The Basics of User Experience Design: A UX Design Book by the Interaction Design Foundation

1. A Brief Introduction to User Experience (UX) Design
  • Page 5 In general, user experience is simply how people feel when they use a product or service. In most cases, that product will be a website or an application of some form.
  • Page 6 A UX designer is someone who investigates and analyzes how users feel about the products he or she offers them.
  • Page 7 The main methodology used to guarantee the user experience in most projects is user-centered design. Simply put, user-centered design is all about designing with the users' needs and expected behaviors in mind.
  • Page 7 UX design is all about guiding product development to ensure how users feel when using our products. 2. What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?
  • Page 10 Design thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding.
  • Page 11 laureate Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial in 1996.
  • Page 11 Empathize--with your users Define--your users' needs, their problem, and your insights Ideate--by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions Prototype--to start creating solutions Test--solutions
  • Page 12 patterns of thinking are often referred to as schemas, which are organized sets of information and relationships between things, actions, and thoughts that are stimulated and initiated in the human mind when we encounter some environmental stimuli.
  • Page 14 At the heart of design thinking is the intention to improve products by analysing and understanding how users interact with products and investigating the conditions in which they operate.
  • Page 14 ask significant questions and challenge assumptions.
  • Page 15 Designers have developed a number of techniques to avoid being captured by too facile a solution. They take the original problem as a suggestion, not as a final statement, then think broadly about what the real issues underlying this problem statement might really be (for example by using the 'Five Whys' approach to get at root causes)."
  • Page 15 Some of the scientific activities will include analyzing how users interact with products and investigating the conditions in which they operate:
  • Page 15 Unlike a solely scientific approach, where the majority of known qualities, characteristics, etc. of the problem are tested so as to arrive at a problem solution, design thinking investigations include ambiguous elements of the problem to reveal previously unknown parameters and uncover alternative strategies.
  • Page 16 After arriving at a number of potential problem solutions, the selection process is underpinned by rationality. 3. The 7 Factors that Influence User Experience
  • Page 21 While it is true that UX as a discipline began with usability, UX has grown to accommodate much more than usability, and paying attention to all facets of UX in order to deliver successful products to market is vital.
  • Page 21 Peter Morville arranged the seven factors into the 'User Experience Honeycomb', which became a famous tool from which to understand UX design.
  • Page 23 2. Usable Usability is concerned with enabling users to achieve their end objective with a product effectively and efficiently.
  • Page 25 experiences. Accessibility is about providing an experience which can be accessed by users with a full range of abilities— at least 19% of people had a disability in 2010, and it is likely that this number is higher in less developed nations.
  • Page 26 That's one in five people in the audience for your product who may not be able to use it if it's not accessible— or 20% of your total market!
  • Page 26 when you design for accessibility, you will often find that you create products that are easier for everyone to use, not just those with disabilities.
  • Page 27 we should bear in mind that value is one of the key influences on purchasing decisions. A $ 100 product that solves a $ 10,000 problem is one that is likely to succeed; 4. An Introduction to Usability
  • Page 29 The ISO 9421-11 standard on usability describes it as: "The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals, with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use." Usability is hence more than just about whether users can perform tasks easily (ease of use); it's also concerned with user satisfaction—
  • Page 30 Usability is the outcome of a user-centered design process.
  • Page 30 That process is an iterative one and seeks to improve following each evaluation cycle continuously.
  • Page 30 Effectiveness Efficiency Engagement Error Tolerance Ease of Learning 1. Effectiveness
  • Page 31 Effectiveness is about whether users can complete their goals with a high degree of accuracy.
  • Page 32 You'll want to examine the number of steps (or indeed clicks/ keystrokes) needed to achieve the objective; can they be reduced?
  • Page 32 So as to maximize efficiency, you need to examine how your users prefer to work—
  • Page 32 engagement occurs when the user finds the product pleasant and gratifying to use.
  • Page 32 Engagement is not only about looking nice but also about looking right. Proper layouts, readable typography and ease of navigation all come together to deliver the right interaction for the user and make it engaging.
  • Page 33 Promoting error tolerance,
  • Page 33 Restricting opportunities to do the wrong thing.
  • Page 34 Offering the opportunity to 'redo'.
  • Page 34 Assuming everyone is going to do things you don't expect them to do.
  • Page 34 into panic mode. 5. Ease of Learning If you want a product to be used regularly, then you want users to be able to learn their way around that product easily—
  • Page 35 The best way to support ease of learning is to design systems that match a user's existing mental models.
