How to leverage your UX skills to create a better portfolio

Being a Data-driven designer empowers you to identify problems and make informed decisions by leveraging user feedback, analytics, and cross-team insights. Venessa discusses how to become a data-driven designer.

Venessa shows you how to advocate for users in a business setting with a lack of user testing. Covering how to: understand your users, gather metrics, connect data to business goals, and compare/present the data to advocate for design changes.

Venessa discusses the importance of staying relevant in an ever-evolving design industry

Venessa discusses essential factors to consider before accepting a job offer, including the quality of management, career growth opportunities, alignment with personal values, and the company's commercial health. Venessa emphasises the importance of treating job interviews as a two-way process, where candidates evaluate the company as much as the company evaluates them.

Venessa emphasises the importance of showing your design process in case studies. Documenting each step, from sketches to final outcomes, helps to show hiring managers how you think.

Diverse design teams enhance creativity, product quality, and profitability. To achieve this, hiring managers should use inclusive job postings, standardised evaluations, and collaborative assessments. The focus should be on "culture add" rather than "culture fit," aiming to build teams that reflect the diversity of product users and bring varied perspectives to the design process.

I am frequently asked about my predictions for the future of UX. I believe that designers will continue to solve problems, but the scale of the challenges they face will change.

Nessa’s knowledge bombs are a series of short bite-size bombs of advice that I have learned over my career.

Discover the top three things I've learned in three months since joining a legal-tech company.

I spoke with Penny de Valk last year, and we discussed her tendency to step outside of her comfort zone and how her tribe empowers her.

This year I ventured into the realm of public speaking. It was a big challenge for me, but it was something that I wanted to master. Here are my learnings after a year of speaking.

Nessa’s knowledge bombs are a series of short bite-size bombs of advice that I have learned over my career.

When speaking to other design leaders, the discussion often moves to the value of design. Reflecting on this, I asked myself why are we still having this discussion. In this article, I explore why that is and what designers can do about it.

I sat down with Louis Badcock as he was leaving Cazoo and about to join Runa. We discussed some of his learnings during his time at Cazoo and our thoughts on AI and the future of design.

Being able to timebox design is an essential skill to nail if you are a designer. It is a great way to deliver value fast and to demonstrate how design can be agile. At the heart of timeboxing design are communication and planning; they help to create a shared understanding amongst the team and stakeholders.

Nessa’s knowledge bombs are a series of short bite-size bombs of advice that I have learned over my career.

One observation I’ve made in my career is that some of the best designers are not necessarily the most talented but the ones that are great at communicating and making the right connections, in short the best hustlers.

Being a designer can be challenging, especially in a cross-functional when you are the only designer. All is not lost, designers often have a lot more power than they think, by using data, insights, and collaboration they can persuade even the toughest stakeholders.

Nessa’s knowledge bombs are a series of short bite-size bombs of advice that I have learned over the years.