Mark Tegtmeier

If your personas describe users in isolation, you’re limiting impact. Real work is collaborative, constrained, and increasingly shaped by automated systems. Our design artifacts need to reflect that reality. This piece explores what it means to expand personas beyond the single user, and why relationships between actors matter just as much as the actors themselves. https://lnkd.in/g4dxrrHx #designexcellence #designleadership #userpersona #AIintegration

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🧠 How to organize internal design documents and manage projects with precision If you work with complex design projects, you know how quickly internal documentation can become messy, and how much that impacts clarity, alignment, and delivery. This article breaks down practical ways to organize internal design documents so teams can collaborate better, make decisions faster, and manage projects with confidence. A must-read for designers working in product, UX, and cross-functional environments. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/emc4eucn ✍️ Credits: Design Bootcamp – published on Medium #UXDesign #ProductDesign #DesignSystems #DesignOps #UXProcess #ProductManagement #Collaboration #Documentation #MediumArticle #DesignBootcamp

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Great design isn’t enough—if no one understands it. In this video, I break down 5 powerful habits that help you communicate your design decisions, build trust with stakeholders, and grow your influence as a designer or design leader. https://lnkd.in/g2UEmzfB

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In 0→1 products, design is more like a map, not a nice-to-have "paint job". When I embed with teams, I prioritize mapping the journey first: 1. what do users need 2. what does the product promise 3. where are the gaps The map shapes the MVP, highlights the right problems to solve, and makes UX trade-offs visible. Good design turns uncertainty into clear next steps. It's how you go from wandering to building with intention & purpose. If you're stuck in the mess of 0→1, design can help you see where to go. #fridaythoughts #startups #design #founders

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The Communication Tax As designers, every time we define design in our own terms, we introduce a tax on the listener. When we adapt to the listener’s language, we remove tax. For example, presenting flows in Google Slides, simplifying jargon for engineers, or framing pixels in terms of outcome, we eliminate the tax. Good design speaks; great design leadership bridges. We're not only designing experiences for users, we're also designing how design is understood throughout the organisation. #DesignLeadership #UXStrategy #Communication #DesignThinking #Collaboration #ProductDesign

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Most companies say they want design maturity. But too often, they treat it like a vibe shift. Hire a design exec. Run a few workshops. Roll out a component library. Then wonder why the customer experience still feels fragmented. Real design maturity isn’t surface polish. It’s systemic coordination. And it only works when you fire on all four cylinders: 1️⃣ Strategic 2️⃣ Operational 3️⃣ Tactical 4️⃣ Cultural Miss one, and the system breaks down. In my latest essay, I outline: 🔹 What each dimension looks like at scale 🔹 Litmus tests for executive alignment 🔹 Why design is more than a function, it’s an operating model 🔹 How to build compounding advantage over time This one’s for the design execs, product leaders, and founders serious about making design indispensable, not decorative. 👇 Read the full piece “The Four Dimensions of a Mature Design Practice” https://lnkd.in/gt97SnJH #DesignLeadership #ProductDesign #DesignOps #EnterpriseUX #DesignSystems #OrgDesign #CustomerExperience #StrategicDesign #DesignMaturity #UXStrategy #CrossFunctionalTeams #DesignExecution

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Bad UX is a symptom. A UX audit isn't just about design—it's about surfacing operational blind spots. Those frustrating navigation issues and confusing UI elements are just the visible tip of deeper systemic problems. Here are five practical findings we routinely uncover in audits: 1️⃣ Navigation designed for teams, not tasks → Content buried beneath internal silos instead of clear user journeys. 2️⃣ Unclear interactions causing usability breakdowns → Ambiguous buttons, opaque error messages, and jargon-heavy critical flows. 3️⃣ Dead-ends killing user momentum → Missing CTAs, unclear next steps, and no easy recovery paths. 4️⃣ Inconsistent components creating cognitive drag → Tabs behave differently across sections, breaking user trust and increasing cognitive load. 5️⃣ Poor accessibility blocks entire user segments → missing alt text, weak colour contrasts, and no clear focus states make your experience unusable for many. But audits always go deeper. Behind these surface-level issues, we typically find: → No unified content strategy → Unclear ownership across digital assets → Design debt accumulating without clear prioritization → Outdated governance frameworks → Misaligned KPIs disconnected from actual user needs An audit might flag your homepage navigation, sure—but what it truly reveals is how your organization thinks about users, collaboration, and managing change.

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Design metrics link design to business performance. In this throwback featured post, our chief instigator Bryan Zmijewski, argues that design impacts business success, and teams need a structured way to connect UX efforts to measurable outcomes. Check out his post: https://lnkd.in/gibPbYAw Our upcoming release of Glare, an open data-informed design framework, provides a design metrics tree that helps teams make design work: • Understand how UX metrics impact business results • Show the value of design investments to stakeholders • Continuously improve design based on data Here’s how it works: → UX metrics (like desirability, comprehension, and usability) are the leaves of a design metrics tree. They measure how users experience a product. → Design initiatives (like improving navigation or UI) are the branches, connecting UX insights to product improvements. → Product metrics (such as engagement and feature adoption) form the trunk, showing how design impacts product success. → Business metrics (like revenue and retention) are the roots, grounding design in measurable business value. By using Helio to collect these metrics, teams ensure that design isn’t just about craft…It’s also measurable, strategic, and contributes to business growth. 💜 If you are a product or design leader and want to dive deeper into how to align your metrics, join the discussion in our open framework Glare: https://lnkd.in/gynueqWu #uxresearch #productdiscovery #marketresearch #productdesign

