Preface

User Experience (UX) design is the act and art of crafting the interface and interactions for a website or application. It is a multidisciplinary career path that requires one to be part visual designer, part social psychologist, a little bit of a developer, and a hint of a project manager, as well as possess a great deal of empathy for those whom you are designing for.

As you will hopefully gather from reading this book, UX design is a career that is responsible for several varied tasks. As with any multidisciplinary career, it is difficult to find anyone with every skill or talent in his or her bag of tricks that are needed. This is to be expected, and I suppose appreciated. It is common to have researchers, scientists, psychologists, developers, and of course, graphic designers change careers to become UX designers to fill the ever-growing need. Each of these bring with them a particular strength that tends to direct them to focus or specialize on a particular aspect of design. Regardless of this unique focus, there are certain universal principles and processes that need to be understood by all.

Whether you are looking to become a professional UX designer or you can't find one and just need to get the job done, the principles and processes discussed in this book will help you get started.

This introduction to user experience design will walk you through what could be described as the industry-standard design process. It will describe the type of research and groundwork that should occur prior to starting your actual design effort. It will also explain several design techniques commonly used by industry professionals. And, it will point out solutions to problems commonly encountered when designing the frontend for websites and applications.

The core philosophy being applied here is as follows:

On a personal note, I am pleased to offer an introductory summary of my years of experience as a UX designer. I do so with the hope that it will help you avoid the many pitfalls inherent in the software design process. May you find success in all that you design. Let's get started!