Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

by Lukas Mathis
Released April 2016
Publisher(s): Pragmatic Bookshelf
ISBN: 9781680501605

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Book description

This book is for designers, developers, and product managers who are charged with what sometimes seems like an impossible task: making sure products work the way your users expect them to. You'll find out how to design applications and websites that people will not only use, but will absolutely love. The second edition brings the book up to date and expands it with three completely new chapters.

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Table of contents

  1.   Before We Start, a Word
    1. Technique Chapters
    2. Idea Chapters
    3. How the Book Is Organized
    4. Just One More Thing
  2. Part I. Research
    1. 1. User Research
    2. 2. Features Are Not Requirements
      1. Why You Need Requirements, Not Features
      2. Create a Product, Not a Collection of Solutions to Problems
      3. Getting to the Root of Things
    3. 3. Job Shadowing and Contextual Interviews
      1. Observing Your Audience
      2. Job Shadowing
      3. Contextual Interviews
      4. Remote Shadowing
      5. Limitations of Contextual Interviews
    4. 4. Personas
      1. Problems with Personas
      2. Creating Personas
      3. Working with Personas
      4. Personas Do Not Replace User Research
    5. 5. Activity-Centered Design
    6. 6. Time to Start Working on Documentation
      1. The Manual
      2. Blog Posts
      3. Screencasts
      4. Press Releases
      5. Talk About Tasks
    7. 7. Text Usability
      1. Why Words Matter
      2. People Don’t Want to Read
      3. Say Less
      4. Make Text Scannable
      5. No Fluff
      6. Sentences Should Have One Obvious Interpretation
      7. Talk Like a Human, Not Like a Company
      8. Illustrate Your Points
      9. Use Words People Understand
      10. Test Your Text
      11. Display Legible Text
    8. 8. Hierarchies in User Interface Design
      1. Creating Hierarchical Structure Visually
    9. 9. Card Sorting
      1. Designing Hierarchies
      2. Preparing for a Card Sort
      3. Participants
      4. Running a Card Sort
      5. Running a Remote Card Sort
      6. Evaluating the Results
    10. 10. Creating Usable Hierarchies
      1. Allow Things to Exist in Multiple Places
      2. Shallow or Deep?
      3. Grouping Things
    11. 11. The Mental Model
      1. What People Think
      2. Three Different Models
      3. Hiding Implementation Details
      4. Leaky Abstractions
      5. Designing for Mental Models
  3. Part II. Design
    1. 12. Keep an Open Mind
      1. Don’t Pick Sides
      2. Don’t Accept False Dichotomies
      3. Don’t Commit Too Early
      4. Break Conventions
      5. Revisit Your Early Ideas
      6. You Can Always Do Better
    2. 13. Sketching and Prototyping
      1. Designing the Structure
      2. Flow Diagrams
      3. Storyboards
      4. Sketching
      5. Wireframes
      6. Mock-ups
      7. Tools
    3. 14. Paper Prototype Testing
      1. Guerilla Paper Prototype Testing
      2. Running Full Usability Tests with Paper Prototypes
    4. 15. Realism
      1. Symbols
      2. Virtual Versions of Real-World Objects
      3. Replicating Physical Constraints in Digital Products
      4. Going Flat
    5. 16. Natural User Interfaces
      1. Avoid Gesture Magic
      2. Recognizing Gestures
      3. Accidental Input
      4. Conventions
    6. 17. Fitts’s Law
      1. Screen Edges Have Infinite Size
      2. Radial Context Menus Decrease Average Distance
      3. Small Targets Need Margins
      4. Sometimes, Smaller Is Better
    7. 18. Animations
      1. Explaining State Changes
      2. Directing User Attention
      3. Avoid Unimportant Animations
