Innovation isn’t a result. It’s the capacity to see change as an opportunity to do something better — instead of a threat. Long the locked-down domain of visionaries, innovation is now required for survival in any market. But pure inventiveness doesn’t cut it these days. Innovation is a moving target. You’ve got to move fast and deliver value to customers …
2020 could have been electronic health records’ moment. When COVID-19 hit the state of Washington and then New York City, a standardized and centralized database of aggregated patient data could have helped differentiate coronavirus symptoms from other conditions, hashed out high-risk patients and raised flags that a pandemic was imminent (and that this wasn’t just the seasonal flu). Integrated apps …
Productivity, optimization and efficiency were the name of the game for the past few decades. Enterprises went all-in on business models, supply chains and IT infrastructures hyper-focused and lean as can be. Not a penny wasted, needless data stored nor a second lost. Redundancy became kind of a bad word. Then the world shut down. Businesses that had been solely …
Data solutions often require months for implementation: there’s technology to integrate, users to train and cultures to shift. But in the middle of the pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) didn’t have months. Every minute was a missed opportunity. When COVID-19 outbreaks began rapidly spreading across U.S. nursing …
The heart of the persona dispute Everyone can agree that personas are a critically useful tool to understanding your customer. But within the world of user-centered design (UCD), there have long been debates about how to create personas that work. The very definition of a persona is a general representation of a target audience. But there is a fine line …
The Opportunity At Ventera Corporation, we service both the federal and commercial sectors, focusing on management consulting, software engineering, and data solutions. In 2008, we turned to Scrum to improve our development life cycle, including quicker feedback cycles, improved vision translation, and shorter development iterations. Implementing Agile brought many positive benefits to our organization. At the team level, Scrum proved …
The emphasis on technology and cloud migration continues to expand, and if organizations are not careful, operational results will be negatively impacted. These trends give rise to an increasing focus on capacity, bandwidth, and security, to name a few. For operational teams to improve their chances for success and to prevent getting lost along the way, using a roadmap approach …
There are nearly 300,000 Meetup groups in upwards of 200 countries. These groups cover a large variety of interests, including technology, writing, and fitness, to name a few. After joining and hosting several Meetups, we’ve compiled a list of reasons Meetups can be beneficial to you both personally and professionally. Networking – Social or Professional If you are new to …
Have you ever been at your desk in your workplace, furiously (or calmly) working on a deliverable (maybe with your headphones in because sometimes the office gets a bit loud) when suddenly you find yourself stuck? “If only I had this last small detail,” or “it would be advantageous to confirm this is the right approach before I go down the wrong …
Challenges Traditional manual testing is not very efficient. Manual testing is labor intensive, requiring a team of people to perform multiple cycles of mundane tasks. Manual testing coverage is not always adequate – new builds and functions often take priority, leaving other items neglected. Manual testing time is often lengthy, with no economies of scale or efficiency improvements. Some automated …
Wireframes are helpful in the early stages of design so that people do not get distracted by the styling of the interface while discussing functionality. In wireframes, it is perfectly acceptable to have placeholder text and empty content blocks while details are still being determined. Because color is the first thing that humans notice when they look at an interface, it is very easy for people to focus …
A UX designer concentrates on workflow and interactions, typically working in low-fidelity mediums such as diagrams and wireframes. Conversely, a UI designer specializes in look and feel, focusing on high-fidelity mockups and branding. While UX and UI are entwined from start to finish, the crux of a UX designer’s work occurs in the early stages of the design process while the primary responsibilities of a UI designer occur during the latter stages. Below …
On every team that I’ve ever worked with, there are hunters and farmers. The terms were originally used in sales to refer to salespeople who would go out and “hunt” new business, versus the farmer who was better suited for cultivating growth opportunities within existing customers. In the context of a UX team, both are important, but for very different …
Data has an expiration date. What it is depends on how that data is being used. Consider a wildfire. Real-time data is essential here. Data about the fire, like location, expanse, terrain, temperature and speed, delivered a week after it’s been collected won’t help firefighters on the ground right now. Yet if you analyzed it alongside datasets from previous weeks, …
IT consulting is a highly charged, highly competitive landscape. Over the past half-decade or more, IT consulting firms have had a great deal of success positioning user-centered design as a key selling point in the commercial and government sectors. However, it’s really easy for sales and business development professionals to want to sell customers on the “concept car” – a …
