How we do UX retreats at Balsamiq (+ steal our agenda!)

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Inside our UX group retreat

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Ciao friends,

Our Apps, Editor, and UX groups recently met in Bologna for a combined, product-focused group retreat—and wanted to share what they talked about with our insiders.

While the developers had specific sessions on certain technologies, testing, and code infrastructure, we’ll focus this newsletter on the higher-level UX and product-related discussions. No matter how often UX crosses your screen, we hope there’s something here that’s useful for you.

A peek into the UX sessions

For this retreat in particular, the groups focused on themes like self-assessment, goal-setting, cross-team alignment, and strategy.

The UX group specifically focused on a few areas they believe will help their mission in leveling up UX across the whole company: UX metrics, research repository, consistency, and strategy.

Outcome-driven UX metrics

After years of being “allergic” to analytics (we felt it was an excuse for people to stop talking to customers), we finally feel like we’re at a phase where we can layer in quantitative data, while continuing our longstanding practice of qualitative user interviews.

So, the UX Group kicked off the retreat with a deep dive into outcome-driven UX metrics, inspired by Jared Spool’s teachings. The team watched the course before the retreat, which set the foundation for a great discussion on what measuring the user experience at Balsamiq means.

User research repository

Next, the UX group talked about our in-progress user research repository. We’re using Condens to build it, so the group spent some time exploring what we wanted to get out of the repository, and how we wanted to use the information and insights.

UX consistency

One of our long-term goals is to get the whole company aligned with UX methods and activities, like discovery. Our theory is that even internal facing teams (like HR) have customers, and activities like proper discovery upfront could make something as simple as writing a new policy much smoother.

We set some priorities for the parts we’ll focus on first, assigned a project lead, and started thinking about how to communicate the “why” to the rest of the company. We’re calling this UX consistency overall, but it’ll really be several projects to teach UX methods.

UX strategy

Lastly, the group’s strategy session. Like past years, the group did an audit on current activities and mapped them against strategic initiatives. This gave the group a shared vision of where their efforts need to be focused and how they evolve over the next 1-2 years. According to our UX lead, Michael, we’re in a period of deliberate preparation before a big push. It feels exciting!

Key takeaways

Per usual, there’s a lot to follow up on after the retreat. The group felt really good about where things left off, and we’re excited to keep you updated as we make progress.

And if this write-up has you considering setting up your own team retreat, steal our schedule! The template, made by our logistics team, covers how we structure our days, balance work and fun, and keep it all organized.

Happy customer of the month

Is it only me, or does using a tool like @balsamiq make wireframing super easy and fast?
— Rafael Servatti

Product news

Did you know you can snap to a grid of columns inside each control?

It works for controls that behave as containers (e.g., Browser Window, iPhone & iPad, Rectangle, and Tabs). You can choose 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, or 12 columns. Selecting Automatic will choose the appropriate number of columns based on the size of the control.

You can also specify an Outside margin to center the columns inside the control. Learn more about our improved snapping and controls.

Company News

Well, the product retreat was pretty big! Besides that, we’re currently focused on Balsamiq-ifying the standardized job descriptions we used in our salary matrix projects late last year. For consistency, we’d pulled the descriptions from a popular salary database—but now we have to describe what that means here. And, we have to describe what each level means. Groups are at different stages on this one, but it’s a useful exercise since the database doesn’t take into account our company size, structure, or culture.

We’re also continuing user interviews that can help us make Balsamiq Better! We’d love to learn more about how you use Balsamiq so we can improve it for you.

That's it for this month!

See you next month, with more behind-the-scenes news from your friends at Balsamiq.

Arielle for the Balsamiq Team

Most new customers find Balsamiq via recommendation...

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How we do UX retreats at Balsamiq (+ steal our agenda!)

A peek into the UX sessions

Outcome-driven UX metrics

User research repository

UX consistency

UX strategy

Key takeaways

Happy customer of the month

Product news

Company News

That's it for this month!

Most new customers find Balsamiq via recommendation...

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