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📔 Field Notes - Vol 4 📔 Why Product Designers Need to Think Like Product Owners Great designers don’t just ship screens and push pixels. They think beyond that ... thinking about outcomes, business goals, user needs, engineering impact, and what moves the needle. In today's Field Notes I'm jumping into why thinking like a product owner can elevate your impact, earn trust, and lead to better products. So take a look: https://lnkd.in/gUvQgHwi As always, I'd love to hear from you. How has thinking like a product owner impacted your design career? #design #productdesign #productowners #designers #careergrowth #fieldnotes

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Most accessibility testing fails users—and the numbers prove it. 94.8% of sites still fail basic WCAG standards in 2025. While automated tools are improving, even the best among them are still missing nearly half of real barriers. This isn’t just about compliance. It’s about methodology. Inspired by a request from a follower, I did some digging and found: → 51 accessibility errors per page on average (via WebAIM Million 2025). → 67% of disabled users never report issues—they just leave. → 2,019 ADA lawsuits filed in H1 alone—expected to reach nearly 5,000 by EoY. → Meanwhile, companies like Tesco are seeing 37,000% ROI from accessibility investments So what separates checkbox compliance from actual inclusive experiences? Today in Part 1 of this two-part LinkedIn series, I’m breaking down: 🔹 A two-pass screen reader testing method you can start using today 🔹 How heatmaps uncover behavioral barriers that code checkers miss 🔹 What tools accessibility professionals actually use (and what they cost) 🔹 How to structure your testing efforts without burning team time 🔹 ROI frameworks that convert skeptics into believers This is my most comprehensive accessibility testing resource yet. Save this if you want your accessibility work to create actual impact—not just pass audits. 👉 Part 2 coming later this week. Want to know interpret results, prioritize fixes, and hand off across teams? Then you’ll want to stay tuned… I’d also love to know: What’s the most surprising accessibility issue you’ve discovered that automation completely missed? #uxdesign #accessibility #designsystems #inclusiveUX ⸻ 👋🏼 Hi, I’m Dane—your source for UX and career tips. ❤️ Was this helpful? A 👍🏼 would be thuper kewl. 🔄 Share to help others (or for easy access later). ➕ Follow for more like this in your feed every day.

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Product and design partnerships are hard. What I’m learning is that it’s rarely about tools, roles, or process. It’s about whether we’ve actually built shared clarity. Do we agree on the problem? The tradeoffs? What success looks like? The harder part is how. Too often, we fall back on frameworks, titles, and best practices to carry the weight of the thinking. But those only help if we’ve already done the work to build belief together. I’ve been trying to name what gets in the way and how the best teams make decisions they can actually stand behind. Working notes in the comments.

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A new episode of UX Spotlight is live 🎙 This conversation was sparked by a viral industry post that challenges conventional design thinking. UX Designer and Product Thinker James Eccleston asserted: "Stop designing for ‘users.’ Start designing for tired, distracted humans." Curious, we connected with James to delve into this idea. He shared why designing for real-world behavior and *not* ideal personas leads to better digital experiences. Drawing from his work with major brands like Virgin, he explains how UX teams drifted away from reality… and what it takes to course-correct. If you work in UX, product design, research, or digital strategy, this conversation will challenge how you think about usability in the real world. 👉 Listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/ezamERjA

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Smart design leaders do one thing before buying AI enterprise tools. The rest waste millions on digital dust. This week I spoke to a switched-on design leader from a traditional organization. Instead of jumping into vendor demos, they said: "I want to understand what's possible before we commit to enterprise tooling." That's when I knew they got it. All smart design leaders understand: An AI workshop helps them make better long-term decisions. Here's what strategic leaders do before any supplier relationship: 1. Frame the real problem first. Get your team in one room. Use AI workshops to extract all their thoughts, opinions, biases and challenges in one focused session. Most orgs skip this step and wonder why their expensive AI tools sit unused. 2. Experience AI live, don't just talk about it. I regularly use AI during my AI workshops. Clients get hands-on with live models. The moment they see AI analyze their actual challenges in real-time? Game over. They finally understand what's possible. 3. Independent research beats vendor pitches. Suppliers will sell you their hammer for every nail. Independent consultants who know their stuff? We run deep research with 3 different AI models (Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude) to see what they recommend for your specific challenges. Usually it's a mix of buying off-the-shelf and custom tooling. 4. Custom vs. off-the-shelf reality check. Building custom tooling is easier than people think. Maintaining and scaling it for 1000+ concurrent users? That's where teams die. If someone's telling you not to buy Dovetail, Indeemo, TheyDo, or Mural and instead build everything in-house... run. Enterprise SaaS is a different beast than "vibe coding" a v1. 5. Look inwards before you look outwards. 9/10 of your colleagues are already using some shadow AI setup with unsanctioned solutions. They're getting results. Ask them: "What have you heard works/doesn't work for our challenges?" No reprimands for shadow AI use while you figure out your strategy - just make sure no private data gets inputted. 6. Controlled trials beat vendor demos. Don't race to install AI everywhere. Whittle down your favorite tooling contenders and pit them against each other in a 30-day controlled experiment. Real data beats sales presentations. The result? The smart leaders get clarity fast through AI Innovation Sprints. They don't just avoid costly mistakes - they get a strategic roadmap with actions and owners that puts them ahead of their competitors. The bottom line: The cautious leaders who do their homework first? They're the ones who end up with AI strategies that actually work. While others are stuck with expensive tools that collect digital dust, the smart ones are using AI to transform how their teams work. Be the strategic one. Do the research first. What's your approach to evaluating AI before committing to enterprise tooling?

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