Tools I use, experiments I make, and other recommendations.

I've used for many years a lot of tools and am now exploring GenAI to make my research and design process more efficient.

Research and Design

  • Miro

    I've been a fan of Miro before it became fashionable, when it was still called Realtimeboard. I introduced it in my latest company and everyone fell in love with it. A good whiteboard is all you need to kickstart your research.

  • Figma

    My design career started with Macromedia Fireworks and then of course Photoshop. Nowadays it's really all about Figma. In the past, I've enjoyed using Sketch combined with Zeplin.

  • Hotjar

    I discovered this tool when they were first starting to roll out heatmaps and video recordings of user interactions. It helped a lot to understand behaviours behind the other analytics we had, and the surveys were great to recruit for user testing.

  • UserTesting.com

    Full disclosure: in my last company, we've worked on B2B solutions for very special users (sometimes employees), which you wouldn't find on UserTesting.com. But I've been a user tester for this platform in the past and enjoyed testing lots of new ideas.

  • Typeform

    Sometimes, you just need a tool to collect data and Typeform does it beautifully. I've used SurveyMonkey too, but have more fond memories of creating a survey with Typeform.

Prototyping

  • Axure

    I know you can do awesome prototypes now with Figma, but almost ten years ago I discovered Axure and for many years as a UX Lead it was my favourite prototyping tool, especially for using formulas which were needed to test solutions for medical devices.

Development

  • Visual Studio Code

    Many years ago, I started developing basic HTML/CSS/JS using Sublime as a text editor. Now I've moved to Visual Studio Code which seems to have everything I need to check any errors, run the terminal and view my work in progress.

  • Tailwind CSS

    I discovered Tailwind CSS a few years ago during a front-end dev event. It definitely seemed an interesting perspective, to bridge the gap between design and development. But it's not as easy as it seems, and I am still learning.

GenAI and other AI tools

  • GPT-4

    I'm using ChatGPT (the paid version) at least 1 hour per day. There are so many things and prompts that you can use to make your life easy.'

  • Perplexity.ai

    I've tried it a few times, with more appropriate results than ChatGPT. The source links are clear and definitely add to the experience if you are researching a document.

  • More tools coming soon

    Watch this space as I keep adding my favourite tools.