  • Page 35 a representation of something in the real world and how it is done from the user's perspective. 5. How to Conduct User Interviews
  • Page 40 "Know thy user, and you are not the user."
  • Page 40 User interviews are where a researcher asks questions of, and records responses from, users.
  • Page 41 The ideal interview takes place with two UX researchers and one user.
  • Page 41 The second takes notes.
  • Page 41 If a second researcher is unavailable for this, then videoing or audio recording an interview can be a good way to record the information elicited.
  • Page 41 Typical topics covered within user interviews include: Background (such as ethnographic data) The use of technology in general The use of the product The user's main objectives and motivations The user's pain points
  • Page 42 'the contextual interview'. This is an interview which is conducted after (or during) the observation of a user using the actual product.
  • Page 43 you will want to ensure that you recruit a representative sample of users for your interviews.
  • Page 43 Ceate a script
    Make sure you begin by explaining the purpose of the interview
    Also explain how the person's data and any data you collect will be used from the interview.
    Try to keep leading questions to a minimum.
    Keep it reasonably short. If you read the script aloud and it takes more than 10 minutes to read… it's probably too long.
    Don't forget that scripts are a guide, not a bible.
  • Page 44 Make your interviewees comfortable--dress in a manner similar to them
  • Page 44 Try to keep the interview on time and heading in the right direction–
  • Page 44 Try to focus on the interviewee and not on making notes--it's just plain rude to bury your
  • Page 44 Thank the interviewees at the end of the process
  • Page 45 Reporting on User Interviews User interviews tend to provide qualitative rather than quantitative data. Compiling the results of many interviews can be challenging. Word clouds (graphical representations of word frequency) and mind maps (hierarchical diagrams that show the relationships between the components) are two good ways of presenting qualitative data in an interesting but easy-to-understand format. Written reports are fine, but try to contain them to the key data and leave all the minor stuff in appendices. 6. 7 Great, Tried and Tested UX Research Techniques
  • Page 48 UX Research Techniques
  • Page 48 Card sorting was originally a technique used in psychological research long before 'UX research' was a thing. It's a simple concept: you write words or phrases on cards; then you ask the user to categorize them. You might also ask the user to label the categories.
  • Page 49 sort them by priority.
  • Page 50 2. Expert Review Expert reviews involve a single 'expert' walking through a product via the User Interface (UI) and looking for issues with the design, accessibility, and usability of the product.
  • Page 50 3. Eye Movement Tracking Knowing where your users are looking when they're using your system can tell you a great deal about where your design's effectiveness stands.
  • Page 51 4. Field Studies This is actually a number of techniques under a broad heading. It's all about going out and observing users 'in the wild' so that we can measure behavior in the context where users actually use a product.
  • Page 51 5. Usability Testing
  • Page 51 observation of users trying to carry out tasks with a product. Such testing can focus on a single process, or be much wider in range.
  • Page 53 6. Remote Usability Testing This is usability testing, but without the need to drag users into your laboratory environment. It was once complex and expensive, but technology has moved on, and now it's fairly simple to set up and reasonable value for money, too.
  • Page 53 7. User Personas User personas are a fictional representation of the ideal user. They focus on the goals of the user, that individual's characteristics
  • Page 53 and the attitudes he/ she displays. They also examine what the user expects from the product. 7. What is Interaction Design?
  • Page 56 Interaction design can be understood in simple (but not simplified) terms: it is the design of the interaction between users and products.
  • Page 57 The 5 Dimensions of Interaction Design The five dimensions of interaction design is a useful model for understanding what interaction design involves.
  • Page 57 1D: Words Words— especially those used in interactions, such as button labels— should be meaningful and simple to understand.
  • Page 57 2D: Visual Representations This concerns graphical elements such as images, typography and icons that users interact with.
  • Page 58 3D: Physical Objects or Space Through what physical objects do users interact with the product: is it a laptop, with a mouse or touchpad?
  • Page 58 While this dimension sounds a little abstract, it mostly refers to media that changes with time (animation, videos, sounds).
  • Page 58 5D: Behavior This includes the mechanism of a product and involves two pivotal questions— namely, "How do users perform actions on the website?" and "How do users operate the product?". 8. Mobile Web UX Design: Some Simple Guidelines
  • Page 62 mobile-specific design considerations.
  • Page 63 three categories for mobile web access: Microtasking: When users interact with their devices for brief but frenzied periods of activity Local: When the users want to know what's going on around them Bored: When the users have nothing better to do and are looking to be entertained or otherwise diverted