Mobile Design Challenges

Stuck in a rut? Does coming up with a good idea feel like picking something to watch on Netflix? (every choice is mediocre, you end up arguing/scrolling for 2 hours) I have a few ‘good ideas’ to help. Here are 4 brainstorming techniques for UX problems. 💡 🧠 The HMW Reframing Method Start with a challenge—users aren't completing sign-up. Now, reframe it as a How Might We question—how might we make sign-up irresistibly easy? This simple switch kickstarts solution-oriented thinking.  Pro tip: Generate multiple HMWs for each problem to explore different angles. 🧠 The Intersection matrix Create a grid with user needs on one axis and random objects or concepts on the other. For example, "Quick checkout" meets "Rollercoaster." How could the thrill and speed of a rollercoaster inform your checkout process? It's weird, agreed. But you never know, you might end up with unexpected brilliance. 🧠 Reverse brainstorming Flip the script. Instead of asking "How do we improve user engagement?", ask "How could we completely destroy and annihilate user engagement?" List all the terrible ideas, then reverse them. It's a fun way to identify pain points and generate solutions you might have overlooked. 🧠 The 5 Whys You know this classic. Basically, become a toddler. Start with a problem statement and ask "Why?" five times. Each answer becomes the basis for the next "Why?" This helps you dig deeper and uncover root causes. For example: - Users aren't using the new feature. Why? - They don't know it exists. Why? - We haven't promoted it effectively. Why? - Our notification system is broken. Why? - It wasn't properly tested before launch. Why? - We rushed the development process. Boom. Now you know where to focus your problem-solving efforts. It also helps to begin ideation with the ‘hair on fire’ problem. Here’s how. https://bit.ly/4dHyjWl Let’s do opposites. What’s a brainstorming exercise you hate, and why do you think it doesn’t work? Looking to find some interesting answers in the comments! 🥸

Yes you can innovate with more management buy-in and less risk …. How? Start PRETOTYPING … Pretotyping is a concept developed by Alberto Savoia that focuses on quickly and cost-effectively validating an idea before investing substantial time and resources into building it. It involves creating a minimal, low-fidelity version of a product or service to gather feedback and insights from potential users. Simply put: “FAKE IT BEFORE YOU MAKE IT”. And that’s also the difference with PROTOTYPING. As you do NOT make aworking prototype it’s faster and cheaper. Here are the steps to take when pretotyping: 1. Identify your core assumptions: Define the key assumptions underlying your idea. What are the most critical aspects that need to be tested? 2. Design a pretotype: Create a basic version of your idea that captures its core functionality and value proposition. This can be a physical mock-up, a landing page, or a simple web-based pretotype. 3. Test with a target audience: Share your pretotype with a select group of potential users who match your target audience. Allow them to interact with it and gather their feedback. 4. Measure user interest and behavior: Pay close attention to how users engage with your pretotype. Is there genuine interest? Are they willing to provide contact information or take the desired actions? 5. Iterate and refine: Based on the insights gained from user testing, make informed refinements to your idea. Focus on addressing the most critical areas of improvement. 6. Repeat the process: Continue iterating and testing until you have validated or invalidated your core assumptions. This iterative process ensures you are building something that meets user needs and has the potential to succeed. Remember, the goal of pretotyping is to learn quickly and make informed decisions early on, saving valuable time and resources in the long run. #designthinking #innovation #pretotype

Many of my web tools are designed to help with creative thinking (because that's what I write books about). And this is one of those. It's a tool I built for a training workshop I ran a couple of weeks ago. Research shows that humans are best at generating ideas in short bursts. Our creative muscles are built for sprints, not marathons. It also shows that perfectionism reduces idea generation and blocks flow. So I built this little tool to encourage people to focus on quantity rather than quality of ideas to get things moving at speed. This opens your mind up to opportunities you wouldn't previously have considered. Link to the tool is in the comments 👇 For solo thinkers, I recommend the 90-second and 3-minute settings. If you're working with a small group, try the longer times. But don't waste precious seconds discussing your ideas or trying to flesh them out. And definitely don't critique any ideas as you go (throw the critics out of your group and tell them never to come back). You can do all the judging you want after you've crossed the finish line. The web tool works like this: ❶ You start by picking a time for your idea sprint. ❷ This takes you to a screen with a text input box. You rattle out your basic ideas one at a time, hitting the return key between each one. The tool keeps a tally of the number of ideas you've come up with so that you can spur yourself on to beat your previous record. ❸ When the time is up, you'll see a list of your ideas that you can copy and paste into a document to explore further. I recommend that you aim for 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 15 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝘀. You probably won't hit it, but that's the kind of speed we're looking at here. Don't focus on detail; focus on coming up with more ideas. I built this tool the night before the workshop. We used it during the session and I can tell you that it works. It works really well! Maybe bookmark it for the next time you need to generate a bunch of ideas. Again, this was built with Cursor and includes features that I would struggle to code myself. Do you think this tool might be useful to you? What other tools would you like me to build?

