The User Experience Team Of One

The User Experience Team of One prescribes a range of approaches that have big impact and take less time and fewer resources than the standard lineup of UX deliverables. Whether you want to cross over into user experience or you're a seasoned practitioner trying to drag your organization forward, this book gives you tools and insight for doing more with less.

The User Experience Team of One prescribes a range of approaches that have big impact and take less time and fewer resources than the standard lineup of UX deliverables. Whether you want to cross over into user experience or you're a seasoned practitioner trying to drag your organization forward, this book gives you tools and insight for doing more with less.

Interviewing is easy, right? Anyone can do it… but few do it well enough to unlock the benefits and insights that interviewing users and customers can yield. In this new and updated edition of the acclaimed classic Interviewing Users, Steve Portigal quickly and effectively dispels the myth that interviewing is trivial. He shows how research studies and logistics can be used to determine concrete goals for a business and takes the reader on a detailed journey into the specifics of interviewing techniques, best practices, fieldwork, documentation, and how to make sense of uncovered data. Then Steve takes the process even further―showing the methods and details behind asking questions―from the words themselves to the interviewer’s actions and how they influence an interview. There is even a chapter on making sure that information gleaned from the research study is used by the business in such a way to make it impactful and worthwhile. Oh, and for good measure he throws in information about Research Operations. But, hey, that’s just the nuts and bolts of the book. The truly fun part is Steve’s voice and how he portrays this information through amusing anecdotes about his career, fascinating examples from other practitioners, and tips and tricks that only the most experienced UX researchers, like Steve, could come up with. As a nod to the pandemic, he offers ideas for the best way to interview someone remotely, and he also discusses personal bias―how to identify and deal with it so that it doesn’t affect interviews. Everyone will get something from this book. But beyond the requisite information, it’s simply a good read. And if you want another good read with stories galore, pick up Steve’s other book Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries. "Quite simply the best book on when, why, and how you should conduct user interview studies." —Elizabeth F. Churchill, PhD, Senior Director, Google Who Should Read This Book? Anyone and everyone who is interested in finding out what makes their business tick, i.e., who their users are. Anyone and everyone who wants to learn how to interview and listen to people. Anyone and everyone, including CEOs, user researchers, designers, engineers, marketers, product managers, strategists, interviewers, and you. Takeaways User research is key for companies to include in their design and development process. The best way to do user research is through interviewing users and determining their needs. Interviewing can identify what could be designed or what is actually a problem. Teams who meet their users face-to-face will build better products. Field research takes a lot of preparation to be successful―and a solid plan in advance. There are critical techniques and frameworks for mapping human behavior. A good interviewer always puts their participants at ease. If you ask the right questions, you’ll get the right answers. A smart interviewer checks their worldview at the door. To establish a rapport with your interviewee, listen and don’t be judgmental. Research data is a combination of analysis and synthesis. The importance of research analysis must be continually highlighted and emphasized to the powers that be.

Think Like a UX Researcher will challenge your preconceptions about user experience (UX) research and encourage you to think beyond the obvious. You’ll discover how to plan and conduct UX research, analyze data, persuade teams to take action on the results and build a career in UX. The book will help you take a more strategic view of product design so you can focus on optimizing the user’s experience. UX Researchers, Designers, Project Managers, Scrum Masters, Business Analysts and Marketing Managers will find tools, inspiration and ideas to rejuvenate their thinking, inspire their team and improve their craft. In this newly revised Second Edition, the authors have added six new essays that look at how UX research methods have changed in the last few years, why remote methods should not be the only tools you use, what to do about difficult test participants, how to improve your survey questions, how to identify user goals when you can’t directly observe users and how understanding your own epistemological bias will help you become a more persuasive UX researcher. Key Features Provides a dive-in-anywhere book that offers practical advice and topical examples. Includes thought triggers, exercises and scenarios to test your knowledge of UX research. Features workshop ideas to build a development team’s UX maturity. Discusses war stories from seasoned researchers to show you how UX research methods can be tailored to your own organization.

