Practical UX Design

Table of Contents

Practical UX Design

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

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Why subscribe?

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. The User Experience Mindset

Dispelling the myth of faster horses

The disservice of faster horses

When facts ruin a good story

Collaboration is a joke, but nobody is laughing

Understanding the problem

Customers/users are dumb!

Shut up and listen!

Data-driven design

The meme that just won't die

Design thinking: an idea worth investing in

One more thing

In closing, a cautionary tale

Summary

2. Creative UX

Essential mindset for Creativity

Closed mode

Open mode

Open and closed modes in action

Using open and closed modes together

Stuck in a mode

The six conditions for creativity

Space

Time

Time – again

The 10,000 hour rule

Confidence

Play

Agreement

Applying creativity to UX design

The space between

Summary

3. Good UX Design

What is good design?

Good design is non-obvious

A brief history of good UX design

Good design is invisible

Good design creates emotion

Good design is familiar

When preference beats performance

The principles of good design

Good design is timeless

Principles of good UX design, by example

Innovative

Good design isn't always original

Useful

Minimalist

Understandable

Understandable – how?

Understandable—why?

Design using the three-second rule

Understandability – fail!

Valuable

Safety

Provide affordances

Long-lasting design

Design exercise

Native advertising revisited

Summary

4. Foundations of Good IA

Foundational IA

The Four Cs of IA

Navigation

Mental models

Taxonomy

Sitemaps

Taxonomy types

Designing for change

Change and consequences

The IA of cities

Fractal loading

Focused IA

Food for thought

Fractal loading on the web

Gauging your IA success

Maps

Wayfinding

Seamless IA

Four C's exercise

More examples of good IA

Amazon

LinkedIn

Coordination

Cooperation

Change

Consequence

Internet movie database

Closing thoughts

Summary

5. Patterns, Properties, and Principles of Good UX Design

Patterns in UX design

The 15 fundamental properties of wholeness

Levels of Scale

Levelling our expectations

Strong centers

Boundaries

Testing boundaries

Safe boundaries

Alternating Repetition

Regular repetition

Random repetition

Progressive repetition

Flowing repetition

Positive space

Good Shape

Local Symmetries

Deep Interlock and Ambiguity

Contrast

Gradients

Roughness

Echoes

The Void

Inner Calm

Not-Separateness

Finding wholeness in your design work

Pattern libraries versus style guides

Summary

6. An Essential Strategy for UX Maturity

The problem with UX

The UX process game

The misunderstanding of UX

A different kind of UX approach

Enterprise UX

The business of UX

Financial metrics

Case study: Strategic e-mail marketing campaign

Initial problem (as outlined by the stakeholder)

My approach

My process

Results

Operational metrics

Case study: employee operational effectiveness

Initial problem (as outlined by the stakeholder)

My approach

My process

Results

Human metrics

Case study – improving user satisfaction and understanding

Initial problem (as outlined by the stakeholder)