You think great ideas strike like lightning. Wrong. They rain like confetti if you know how to catch them. 93% of breakthrough innovations come from collecting small ideas over time. Not from one big "aha" moment. Here's your 5-step framework to catch more ideas: 1. The Collector's Mindset • Your brain processes 6,200 thoughts daily • Most people lose 98% of their ideas • Start capturing everything 2. The Connection Protocol • New ideas = 2 old ideas colliding • Research shows diverse inputs = better outputs • Read outside your field 3. The 3x3 Method • Write 3 ideas every morning • Review them 3 days later • Keep the ones that still excite you • Studies show delayed evaluation improves quality by 40% 4. The Idea Compound • Each captured thought builds on others • Small notes become big breakthroughs • Group brainstorming increases creativity by 71% 5. The Implementation Loop • Ideas without action die • Test one small concept daily • Build fast, learn faster • Innovation requires iteration Remember: You don't need to be a genius. You just need a bigger bowl. ♻️ Share this with someone who's sitting on brilliant ideas 🔔 Follow Kabir Sehgal for frameworks that turn inspiration into innovation

This e-book from the authors at Northwestern University & NiuTrans Research was a great, educative read for me! I am sharing some of my key takeaways and lessons here. TBH, it has some solid engineering lessons but I read it as a Product Leader. Hence, my takeaways might be a little more nuanced for product folks. ✅ Embed LLMs into the Product Vision Early LLMs can shape entire product strategy and roadmaps. Use them not just for individual features fitment (like chat interfaces) but as foundational technology that influences overall product design and user experience. ✅ Prototype Rapidly with Prompting Rather than waiting for perfect models for your use case, start quick experiments with prompts and in-context learning. Quick experiments let you validate feasibility, refine user flows, and surface early insights on user behaviour. ✅ Scale Features Responsibly More data and bigger models bring power, but also complexity. Evaluate if you really need “the biggest model” or if a moderately sized model, with targeted fine-tuning, can solve your product challenges just as effectively. This is something that needs to be reiterated every few cycles. ✅ Design for Real-world Use LLMs handle unstructured queries, but you must define guardrails. For example, incorporate alignment strategies (like RLHF) to ensure the model’s outputs stay on-brand and meet user expectations at all times. These are early days and putting strong governance guardrails (including setting up eval parameters) will go a long way in building trust with end users ✅ Focus on User-driven Data and Feedback Encourage a feedback loop where users (or internal teams) rate and flag responses. This data helps refine instruction tuning and maintain model relevance over time ✅ Leverage Chain-of-thought Reasoning for Complex Features For intricate tasks—like multi-step Q&A or data analysis—prompting the model to “think aloud” can boost quality. Build interfaces or prompts that reveal intermediate steps when appropriate. It is also very useful for monitoring quality and correctness as well as some degree of debugging and error handling. ✅ Iterate, Measure, Repeat Keep a close eye on metrics like accuracy, engagement, and trust. Fine-tuning is never a one-off event; plan for an ongoing iteration cycle that refines both your product’s UX and the model’s performance. ____ Feel free to repost / share and follow me, Priyadeep Sinha, for more similar content