User Experience Management: Essential Skills for Leading Effective UX Teams deals with specific issues associated with managing diverse user experience (UX) skills, often in corporations with a largely engineering culture. Part memoir and part handbook, it explains what it means to lead a UX team and examines the management issues of hiring, inheriting, terminating, layoffs, interviewing and candidacy, and downsizing. The book offers guidance on building and creating a UX team, as well as equipping and focusing the team. It also considers ways of nurturing the team, from coaching and performance reviews to conflict management and creating work-life balance. Furthermore, it discusses the essential skills needed in leading an effective team and developing a communication plan. This book will be valuable to new managers and leaders, more experienced managers, and anyone who is leading or managing UX groups or who is interested in assuming a leadership role in the future. *Gives a UX leadership boot-camp from putting together a winning team, to giving them a driving focus, to acting as their spokesman, to handling difficult situations *Full of practical advice and experiences for managers and leaders in virtually any area of the user experience field *Contains best practices, real-world stories, and insights from UX leaders at IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and many more!

Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability clearly explains exactly how to design great forms for the web. The book provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. It features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. It includes dozens of examples - from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color). This book isn’t just about colons and choosing the right widgets. It’s about the whole process of making good forms, which has a lot more to do with making sure you’re asking the right questions in a way that your users can answer than it does with whether you use a drop-down list or radio buttons. In an easy-to-read format with lots of examples, the authors present their three-layer model - relationship, conversation, appearance. You need all three for a successful form - a form that looks good, flows well, asks the right questions in the right way, and, most important of all, gets people to fill it out. Liberally illustrated with full-color examples, this book guides readers on how to define requirements, how to write questions that users will understand and want to answer, and how to deal with instructions, progress indicators and errors. This book is essential reading for HCI professionals, web designers, software developers, user interface designers, HCI academics and students, market research professionals, and financial professionals. *Provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. *Features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. *Includes dozens of examples -- from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color). *Foreword by Steve Krug, author of the best selling Don't Make Me Think!

It’s Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects discusses frameworks, strategies, and techniques for working with stakeholders of user experience (UX) research in a way that ensures their buy-in. This book consists of six chapters arranged according to the different stages of research projects. Topics discussed include the different roles of business, engineering, and user-experience stakeholders; identification of research opportunities by developing empathy with stakeholders; and planning UX research with stakeholders. The book also offers ways of teaming up with stakeholders; strategies to improve the communication of research results to stakeholders; and the nine signs that indicate that research is making an impact on stakeholders, teams, and organizations. This book is meant for UX people engaged in usability and UX research. Written from the perspective of an in-house UX researcher, it is also relevant for self-employed practitioners and consultants who work in agencies. It is especially directed at UX teams that face no-time-no-money-for-research situations. Named a 2012 Notable Computer Book for Information Systems by Computing Reviews Features a series of video interviews with UX practitioners and researchers Provides dozens of case studies and visuals from international research practitioners Provides a toolset that will help you justify your work to stakeholders, deal with office politics, and hone your client skills Presents tried and tested techniques for working to reach positive, useful, and fruitful outcomes

Igniting business growth through UX In an increasingly digital world, users are rewarding products and services that provide them with a good experience and punishing those that don’t — with their wallets. Organizations realize they need to adapt quickly but don’t know how or where to start. In User Experience Design: A Practical Playbook to Fuel Business Growth, UXReactor co-Founder Satyam Kantamneni distills 25 years of industry experience into a pragmatic approach to help organizations advance in the highly competitive and rapidly changing digital world. You’ll discover: Why putting users at the center of strategy leads to an almost unfair competitive advantage Ways to build an organizational system that delivers a superior user experience that is replicable, consistent, and scalable Common shortfalls that prevent organizations from reaping the value of experience design 27 proven “plays” from the UXReactor playbook to put concepts into practice Game planning examples to execute at different levels of an organization A comprehensive and practical book for everyone involved in the transformation — business leaders, design leaders, product managers, engineers, and designers — User Experience Design: A Practical Playbook to Fuel Business Growth is also an ideal blueprint for current and prospective UX practitioners seeking to improve their skills and further their careers.