My approach

My process

Results

One more thing…

The UX maturity map

Level 1 – Awareness

Level 2 – Repeatable

Level 3 – Strategic

Level 4 – Integrated

Level 5 – Core

Summary

7. UX Tools

Tools of the UX trade

Personas

The human persona

Ethnography

Human centered design

Journey maps

Usability studies

RITE usability testing

Usability study reporting

Visual design

Cynefin

Business model canvas

Wireframes and prototyping

A closing thought

Summary

8. Final Thoughts and Additional Resources

Measuring UX

Metrics

Books and articles

Google terms

Online measurement tools

Enterprise UX

UX-related websites

UX-related books

Mobile patterns

Additional UX design tools

People to follow

Summary

Index

Practical UX Design

Practical UX Design

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: April 2016

Production reference: 1220416

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78588-089-6

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Credits

Author

Scott Faranello

Reviewer

Peter Spannagle

Commissioning Editor

Dipika Gaonkar

Acquisition Editor

Subho Gupta

Content Development Editor

Arshiya Ayaz Umer

Technical Editor

Pranjali Mistry

Copy Editor

Karuna Narayanan

Project Coordinator

Kinjal Bari

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Rekha Nair

Graphics

Kirk D'Penha

Production Coordinator

Melwyn Dsa

Cover Work

Melwyn Dsa

About the Author

Scott Faranello has been a dedicated and passionate UX professional for well more than a decade now, working with many companies in very diverse organizational cultures. His experience includes intensive customer, user, and business research, conceptual wireframes, designing information architecture, conducting user and usability tests, measuring the ROI of usability, creating visual design, and staying abreast of the current UX technology trends. Scott is also the author of Balsamiq Wireframes Quickstart Guide (2012) and Practical UX Design (2016), Packt Publishing.

I absolutely could not have written this book without the love, support, and encouragement of my wife Melanie, who got me unstuck when I needed it and who reminded me that the chapters were good enough, or else I'd still be writing Chapter 1. I want to acknowledge my two beautiful boys, who in the past year never saw dad without the laptop—you both are the reason I've accomplished anything at all. I'd also like to thank the fine folks at Packt Publishing, including Subho Gupta, Pranjali Mistry, and of course, Arshiya Ayaz Umer, whose patience never ran out, even when it should have. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write for you once again and for believing and trusting in me throughout. I'd like to thank my friend Jennifer Fabrizi, who was kind enough to read some of my work when it was still in the larval stage. Thanks to Rob Edge for giving me a much-needed break from thinking about UX one night a week. Thanks to James Wachira because how could I not thank you? Thanks to Greg Renoff, the author of Van Halen Rising, who was kind enough to thank me in his book, so I am returning the favor. Thank to Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Panera Bread for allowing me to sit for hours, even during lunch time, as I wrote and rewrote these chapters while consuming most of their coffee. Lastly, I'd like to thank you for buying this book and for taking the time to read what has been the top priority of my life for the past year.

I am grateful. Thank you.

About the Reviewer

Peter Spannagle is a UX design leader and strategist who lives in San Francisco. His background includes working with mobile, agency, start-ups and enterprise. He helps companies define and launch digital products by working with business stakeholders to establish objectives, engaging with end users to capture insights and user needs, leading rounds of concept design and validation, directing creative and technical teams to execute a design vision using iterative and collaborative methods. He is the coauthor of WordPress and Flash 10.x Cookbook, Packt Publishing, 2010.

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To Mel and the boys. My miracles.

Preface

It's an exciting time for User Experience (UX). Never before has UX been so much at the forefront of technology and so sought after by companies around the world. It's truly a great time to be a UX practitioner. It has also taken a long time to reach this place. UX has been working hard for years to make an impact on becoming an integral and valued member of the technology team, proving its value and providing organizations with problem-solving techniques and design solutions that promise greater returns on investment (ROI) and happier customers and users. Nevertheless, while UX appears to be highly sought after, garnering high salaries in many areas and seemingly plentiful job opportunities appearing almost daily, there is another story taking place that is not as rosy.

Although UX is more prevalent in business circles, it is still highly misunderstood. A gap exists between how UX sees itself and what stakeholders and executive understand of it. To those at the top as well as managers, stakeholders, project managers, and so on, UX practitioners are thought of as those folks who perform usability studies and wireframes, usually after business requirements have been completed and the development team is about to launch a product. The rest of the time, UX teams can sit idle, waiting to be asked on a project while watching user-facing products continue being released for the public without their help.

Even as calls to customer support increase as revenue from poor design decisions goes down, UX still has trouble proving its value. With the current pace of technology and the competitive nature of interactive designs, it is more important than ever for companies to keep pace and meet the expectations of their customers/users. UX is much more than usability studies and wireframes.

UX is a mindset that requires a deep understanding, strategy, and approach toward design that when aligned to business goals has the potential to go straight to the top, grabbing the attention of those who matter most: those who pay us to deliver results. When the opportunity of writing this book came to me, I was, of course, very excited and also quite challenged. While it's important to share the techniques and skills that UX practitioners need in order to improve their design work, it was also important to focus on UX from a more holistic perspective to understand and explain how it is connected and related to the larger world of design, creativity, and the human experience.