💡Combining Design Thinking, Lean UX, and Agile A combination of Design Thinking, Lean UX, and Agile methodologies offers a powerful approach to product development—it helps balance user-centered design with efficient concept validation and iterative product development. 1️⃣ User-centered foundation (Design Thinking): Begin by understanding the needs, emotions, and problems of the end-users. ✔ Start by conducting user research to identify and understand user needs. ✔ Gather insights through direct interaction with users (e.g., through interviews, surveys, etc.). Spend time understanding users' behavior, focusing on "why" rather than "what" they do. ✔ After gathering research, prioritize the most critical user insights to guide your design focus. Create a 2x2 matrix to prioritize insights based on impact (high vs low business impact) and feasibility (easy vs hard to implement) ✔ Begin brainstorming potential solutions based on these prioritized insights and formulate a hypothesis. Encourage cross-functional collaboration during brainstorming sessions to generate diverse ideas. 2️⃣ Hypothesis-driven testing (Lean UX): Lean UX helps quickly validate key assumptions. It fits perfectly between Design Thinking's ideation and Agile's development processes, ensuring that critical hypothesis are validated with users before actual development started. ✔ Formulate a testable hypothesis around a potential solution that addresses the user needs uncovered in the Design Thinking phase. ✔ Conduct experiment—develop a Minimum Viable Product (https://lnkd.in/dQg_siZG) to test the hypothesis. Build just enough functionality to test your hypothesis—focus on speed and simplicity. ✔ Based on the experiment's outcome, refine or revise the hypothesis and repeat the cycle. 3️⃣ Iterative product development (Agile): Once the Lean UX process produces validated concepts, Agile takes over for incremental development. Agile's iterative sprints will help you continuously build, test, and refine the concept. Agile complements Lean UX by providing the structure for frequent releases, allowing teams to adapt and deliver value consistently. ✔ Break down work into small, manageable chunks that can be delivered iteratively. ✔ Embrace iterative development—continue refining your product through iterative build-measure-learn sprints. Keep the user feedback loop tight by involving users in sprint reviews or testing sessions. ✔ Gather user feedback after each sprint and adapt the product according to the findings. Measure user satisfaction and track usability metrics to ensure improvements align with user needs. 🖼️ Design thinking, Lean UX and Agile better together by Dave Landis #UX #agile #designthinking #productdesign #leanux #lean  

How to start creating fresh and innovative ideas for any problem in under 5 minutes. 1. Define the problem 2. Go to your bookshelf. 3. Pick any book 4. Flip through the book and stop on any page. 5. Read the first complete sentence you see. 6. Force yourself to make connections between the sentence and your problem. 7. Write down as many ideas as possible, no matter how silly. 8. Hint: Let your mind wander if it needs to. 9. Stop when 5 minutes are up. Creative coaches call this juxtapositional thinking. I call it the Oracle Technique because this is precisely the thinking the oracles in every religion try to evoke. And I do it at the start of every Generalists project. Because new ideas are precisely what they sound like. New. And they are created only when two ideas that seem to have nothing to do with each other come together. That's literally what happens in the brain. Every time a new idea is formed, two unconnected synapses come together. But the human brain is lazy. It doesn't want to do that. It wants to look for solutions among the many apparent connections it's already made. You've got to make your brain used to making these types of connections. Starting every project with a juxtapositional exercise is a great way to break through that. It's like exercise. It may not result in an immediate solution. But it will put you in the right mindset to find one sooner rather than later. p.s There are no new ideas. There are only better ones. Add even then, they are only better for the circumstances you are in. Get over yourself. p.s.s 10. If it takes you more than 5 minutes to start making connections, your probably trying to solve the wrong problem. p.s.s.s Your oracle doesn't have to be a sentence in a book. It could be anything. Here are some other examples of Oracles I've heard people use. 1. The first thing you hear a stranger say. 2. The first Linkedin post you see 3. A random place on a map. 4. A deck of cards 5. The results of a random word typed into Wikipedia. 6. Random words types into Midjourney Try using the below image as an oracle for a problem you are currently working on.

