Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Back-End Design Is UX Design

Because the back end—and the data model in particular—has such a huge impact on the user interface, it’s important for UX designers to be involved in back-end design decisions. If a UX designer were involved in the design of file systems, that person would have pointed out that it’s important for applications not to break when users rename or move files. In fact, Apple realized this early on, and Macs have always been able to identify files based on a file reference, or a unique ID for each file. That’s why well-written Mac apps do allow users to move or rename files while they’re open.

As a designer, you should define common use cases and create at least high-level sketches of user interfaces before back-end developers ...