The User Experience Team of One prescribes a range of approaches that have big impact and take less time and fewer resources than the standard lineup of UX deliverables. Whether you want to cross over into user experience or you're a seasoned practitioner trying to drag your organization forward, this book gives you tools and insight for doing more with less.
Whether you're new to UX or a seasoned practitioner, The User Experience Team of One gives you everything you need to succeed, emphasizing down–to–earth approaches that deliver big impact over time–consuming, needlessly complex techniques. This updated classic remains a comprehensive and essential guide for UX and product designers everywhere—you'll accomplish a lot more with a lot less. Who Should Read This Book? The techniques and advice in this book are applicable to anyone who is just starting out in user experience, as well as seasoned practitioners who have been in the field for years. In addition, anyone who read the first edition will appreciate this updated edition that features loads of new material that has changed over the past 10 years. There are tips, tools, and techniques throughout the book to improve your performance. The various methods detail exactly how to handle a variety of situations—from the timing involved, the materials, when to use that information, and how to try it out. Look for real–life sidebars from the authors, as well as experts in the field. This book applies to a team of one or a team of many. Takeaways The first section covers the philosophy of the UX team of one—why you do it, how you build support, how to identify common challenges, and how to keep growing. The second section of the book, "Practice," gives you tools and techniques for managing this balancing act with detailed methods. The 25 up–to–date methods in Part II prompt a question about a specific topic, answer the question, give the average time it will take to deal with the issue, tell you when to use this material, and give you instructions for "Trying It Out". You can learn about working conditions that a team of one often experiences. The book addresses difficult situations that UX practitioners often encounter (for example, the need for speed in corporate environments. Be sure to review the UX Value Loop[TM] that Joe created to define UX. Check out sidebars that highlight some of Joe and Leah's personal real–life experiences. The end of each chapter tells you what to do if you can "only do one thing" Finally, notes and tips give you handy techniques and tools to use in your own practice.
Igniting business growth through UX In an increasingly digital world, users are rewarding products and services that provide them with a good experience and punishing those that don’t — with their wallets. Organizations realize they need to adapt quickly but don’t know how or where to start. In User Experience Design: A Practical Playbook to Fuel Business Growth, UXReactor co-Founder Satyam Kantamneni distills 25 years of industry experience into a pragmatic approach to help organizations advance in the highly competitive and rapidly changing digital world. You’ll discover: Why putting users at the center of strategy leads to an almost unfair competitive advantage Ways to build an organizational system that delivers a superior user experience that is replicable, consistent, and scalable Common shortfalls that prevent organizations from reaping the value of experience design 27 proven “plays” from the UXReactor playbook to put concepts into practice Game planning examples to execute at different levels of an organization A comprehensive and practical book for everyone involved in the transformation — business leaders, design leaders, product managers, engineers, and designers — User Experience Design: A Practical Playbook to Fuel Business Growth is also an ideal blueprint for current and prospective UX practitioners seeking to improve their skills and further their careers.
The ultimate guide to UX from the world’s most popular resource for web designers and developers Smashing Magazine is the world′s most popular resource for web designers and developers and with this book the authors provide the ideal resource for mastering User Experience Design (UX). The authors provide an overview of UX and User Centred Design and examine in detail sixteen of the most common UX design and research tools and techniques for your web projects. The authors share their top tips from their collective 30 years of working in UX including: Guides to when and how to use the most appropriate UX research and design techniques such as usability testing, prototyping, wire framing, sketching, information architecture & running workshops How to plan UX projects to suit different budgets, time constraints and business objectives Case studies from real UX projects that explain how particular techniques were used to achieve the client's goals Checklists to help you choose the right UX tools and techniques for the job in hand Typical user and business requirements to consider when designing business critical pages such as homepages, forms, product pages and mobile interfaces as well as explanations of key things to consider when designing for mobile, internationalization and behavioural change. Smashing UX Design is the complete UX reference manual. Treat it as the UX expert on your bookshelf that you can read from cover-to-cover, or to dip into as the need arises, regardless of whether you have 'UX' in your job title or not.