We will never be user centred because if we ask people what they want, we just won’t be able to deliver it. I’ve heard that a good many times now and at its heart it demonstrates a foundational misunderstanding of what user centred design actually is. Let me expand… 1. ‘User’ was never meant to only mean end users. We need to make sure that the service works for the staff delivering it too. If it’s impossible to deliver for the staff, that isn’t good user centred design. 2. User centred design doesn’t mean throwing away organisation needs. It means starting with user needs and then prioritising the ideas and services that are feasible and viable for the organisation to deliver. 3. People are brilliant at describing their own experiences, but not always great at designing the solution. If we literally ask “what do you want?” we’ll get feature requests. User centred design is more about understanding behaviours, constraints, motivations and pain points, then designing options that are deliverable. 4. User centred doesn’t mean “more work for the organisation” Done well, it reduces failure demand: repeat contacts, avoidable calls, workarounds, rework, complaints. There’s a strong case for linking user pain points to organisational waste points and cost. 5. It’s not a phase you do at the start A lot of resistance comes from assuming research is a big, slow, one-off event. In practice, it’s little and often: test, learn, iterate, keep checking you’re solving the right problem. 6. The “user” includes people who never get invited into the room or don’t use your services yet. User centred design includes actively seeking underrepresented perspectives and folks with accessibility needs and designing services that actually works for them. We can’t afford not to do this in public services. User centred design isn’t about giving everyone what they ask for. It’s about taking responsibility for understanding what people need, then making the trade-offs visible.

Most product failures aren’t engineering failures. They’re empathy failures. Teams ship what they think customers want… …and then wonder why adoption stalls, churn climbs, and the roadmap turns into a graveyard of “nice features.” Here’s the shift that changes everything: Customer-centric design isn’t a UX phase — it’s an operating system. It means building around real user needs, behaviors, and outcomes (not internal opinions). And in the last few years, AI has raised the bar: Customers expect relevance and ease (not generic journeys) Personalization is now table-stakes — but trust is fragile The winners will be the teams who pair speed with human-centered design The customer-centric loop (that actually works) 1) Learn deeply Talk to customers weekly. Mine tickets, reviews, churn reasons, behavior data. 2) Map reality Personas + journeys that expose friction, emotion, and drop-off points. 3) Design for outcomes Less effort. More clarity. Better defaults. Faster “time to value.” 4) Prototype + test fast Small tests beat big debates. 5) Measure + iterate Track experience and behavior (activation, retention, task success, effort). Where AI fits (and where it breaks) Use AI to accelerate: Synthesizing feedback Finding patterns Generating variations and prototypes But design AI like a relationship: Set expectations Provide controls (“undo,” preferences, corrections) Fail gracefully Escalate when confidence is low Customer-centric design is the advantage that compounds. Because when you build what people truly need, growth stops being a fight. Question: What’s one customer insight you learned recently that changed how you build? iQor we take customer centric design to the next level with InsightsIQ, hit me up with questions. #CustomerExperience #ProductManagement #UXDesign #ProductDesign #AI #HumanCenteredDesign #Leadership

Have you kept Thumb Zone Accessibility in mind while designing your features? If you’ve used Paytm, PhonePe, or CRED recently, you might have noticed a subtle but powerful design shift—the QR scanner now sits at the bottom of the screen, conveniently within reach. What seems like a minor tweak actually makes a huge difference in user experience! 🌟 Previously, apps like PhonePe placed the QR scanner in the top-right corner. For users with larger phones, this placement often required a two-handed reach 👆👈—an awkward, inefficient, and slightly clunky experience. By relocating the scanner to the bottom center, the app now leverages the Thumb Zone Accessibility or Thumb-Friendly Design principle, placing key features within easy reach of the thumb. This aligns with usability best practices, as the scanner is now positioned where your thumb is organically placed, making scanning faster, more intuitive, and a seamless one-tap, single-hand interaction. ✅👍 Why the Change? 🤔 The “Jobs to Be Done” Principle in Action This shift aligns perfectly with the “Jobs to Be Done” theory in product management. Users aren’t just using these apps—they’re hiring them to perform a specific job: making payments seamlessly. By moving the scanner to the bottom, apps remove unnecessary friction, making the experience smooth and intuitive. 🎯💡 Paytm picked up on this UX enhancement early on, perhaps gaining a slight edge in usability. But PhonePe recently adopted this change. This simple repositioning could not only boost accessibility but might even increase transaction frequency by making payments faster and more convenient. 💸💥 What's the takeaway? In product design, no detail is too small. Tiny UX optimizations can have a big impact on user satisfaction and engagement. Always opt for user-centered designs. Which app do you use for UPI payment and does this placement of QR scanner help you ? #ProductManagement #ProductDesign #UIUX #Design #ProductManager #Design