Amazon GO is a retail concept that promises no checkout lines. Awesome!

I’m a bit surprised that the friction-free shopping experience they show in the video is kicked off by scanning a QR code from one’s phone. It would be slick if they extended their “Just Walk Out technology” to provide a less cumbersome just walk in experience.

We’ll see this sort of experience beyond stores operated by Amazon. I’m sure someone at Amazon is already has a deck describing how to package this for retailers. It will be great, I just hope that people without smartphones, Amazon accounts and credit cards can take part in this experience as well.

via NY Times

Jason Cranford Teague has some solid advice on making the most out of design critiques in Creativity Under The Microscope: Running A UI Design Critique. If your team isn’t having regular critiques, or if your critiques aren’t making much of an impact, this article is a good place to start.

We talk a lot about design systems and pattern libraries, but what sets a great pattern library apart from the mediocre? I think Brad Frost has nailed that answer with Anatomy of a Pattern in a Pattern Library. In it, he describes the important elements that each pattern needs in order for a library to best serve its users.

Ah, Brainstorming. Whether you love it or hate it, as a user experience practitioner, you’ll often find yourself in the position of moderating a brainstorming session. It’s good to have several frameworks or techniques to draw from so you can use one that fits the situation.

AJ&Smart’s Applied User Story Mapping approach is a good one, and provides a fair amount of structure around ranking and prioritizing ideas.

via Smashing Magazine

Shivani Mohan and Lissette Sotelo Parr, from Facebook’s research group, outline Four Creative Ways to Share Research.

Teams and organizations have a better connection to their customers when research findings aren’t relegated to slides in a Powerpoint deck.

Photo from Beyond Bullet Points: Four Creative Ways to Share Research