The Joy of UX: User Experience and Interactive Design for Developers

The Joy of UX: User Experience and Interactive Design for Developers

by David Platt
Released May 2016
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 9780134277790

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Book description

“For years now, I’ve been running around preaching to anyone who’ll listen that UX is something that everybody (not just UX people) needs to be doing. Dave has done an excellent job of explaining what developers need to know about UX, in a complete but compact, easy-to-absorb, and implementable form. Developers, come and get it!” —Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Master User Experience and Interaction Design from the Developer’s Perspective

For modern developers, UX expertise is indispensable: Without outstanding user experience, your software will fail. Now, David Platt has written the first and only comprehensive developer’s guide to achieving a world-class user experience.

Quality user experience isn’t hard, but it does require developers to think in new ways. The Joy of UX shows you how, with plenty of concrete examples. Firmly grounded in reality, this guide will help you optimize usability and engagement while also coping with difficult technical, schedule, and budget constraints.

Platt’s technology-agnostic approach illuminates all the principles, techniques, and best practices you need to build great user experiences for the web, mobile devices, and desktop environments. He covers the entire process, from user personas and stories through wireframes, layouts, and execution. He also addresses key issues—such as telemetry and security—that many other UX guides ignore. You’ll find all the resources and artifacts you need: complete case studies, sample design documents, testing plans, and more.

This guide shows you how to

  • Recognize and avoid pitfalls that lead to poor user experiences

  • Learn the crucial difference between design and mere decoration

  • Put yourself in your users’ shoes—understand what they want (and where, when, and why)

  • Quickly sketch and prototype user interfaces for easy refinement

  • Test your sketches on real users or appropriate surrogates

  • Integrate telemetry to capture the best possible usage information

  • Use analytics to accurately interpret the data you’ve captured

  • Solve unique experience problems presented by mobile environments

  • Secure your app without compromising usability any more than necessary

  • “Polish” your UX to eliminate user effort everywhere you can

    • Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and corrections as they become available. 