Quantifying the User Experience: Practical Statistics for User Research, Second Edition, provides practitioners and researchers with the information they need to confidently quantify, qualify, and justify their data. The book presents a practical guide on how to use statistics to solve common quantitative problems that arise in user research. It addresses questions users face every day, including, Is the current product more usable than our competition? Can we be sure at least 70% of users can complete the task on their first attempt? How long will it take users to purchase products on the website? This book provides a foundation for statistical theories and the best practices needed to apply them. The authors draw on decades of statistical literature from human factors, industrial engineering, and psychology, as well as their own published research, providing both concrete solutions (Excel formulas and links to their own web-calculators), along with an engaging discussion on the statistical reasons why tests work and how to effectively communicate results. Throughout this new edition, users will find updates on standardized usability questionnaires, a new chapter on general linear modeling (correlation, regression, and analysis of variance), with updated examples and case studies throughout. - Completely updated to provide practical guidance on solving usability testing problems with statistics for any project, including those using Six Sigma practices - Includes new and revised information on standardized usability questionnaires - Includes a completely new chapter introducing correlation, regression, and analysis of variance - Shows practitioners which test to use, why they work, and best practices for application, along with easy-to-use Excel formulas and web-calculators for analyzing data - Recommends ways for researchers and practitioners to communicate results to stakeholders in plain English
Think Like a UX Researcher will challenge your preconceptions about user experience (UX) research and encourage you to think beyond the obvious. You’ll discover how to plan and conduct UX research, analyze data, persuade teams to take action on the results and build a career in UX. The book will help you take a more strategic view of product design so you can focus on optimizing the user’s experience. UX Researchers, Designers, Project Managers, Scrum Masters, Business Analysts and Marketing Managers will find tools, inspiration and ideas to rejuvenate their thinking, inspire their team and improve their craft. In this newly revised Second Edition, the authors have added six new essays that look at how UX research methods have changed in the last few years, why remote methods should not be the only tools you use, what to do about difficult test participants, how to improve your survey questions, how to identify user goals when you can’t directly observe users and how understanding your own epistemological bias will help you become a more persuasive UX researcher. Key Features Provides a dive-in-anywhere book that offers practical advice and topical examples. Includes thought triggers, exercises and scenarios to test your knowledge of UX research. Features workshop ideas to build a development team’s UX maturity. Discusses war stories from seasoned researchers to show you how UX research methods can be tailored to your own organization.
Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability clearly explains exactly how to design great forms for the web. The book provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. It features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. It includes dozens of examples - from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color). This book isn't just about colons and choosing the right widgets. It's about the whole process of making good forms, which has a lot more to do with making sure you're asking the right questions in a way that your users can answer than it does with whether you use a drop-down list or radio buttons. In an easy-to-read format with lots of examples, the authors present their three-layer model - relationship, conversation, appearance. You need all three for a successful form - a form that looks good, flows well, asks the right questions in the right way, and, most important of all, gets people to fill it out. Liberally illustrated with full-color examples, this book guides readers on how to define requirements, how to write questions that users will understand and want to answer, and how to deal with instructions, progress indicators and errors. This book is essential reading for HCI professionals, web designers, software developers, user interface designers, HCI academics and students, market research professionals, and financial professionals. *Provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. *Features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. *Includes dozens of examples -- from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color).*Foreword by Steve Krug, author of the best selling Don't Make Me Think!
User experience (UX) design has traditionally been a deliverables-based practice, with wireframes, site maps, flow diagrams, and mockups. But in today’s web-driven reality, orchestrating the entire design from the get-go no longer works. This hands-on book demonstrates Lean UX, a deeply collaborative and cross-functional process that lets you strip away heavy deliverables in favor of building shared understanding with the rest of the product team. Lean UX is the evolution of product design; refined through the real-world experiences of companies large and small, these practices and principles help you maintain daily, continuous engagement with your teammates, rather than work in isolation. This book shows you how to use Lean UX on your own projects. Get a tactical understanding of Lean UX—and how it changes the way teams work together Frame a vision of the problem you’re solving and focus your team on the right outcomes Bring the designer’s tool kit to the rest of your product team Break down the silos created by job titles and learn to trust your teammates Improve the quality and productivity of your teams, and focus on validated experiences as opposed to deliverables/documents Learn how Lean UX integrates with Agile UX
User Experience Management: Essential Skills for Leading Effective UX Teams deals with specific issues associated with managing diverse user experience (UX) skills, often in corporations with a largely engineering culture. Part memoir and part handbook, it explains what it means to lead a UX team and examines the management issues of hiring, inheriting, terminating, layoffs, interviewing and candidacy, and downsizing. The book offers guidance on building and creating a UX team, as well as equipping and focusing the team. It also considers ways of nurturing the team, from coaching and performance reviews to conflict management and creating work-life balance. Furthermore, it discusses the essential skills needed in leading an effective team and developing a communication plan. This book will be valuable to new managers and leaders, more experienced managers, and anyone who is leading or managing UX groups or who is interested in assuming a leadership role in the future. - Gives a UX leadership boot-camp from putting together a winning team, to giving them a driving focus, to acting as their spokesman, to handling difficult situations - Full of practical advice and experiences for managers and leaders in virtually any area of the user experience field - Contains best practices, real-world stories, and insights from UX leaders at IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and many more!
From the moment it was published almost ten years ago, Elements of User Experience became a vital reference for web and interaction designers the world over, and has come to define the core principles of the practice. Now, in this updated, expanded, and full-color new edition, Jesse James Garrett has refined his thinking about the Web, going beyond the desktop to include information that also applies to the sudden proliferation of mobile devices and applications. Successful interaction design requires more than just creating clean code and sharp graphics. You must also fulfill your strategic objectives while meeting the needs of your users. Even the best content and the most sophisticated technology won't help you balance those goals without a cohesive, consistent user experience to support it. With so many issues involved—usability, brand identity, information architecture, interaction design— creating the user experience can be overwhelmingly complex. This new edition of The Elements of User Experience cuts through that complexity with clear explanations and vivid illustrations that focus on ideas rather than tools or techniques. Garrett gives readers the big picture of user experience development, from strategy and requirements to information architecture and visual design.
