Vision. Strategy. Innovation.

That, and a little fun, add up to serious results.

Vision. Strategy. Innovation.

Innovating is serious business. But getting there takes serious play.

With Phase II on your team, time flies when you're inventing the future.

What we Do. 

 We help you craft product, experience and innovation strategies.

We do that by facilitating a co-design process with you, your customers and users. 

To ensure your strategies become a reality, Phase II offers services across the Discover, Define, Design and Deliver phases of the product lifecycle.

Featured Projects

Image of front cover of book, Presumptive Design: Design Provocations for Innovation
In 2016, Morgan Kauffman published "Presumptive Design: Design Provocations for Innovation," a book I co-authored and co-designed about a leading-edge design research method I've used throughout my career.
Chart depicting level of investment in UX from 2012 to projected 2015. Curve increases through 2014 and then splits. One option is to divest, another to invest more.
When my UX team had completed its multi-year project, the larger IT organization expected them to be disbanded. Breaking up a high functioning team into individual "teams of one" would have diluted UX's effectiveness . Making my case to keep the team together was a multi-pronged challenge in navigating the corporate landscape of headcount assignment, business partner funding and organizational politics.
Image of a five-pointed star, with thumbnail images at each point: A highway, a graph, jet planes flying in formation, small screens, and a happy young man in a frame
In 2012, the Sales and Marketing group was already two years into their bold new plan to create a world-wide collaborative sales process. I was hired to make the experience world-class, a difficult challenge given the state of the UX process, a delinquent UX consultant, and no UX architectural work or user-research to speak of.

Musings and bloviations

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Image of architect Lebbeus Woods with his quote about architecture: Architecture is a political act, by nature. It has to do with the relationships between people and how they decide to change their conditions of living.

Architecture and User Experience, Part 1: The Politics of Architecture

About eight years ago I published a series of articles on CHIFOO (the Oregon and SW Washington chapter of the…
Scanned image of Boullee's proposed royal library from 1795.

Architecture and User Experience, Part 10: A Model for UX Architecture

In this installment I propose a need for, and an example of, a model for UX architecture. Models allow us…
A nine-piece jigsaw puzzle: the four corners labeled "stakeholders," the top-middle Principles, right-side-middle, Qualities, bottom-middle, References, left-side middle, Standards, the center: The Experience
Completed puzzle piece

Architecture and User Experience, Part 11: The PQRS Model

Finally, after almost a dozen articles, I'm prepared to discuss a framework for a UX architecture, what I've called the…
Image of multiple arrows pointing to the top of an enclosed circle with icons of factories, targets and bar graphs

Architecture and User Experience, Part 2: Architecture and Strategy

In this continuation of a series of articles about UX Architecture, I suggest that Architecture, by definition, is a strategic…
The double-diamond diagram as a representation of UX architecture - UX architecture bridges from the start to finish of the design cycles.
UX architecture and the Double Diamond Diagram

Architecture and User Experience, Part 3: A Sustainable Process Of Design

In the first few installments of this commentary, I propose Architecture is (by definition) a political act and an essential…
Image of front cover of Volume 1 of the UX Architecture: Architecting the Experience.

Architecture and User Experience, Part 4: The UX Vision

The point of these blogs is to sketch out the notion of  "UX architecture," something that many people talk about…