
https://lnkd.in/e2UGu9N2

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Vitaly Friedman on LinkedIn

Figma checklists

Figma Checklists (https://lnkd.in/enncAgGr), a wonderful little project with actionable guidelines to deliver better quality of Figma components — from layers and layout to properties, style and testing. Suggestions are welcome! Kindly put together and maintained by Javier Cuello. 🙏🏾

Useful resources:

Figma Cheat Sheet For Developers, by Christian Reichart
https://lnkd.in/eghBjrAD

Figma Keyboard Shortcuts Cheatsheet, by Shirley, Xinling Wang
Preview: https://lnkd.in/e2NQxbZd
High resolution PDFs: https://lnkd.in/eeMB74-p

How To Clean Up A Messy Figma File, by yours truly
https://lnkd.in/eFciDnwe

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Vitaly Friedman on LinkedIn

Fix a broken colour palette

How We Fixed Skyscanner’s Broken Color Palette (https://lnkd.in/erqd-yCX), a practical case study on how the Skyscanner team fixed their color palette — along with process, naming, testing and explorations to get there. Neatly put together by Adam Wilson.

✅ Set your base colors: primary, secondary and UI states.
✅ Define core color pairings and extended pairings.
✅ Choose product-specific colors, gradients, patterns.
✅ 4 color groups: neutral, white text, black text, yellow/orange.
🚫 Avoid poetic names: they are difficult to remember and refer to.

✅ Mix black and grey with primary color for a better design fit.
✅ Choose a night color that is slightly lighter than black.
✅ Your colors will need to appear on different backgrounds.
✅ Create color sets with transparency for such cases.

✅ Create tints based on the color contrast against black.
✅ Create shades based on the color contrast against white.
✅ Test for color contrast, colorweakness, colorblindness early.
✅ Double-check the dark yellow problem in your palette.

🌱 Useful resources:

How To Design A Color Palette For Design Systems, by Alex Baranov
https://lnkd.in/epJkT252

How To Set Up Color in Design Systems, by Nathan Curtis
https://lnkd.in/e48aJaGb

How To Create An Accessible Color Palette, by Stéphanie Walter
https://lnkd.in/eUnSTYSM

The “Dark Yellow Problem” In Color Palettes
https://lnkd.in/eS7YqfCf

🪴 Useful case studies

Contentful: https://lnkd.in/e66Rw85K, by Fabian Schultz
Goldman Sachs: https://lnkd.in/e8JQsqnq
Modern Health: https://lnkd.in/ez7xM5xt, by Brian Cleveland
Stripe: https://lnkd.in/enaXpWvD, by Daryl Koopersmith, Wilson Miner
Wise: https://lnkd.in/eyv8Qh7r, by Stephanie S.
Wish: https://lnkd.in/eGYGa7PK, by Taamannae Taabassum

🍭 Color Palette Generators

Accessible Palette Generator: https://lnkd.in/ejkpyWqZ
Figma Color Palettes: https://lnkd.in/et2zeUjX
Contrast Grid: https://lnkd.in/e6sENdRW
Leonardo: https://leonardocolor.io/
ABC: https://lnkd.in/e7QHC2gx
Stark Figma plugin: https://www.getstark.co/
Primer Prism: https://lnkd.in/ekpTmkkM
Colorbox: https://colorbox.io/
Naming colors: https://lnkd.in/e6jJzRdW
OKLCH Color Converter: https://lnkd.in/esP29Jyj

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Vitaly Friedman on LinkedIn

Running design critiques

“How We Run Design Critiques At Figma” (https://lnkd.in/eERQmRnY), an honest case study by Noah Levin with helpful techniques and templates to run more effective and friendly design critiques.

Most critiques are an avalanche of unstructured opinions.

Run successful design critiques

✅ Good critiques are inspiring, and give you a plan of action.
✅ Critiques work best with 2–6 people in the room.
✅ Explain the problem before showing any work.
✅ Reiterate previous findings, decisions and research.

✅ Explain how far you are: 30%, 60% or 90% done.
✅ Explain what kind of feedback you are looking for.
✅ No Keynote/Powerpoint: Figma link + Observation mode.
✅ Assign a note-taker to capture key points (Google Doc).
✅ Show what you want to show: feedback is shaped by that.

Critique formats

🎡 Round-the-room: everyone voices their feedback (2min / person). 
🍿 Popcorn: freeform comments for flowing conversation.
🥁 Jams: for early explorations with brainstorms, group sketching.
🫱🏻‍🫲🏾 Pair design: for deep collaboration on a problem (small groups).
🤫 Silent critiques: for a large volume of written, structured feedback.
📋 Paper print-out: for complex flows and reviewing more at once.
📣 FYI critiques: for sharing context and invite feedback later.

Design critiques are about applying critical thinking. It’s about how well a current iteration of design does what it’s trying to do. However, designers alone often don’t have the full picture. Don’t necessarily reserve critiques to design teams only: invite developers and stakeholders and PMs for early feedback.

Don’t ask what people think — ask how well the design tackles a specific problem. And probably the most important thing is to enable a flowing conversations. Invite everyone to ask, to doubt, to scrutinize, but stay on point and gather structured feedback: that’s when good critiques emerge.

Useful resources

Practical Design Critique Guide, by Darrin Henein
https://lnkd.in/ey_cGKuc

Mastering Design Critiques, by Jonny Czar
https://lnkd.in/e_BYwNwf

Anti-Behavior in Design Critiques, and How To Handle Them, by Ben Crothers
https://lnkd.in/e4UrpsPs

Figma and Miro Templates

Design Critique Meetings Guide (Figma), by Overflow
https://lnkd.in/eS6_Vqc8

Design Critique Template (Figma), by Janus Tiu
https://lnkd.in/edzhC4Mw

Design Critique Meeting (Figma), by Rodrigo Alas
https://lnkd.in/eppC4TFk

Design Critique Meeting Agenda (Figma), by Tony Murphy
https://lnkd.in/e8bMqqcq

Design Critique Playground Template (Miro), by Miroslava Jovicic
https://lnkd.in/eryJShRd

from Vitaly Friedman on LinkedIn

How to give feedback

Eric Partaker on LinkedIn

Free Product Management Templates

Free Product Management Templates (Miro, Figma, PDF) (https://lnkd.in/eW95eZ9c), a large repository with 69 templates — for discovery, research, prioritization, team building, metrics and product strategy. A wonderful repository, curated and maintained by Paweł Huryn 🇺🇦.

Google Drive (Powerpoint templates):
https://lnkd.in/eC7AkmGP

FigJam templates by Maryna Kucherova 🇺🇦:
https://lnkd.in/eNHJeqAh

Comprehensive PM Curriculum, by Matt Mochary
https://lnkd.in/emX4DtcV

More free resources for PMs:
https://lnkd.in/eVmqUvtv

As always, please always customize templates to the needs of your company. Very often they are quite generic and as such, not necessarily helpful. So use them as a good starting point to build open and improve, but not as the ultimate source of truth to follow. Good luck, everyone!

And again, please give a huge round of thank-you to Paweł Huryn 🇺🇦 for putting and maintaining this and other resources for everyone to learn from and grow with. 👏🏼 👏🏽 👏🏾

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Vitaly Friedman on LinkedIn