User experience design, or UX, isn’t just a trendy buzzword… it’s essential if you’re looking to create products for people, and isn’t that what every organization aims to do? It’s easy to see when businesses treat UX as afterthought because it leads to products that are not intuitive and services that alienate customers and clients.

After having a baby, there are a lot of things that change, of course, but one of the biggest changes may be in the way you and your partner act (or want to act) as a family. What kind of values do you want to bestow on your offspring? What character values do you hope they embody? Lead by action is a wonderful way to set the right impression no matter the age of your child(ren) but sometimes it can be tough to get everyone on the same page. I think a family "brand" foundation might be just the thing to get the whole family on board.

Think of service design as your experience in preparing for and watching a movie. Everything from the hype around the movie trailer, booking tickets in advance, reading box office reviews, seeing the latest tabloid buzz about the lead actors, arriving at the theatre, and finally, watching the movie has an effect on your overall experience. The moviemakers can control some factors and not others. What’s critical to grasp is that both the controlled and the uncontrolled elements influence not only your movie-watching experience but also what you do with it next. Do you love it or hate it? Do you buy all the fan paraphernalia or do you tell all your friends not to go watch it? Every little touchpoint adds up to the big picture effect.

I had a lot of fun with this "make belief" healthcare project with the team at Pivot... we identified a problem and then brainstormed a solution to see what we could come up with if there were no project barriers to get through. Read on to see how it unfolded...

In this series, we explored the methods and principles of user experience design (UXD) and how they could practically be applied to today's business problems. It's a 5-part series to feel free to take your time reading them — they're doozies.

This idea for this article came about from my final year thesis of Undergrad. It was then condensed and written in this blog format at Pivot Design Group — a Toronto-based user experience and communication design firm.

This idea for this article came about from my final year thesis of Undergrad. It was then condensed and written in this blog format at Pivot Design Group — a Toronto-based user experience and communication design firm.