I use this cheat sheet to help assess where the team currently is with respect to UX and design, where they most need input, and as a general aid in planning design strategy. It also serves as an aid in assessing the maturity of the client's UX practice (if it exists at all), product usability/design challenges, and how UX/design currently fits into the engineering process.
UX Strategy Cheat Sheet (ux-cs-strategy.pdf, 28K)
This cheat sheet contains an overview of user research: why it's fundamental to good design, its nature as a discovery activity, and a means to get to the why. It covers some basic techniques including one on one interviews, field studies, and surveys, as well as their pros and cons. Analysis is covered as an affinity diagramming activity, and artifacts include the ones I've found most useful: user scenarios (or "day in the life") and personas.
User Research Cheat Sheet (ux-cs-user-research.pdf, 57K)
This cheat sheet resulted from a literature review covering design critique. It addresses the roles involved, how feedback should be given, and provides an overview of how a design critique should be run. References to the most useful articles are also included.
Design Critique Cheat Sheet (ux-cs-design-critique.pdf, 40K)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