      4. Help Users Form Suitable Mental Models
      5. Learning from Cartoons
    8. 19. Consistency
      1. Identifying Archetypes
      2. Behavioral Consistency
      3. In-App Consistency
    9. 20. Discoverability
      1. What to Make Discoverable
      2. When to Make Things Discoverable
      3. How to Make Things Discoverable
    10. 21. Don’t Interrupt
      1. Make Decisions for Your User
      2. Front Load Decisions
      3. Interrupt Users Only For Truly Urgent Decisions
    11. 22. Instead of Interrupting, Offer Undo
      1. Let Users Undo Their Actions
      2. Temporary Undo
    12. 23. Modes
      1. Nonobvious Modes
      2. Unexpected Modes
      3. Sticky Modes
      4. Modes Are Not Always Bad
      5. Quasimodes
    13. 24. Have Opinions Instead of Preferences
      1. Why Preferences Are Bad
      2. How to Avoid Preferences
      3. If You Can’t Avoid Preferences
    14. 25. Hierarchies, Space, Time, and How We Think About the World
      1. User-Generated Hierarchies
      2. Space
      3. Time
      4. A Better Hierarchical System
    15. 26. Speed
      1. Responsiveness
      2. Progress Feedback
      3. Perceived Speed
      4. Slowing Down
    16. 27. Avoiding Features
      1. Remember the User’s Goals
      2. The Five Whys
      3. Instead of Adding a New Feature, Make an Existing Feature More Usable
      4. Solve Several Problems with One Change
      5. Consider the Cost
      6. Make It Invisible
      7. Provide an API and a Plug-in Architecture
      8. Listen to Your Users
      9. But Don’t Listen to Your Users Too Much
      10. Not All Users Need to Be Your Users
    17. 28. Removing Features
      1. Do the Research
      2. Inform Your Users
      3. Provide Alternatives
      4. It’s Your Product
    18. 29. Learning from Video Games
      1. What’s Fun?
      2. Why Your Product Is Not Like a Game
      3. What We Can Learn from Games
      4. Fun vs. Usability
  4. Part III. Implementation
    1. 30. Designing the Back End
      1. The Back End Influences the Front End
      2. Back-End Design Is UX Design
    2. 31. Guerilla Usability Testing
      1. How Often to Test
      2. Preparing for the Test
      3. How Do You Find Testers?
      4. How Many Testers
      5. Running the Test
      6. The Results
    3. 32. The First Run Experience
      1. Getting people up and running
      2. Teaching people how to user your app
      3. Solving what problem?
    4. 33. Usability Testing
      1. Usability Tests Don’t Have to Be Expensive
      2. How Often to Test
      3. How Many Testers
      4. Who Should Test Your Product?
      5. How to Find Testers
      6. Different Types of Tests
      7. Preparing for the Test
      8. Running the Test
    5. 34. Testing in Person
      1. Running the Test
    6. 35. Remote Testing
      1. Moderated Remote Testing
      2. Unmoderated Remote Testing
    7. 36. How Not to Test: Common Mistakes
      1. Don’t Use Words That Appear in the User Interface
      2. Don’t Influence the Tester
      3. Avoid Stressful Situations
    8. 37. User Error Is Design Error
      1. Don’t Blame Your Users in Your Error Messages
      2. No Error, No Blame
    9. 38. A/B Testing
      1. When to Do A/B Testing
      2. What’s Success?
      3. Preparing for the Test
      4. Running the Test
      5. Interpreting the Results
      6. Keep in Mind
    10. 39. Collecting Usage Data
      1. Measure Speed
      2. Exit Points
      3. Measure Failure
      4. User Behavior
    11. 40. Dealing with User Feedback
      1. Unexpected Uses
      2. Bad Feedback
    12. 41. You’re Not Done
  5. A1. Acknowledgements
  6.  Bibliography

Product information

  • Title: Designed for Use, 2nd Edition
  • Author(s): Lukas Mathis
  • Release date: April 2016
  • Publisher(s): Pragmatic Bookshelf
  • ISBN: 9781680501605