Usersnap - Blog for collecting visual feedback - Page 5 of 38 - Learn more about how to collect user feedback and improve your digital products with it.

How to Use Design Thinking Principles for Your Dev Project

In 2009, Tim Brown published his now famous book “Change by Design”. His idea: Design strategies and techniques can be used at every level of business. In 2018, Design Thinking has become a methodology and is used for innovative activities by project teams around the world.

We explore: How can design thinking help you when you are building new products? What strategies can you use? And how can you integrate Design Thinking into agile software development?

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Sprint: How to test new ideas with your dev team

Jake Knapp’s sprint concept and his book “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in just Five Days” are used in teams all over the world and has become a staple in agile process management. The idea is to explore new ideas, prototype, and get new things off the ground in a limited time and without making huge investments.

We take a look at Jake Knapp’s famous sprint concept and take you through his design of a sprint week, from planning to prototyping and testing.

Ready for a sprint? 🙂

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How to test your application with 5 users before you launch!

Building a successful digital product means developing products with your users and customers in mind.

89% of customers will switch to a competitor if they are not happy with your service or digital offering.

It’s as simple as that.

But the good news is: You only need to test your digital product with 5 users before you launch.

Only 5 user tests help you identify most major usability issues and, therefore, help you build better products.

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What your dev team can learn from Greg McKeown’s principle of essentialism

Everyone wants to get more done in less time. However, that is not what Greg McKeown’s New York Times bestseller book “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” is about. It is rather a book about getting the right things done and focusing on the things that are essential while eliminating the clutter.

In the last few weeks, we covered productivity and communication topics here on our blog and asked how they can be applied to working together with your dev team.

In this article, we want to take a look at the tipsMcKeown’s is suggesting and ask how they can work when you are building digital products with your dev team.

Happy reading!

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4 reasons why you should integrate visual communication into your workflow

Our communication is becoming more visual every day. We send emojis, gifs, pictures. We Instagram, Snapchat, or use the latest Facebook Filters to add some visual elements to our video chats. Visual communication is everywhere – and it’s faster, more effective, and fun.

Business communication is not exempt from integrating visual elements and giving everyone more and more opportunities to communicate visually. From Trello boards to Basecamp organization to our very own Usersnap (a visual communication tool for web developers – check it out!) visual communication is everywhere!

Why should you care? And why should you make sure to integrate visual communication into your daily work? We have 4 reasons for you to make you love visual communication even more!?
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Is your dev team lost in communication?

Communication is a key strength that is required no matter what you do for a living. Since tech companies have defined the “team” as the basic unit of an organization, communication skills take on a new significance.

However, not every developer possesses the same skills, when it comes to communicating ideas, exchanging feedback, and articulating thoughts on a new product update or feature.

In this article, we are looking at ways to improve communication for your dev team and show how visual communication can help you not only communicate faster and more effectively, but also in a way that’s fun. Continue Reading “Is your dev team lost in communication?” →

How to collect feedback & track bugs with the new Jira Experience!

In 2002 the software world looked quite different.

Bugzilla was the main bug tracking tool available, and a small company named Atlassian just launched its software, named Jira.

Jira, in reference to Gojira (Japanese for Godzilla), was intended to be a modern alternative to the market leader Bugzilla. Fast forward to 2018: Jira is used by more than 75,000 customers globally, who use JIRA for their entire software development lifecycle.

While all sorts of department and teams use Jira, its core use case is still its issue tracking and ticketing functionality.

And with this article, we show you how to collect feedback from colleagues, and track bugs with Jira more effectively.
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7 Easy Steps to Motivate Your Dev Team to Go the Last Mile

Everyone knows about the 80/20 rule. Here’s how Richard Koch defines it in his book “The 80/20 principle”:

“The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards. Taken literally, this means that, for example, 80 percent of what you achieve in your job comes from 20 percent of the time spent.”

In his book, Koch illustrates in which areas the 80/20 principle holds true and how to use it to optimize work.

However, you might think that in our highly competitive world, achieving 80 percent is not enough. Sometimes, it seems that with growing customer expectations, giving 100 percent is just barely okay.

So how can you motivate your product team to go the last mile? How do you instill a culture of curiosity and learning?

Or in other words: What does it take, to make your team go the last 20 percent?

Here are our 7 practical approaches.

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What the best dev teams do differently

Teams have become the fundamental unit of an organization. That’s the reason why there has been a lot of research on how to improve team culture, collaboration, and communication. The question is no longer around what individuals can do, but how they can work together. Especially when it comes to web development projects, teamwork is key. In this article, we want to spotlight a few things that the best teams get right.

We take a look at three critical things: 1) communication, 2) culture of learning, and 3) psychological safety. Our goal is to provide a few tips of actionable advice so you can work better after reading this. Better as a team, of course.

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Let’s UAT: A practical test case illustrated on the example of Trello

User Acceptance testing is an important – yet often overlooked – step in every software development project. The principle of UAT is simple: It allows you to verify if a solution/software/application works for the user.

Yet its implementation in real life software development teams and processes is something a lot of companies struggle with.

In this article, we guide you through a practical user acceptance testing example, illustrated by testing a Trello feature.

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