To accomplish this in a book, I provided material that speaks not only to new UX practitioners, but also to anyone at any level, be they technology or business-focused learners and those in the UX field those who want to understand what UX is, what UX does, and how UX can truly provide real, measurable business value business stakeholders find impossible to ignore. You will also find no geekspeak in these pages. Anytime a technical term is introduced, a clear explanation follows. UX is about reaching large audiences with design, and writing about it should be no different. In addition, when we talk only to those in the UX field, we do our profession and ourselves a disservice. UX is about access, ease of use, and engagement. Unless our coworkers understand UX clearly, we cannot expect to deliver clarity to our end users. This is what Practical UX sets out to accomplish.

UX is not going away anytime soon, but if we fail to engage, educate, and prove our value on a consistent and visible basis to our entire audience—customers, users, and business stakeholders—we risk losing our audience for good. Good UX design is more than just look and feel and the most effective place on the screen to put a submit button. Those things are important, but good UX is more importantly about the mindset, creativity, and recognizing that our true value lies in how we think and how we approach our work. We will begin with the mindset of UX and what it means to truly listen to customers/users. We will then move on to creativity and how to identify a truly good design using examples from the Web, mobile, and areas of design that at first may seem far outside the realm of UX, but upon closer inspection are actually inseparable from it. Following that, we will look at how to effectively drive customers, users, and stakeholders to where we want them to go in terms of information architecture, pattern usage, and a strategy that provides stakeholders and business leaders with results that are impossible to ignore. Lastly, we will look at some of the tools of the UX trade as well as resources to expand your learning long after our time together here.

Practical UX is a big subject that will take you down many interesting and hopefully new paths of learning in order to take your design skills and UX knowledge to the highest level of maturity.

Thank you for taking this journey with me. Now, let's begin.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, The User Experience Mindset, looks at some persistent myths about design and customer/user engagement that can make a profession like UX non-existent. Dispelling these myths is the first step, and an important one, for acquiring a UX mindset—the first step of good design.

Chapter 2, Creative UX, looks at how to create six optimal conditions for your best ideas to appear. This will require two modes of thinking, open and closed. Once you acquire the skill to control both of these mindsets creativity and good design will soon follow.

Chapter 3, Good UX Design, identifies ten design principles found in all good UX design, how to identify it and how to recognize it is more than just web design. Good design has no boundaries and this chapter will explain why.

Chapter 4, Foundations of Good IA, will provide you with a broader understanding of Information Architecture (IA) that will give you a wider view of IA and demonstrate that IA is not found in technology.

Chapter 5, Patterns, Properties, and Principles of a Good UX Design, looks at some fundamental properties of patterns that are found is all of the best designs, from UX to music to painting to architecture. Borrowing from a renowned building architect, you will be introduced to fifteen properties that will change the way you look and think about patterns and how to use them in your design work.

Chapter 6, An Essential Strategy for UX Maturity, discusses the challenges that UX faces if its maturity level does not increase. Doing this effectively and rapidly begins with a strategy that transforms how others, like stakeholders and various other colleagues, understand the true value of UX work.

Chapter 7, UX Tools, hows you the most important tools of the UX trade that never go out of style.

Chapter 8, Final Thoughts and Additional Resources, provides resources for continued learning long after you have finished reading this book.

What you need for this book

No software is needed for this book.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for UX practitioner/designers and anyone who is engaged in designing UX for end users, where you are looking to go deep and become fully engaged with your surroundings, team, end users, and your organization. This is also a book for those who are not yet enlightened about the value of UX, those curious about those who may be curious have never taken the time to investigate what UX is all about, this book is also for teachers of UX, IT, and other disciplines where customers and end users are important. The bottom line is that regardless of who you are or where you come from, this book provides a rich, in-depth, and insightful approach to UX that will help you to become a better UX designer, practitioner, thinker and leader.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "To clarify the issue even further, Apple added a line of text below the app