    Table of contents

    1. About This E-Book
    2. Title Page
    3. Copyright Page
    4. Dedication Page
    5. Contents
    6. Foreword
    7. About the Author
    8. Introduction: UX Rules the Roost
      1. Your Biggest Advantage
      2. UX Is Not Fonts and Colors
      3. Fundamental Example
      4. The Three Fundamental Corollaries
      5. Example: Save Me?
      6. Bake UX In from the Beginning
      7. Why Developers Don’t Consider UX
        1. Our Projects Are Low-Level, So UX Doesn’t Matter
        2. Marketing Decides Our UX
        3. We Have a UX Group That Does That Stuff
        4. UX Is for the Beret-Heads
      8. Where to Get the Skills
      9. You Can Do This
      10. This Book’s Web Site
      11. And Here We Go . . .
    9. Chapter 1. Personas
      1. Putting a Face on the User
      2. Creating the Simplest Persona
      3. Adding Detail
        1. The Big Three Details
        2. Business Interaction
        3. Hardware and Software
        4. Grokkability Items
        5. Personality Cues
        6. Personal Essay
      4. Using Personas
      5. Succeeding with Personas
    10. Chapter 2. What Do Users Want? (and Where, and When, and Why?)
      1. We’re Not Programming Yet
      2. But Users Don’t Know What They Want!
      3. Finding Users to Examine
      4. Interviewing Users
      5. Observing Users
      6. Explaining It to the Geeks
      7. Storytelling
        1. Writing Stories
        2. Interview and Story Example
    11. Chapter 3. Sketching and Prototyping
      1. Prototyping: The Wrong Way to Start
      2. Starting with a Good Sketch
      3. Mockup Tool Example: Balsamiq
      4. Showing Interaction through a Storyboard
      5. Demonstrating through Live Action
    12. Chapter 4. Testing on Live Users
      1. Testing Constantly, Testing Throughout
      2. Why Isn’t Testing Done?
      3. Start Testing Early
      4. What We Learn from UX Testing
      5. Finding Test Users
      6. Compensating Test Users
      7. Test Area Design and Setup
      8. Using a Moderator
      9. Task Design and Description
      10. Watching and Debriefing
      11. User Testing Example
      12. The Last Word in Usability Testing
    13. Chapter 5. Telemetry and Analytics
      1. The Guessing Game Era
      2. Telemetry as a Solution
      3. Evolution of Telemetry
      4. Permission and Privacy
      5. Selecting a Telemetry Provider
      6. What to Track
      7. Telemetry Example
      8. Suggestions for Telemetry Today
      9. Getting Telemetry Wrong
    14. Chapter 6. Security and Privacy
      1. Everything’s a Trade-off
      2. Users Are Human
      3. What Users Really Care About
      4. The Hassle Budget
        1. Respect Your Users’ Hassle Budget
        2. A Widespread, Real-Life, Hassle Budget Workaround
      5. Case Study: Amazon.com
      6. Securing Our Applications
        1. Understand Our Users’ Hassle Budget
        2. Start with Good Defaults
        3. Decide, Don’t Ask
        4. Use Your Persona and Story Skills to Communicate
        5. Strengthen Your Stories with Data
        6. Cooperate with Other Security Layers
        7. Read a Good Book
        8. Bury the Hatchet
      7. The Last Word on Security
    15. Chapter 7. Making It Just Work
      1. The Key to Everything
      2. Start with Good Defaults
      3. Remember Everything That You Should
      4. Speak Your Users’ Language
      5. Don’t Make Users Do Your Work
      6. Don’t Let Edge Cases Dictate the Mainstream
      7. Don’t Make the User Think
      8. Don’t Confirm
      9. Do Undo
        1. Non-Undoable Operations
      10. Have the Correct Configurability
      11. Lead the Witness
    16. Chapter 8. Case Study: Commuter Rail Mobile App
      1. Pity the Poor Commuter
      2. Current State of the Art
      3. Step 1: Who?
      4. Step 2: What (and When, and Where, and Why)?
        1. Story 1
        2. Story 2
        3. Story 3
        4. Story 4
      5. Step 3: How?
      6. Step 4: Try It Out
      7. Step 5: Telemetry Plan
      8. Step 6: Security and Privacy Plan
      9. Step 7: Make It Just Work
        1. Start with Good Defaults
        2. Remember Everything That You Should
        3. Speak Your Users’ Language
        4. Don’t Make Users Do Your Work
        5. Don’t Let Edge Cases Dictate the Mainstream
        6. Don’t Make the User Think
        7. Don’t Confirm
        8. Do Undo
        9. Have the Correct Configurability
        10. Lead the Witness
    17. Chapter 9. Case Study: Medical Patient Portal
      1. A Good First Try
      2. Current State of the Art
      3. Step 1: Who?
      4. Step 2: What (and When, and Where, and Why)?
        1. Story 1
        2. Story 2
        3. Story 3
      5. Step 3: How?
      6. Step 4: Try It Out
        1. A Quick Speculation: Health Coach Mobile App
      7. Step 5: Telemetry Plan
      8. Step 6: Security and Privacy Plan
      9. Step 7: Make It Just Work
        1. Start with Good Defaults
        2. Remember Everything That You Should
        3. Speak Your Users’ Language
        4. Don’t Make Users Do Your Work
        5. Don’t Let Edge Cases Dictate the Mainstream
        6. Don’t Make the User Think
        7. Don’t Confirm
        8. Do Undo
        9. Have the Correct Configurability
        10. Lead the Witness
    18. Index
    19. Code Snippets

    Product information

    • Title: The Joy of UX: User Experience and Interactive Design for Developers
    • Author(s): David Platt
    • Release date: May 2016
    • Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
    • ISBN: 9780134277790