Review: A project guide to UX design

Hi,

last weekend I read the book "A project guide to UX design - For user experience designers in the field or in the making" by Russ Unger (Twitter) and Carolyn Chandler (Twitter).

I found this book because Robert Hoekman, Jr. mentioned it in his Userability Podcast as one of the top 3 books he would recommend.

In general the book is nice and fast to read, the content is very basic and is a good introduction if you want to start in the field of User experience (for me a little bit to low-level). The book focuses a lot on the topics that are relevant for a UX consultant and cover topics like the project ecosystem, proposals for consultants and freelancers, project objectives and approach and Business Requirements.

More interesting chapters for me were about user research, personas, Transition: from defining to designing, Site Maps and Task Flows, Wireframes and Annotations and Prototyping.

Especially the chapter "Prototyping" was interesting because a few weeks ago I discussed with a colleague and he put the need of prototyping into question. Here are some of the key facts from the book...

"... Remember that prototyping is a process and not an artifact. [...] The outcome of the prototyping process is actionable feedback from concepts that can be used to enhance and improve the design."

And Todd Zaki Warfel, president of Messagefirst said the following regarding the goals of Prototyping:

"Prototypes are a way to achieve one or more of the following goals:

• Work your way through a design
• Create a common communication platform
• Sell your design ideas internally (e.g., to your boss, other designers, etc.)
• Test technical feasibility
• Test design concepts with end users/customers"

So in my point of view there are a lot of good reasons for prototyping, because the best or most useable design can only be created in an evolutionary process with a lot of feedback from users, customers and stakeholders.

Br, Claudia

@ TechTalkers: If you are interested in the book I can borrow it to you.