An understanding of psychology—specifically the psychology behind how users behave and interact with digital interfaces—is perhaps the single most valuable nondesign skill a designer can have. The most elegant design can fail if it forces users to conform to the design rather than working within the "blueprint" of how humans perceive and process the world around them. This practical guide explains how you can apply key principles in psychology to build products and experiences that are more intuitive and human-centered. Author Jon Yablonski deconstructs familiar apps and experiences to provide clear examples of how UX designers can build experiences that adapt to how users perceive and process digital interfaces. You’ll learn: How aesthetically pleasing design creates positive responses The principles from psychology most useful for designers How these psychology principles relate to UX heuristics Predictive models including Fitts’s law, Jakob’s law, and Hick’s law Ethical implications of using psychology in design A framework for applying these principles

An understanding of psychology—specifically the psychology behind how users behave and interact with digital interfaces—is perhaps the single most valuable nondesign skill a designer can have. The most elegant design can fail if it forces users to conform to the design rather than working within the "blueprint" of how humans perceive and process the world around them. This practical guide explains how you can apply key principles in psychology to build products and experiences that are more intuitive and human-centered. Author Jon Yablonski deconstructs familiar apps and experiences to provide clear examples of how UX designers can build experiences that adapt to how users perceive and process digital interfaces. You’ll learn: How aesthetically pleasing design creates positive responses The principles from psychology most useful for designers How these psychology principles relate to UX heuristics Predictive models including Fitts’s law, Jakob’s law, and Hick’s law Ethical implications of using psychology in design A framework for applying these principles

An understanding of psychology-specifically the psychology behind how users behave and interact with digital interfaces-is perhaps the single most valuable nondesign skill a designer can have. The most elegant design can fail if it forces users to conform to the design rather than working within the "blueprint" of how humans perceive and process the world around them. This practical guide explains how you can apply key principles in psychology to build products and experiences that are more intuitive and human-centered. Author Jon Yablonski deconstructs familiar apps and experiences to provide clear examples of how UX designers can build experiences that adapt to how users perceive and process digital interfaces. You'll learn: How aesthetically pleasing design creates positive responses The principles from psychology most useful for designers How these psychology principles relate to UX heuristics Predictive models including Fitts's law, Jakob's law, and Hick's law Ethical implications of using psychology in design A framework for applying these principles.

Ten laws of simplicity for business, technology, and design that teach us how to need less but get more. Finally, we are learning that simplicity equals sanity. We're rebelling against technology that's too complicated, DVD players with too many menus, and software accompanied by 75-megabyte "read me" manuals. The iPod's clean gadgetry has made simplicity hip. But sometimes we find ourselves caught up in the simplicity paradox: we want something that's simple and easy to use, but also does all the complex things we might ever want it to do. In The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda offers ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design—guidelines for needing less and actually getting more. Maeda—a professor in MIT's Media Lab and a world-renowned graphic designer—explores the question of how we can redefine the notion of "improved" so that it doesn't always mean something more, something added on. Maeda's first law of simplicity is "Reduce." It's not necessarily beneficial to add technology features just because we can. And the features that we do have must be organized (Law 2) in a sensible hierarchy so users aren't distracted by features and functions they don't need. But simplicity is not less just for the sake of less. Skip ahead to Law 9: "Failure: Accept the fact that some things can never be made simple." Maeda's concise guide to simplicity in the digital age shows us how this idea can be a cornerstone of organizations and their products—how it can drive both business and technology. We can learn to simplify without sacrificing comfort and meaning, and we can achieve the balance described in Law 10. This law, which Maeda calls "The One," tells us: "Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful."

It’s easier than ever to build a new product. But developing a great product that people actually want to buy and use is another story. Build Better Products is a hands-on, step-by-step guide that helps teams incorporate strategy, empathy, design, and analytics into their development process. You’ll learn to develop products and features that improve your business’s bottom line while dramatically improving customer experience.

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!

This pocket edition of the bestselling design reference book contains 150 essential principles.

Learn from the opinions of a UX expert, evaluate your own design principles, and avoid common mistakes. Key Features Hear insights from an author who was trained by the Nielsen Norman Group Browse over 20 years of collected UX insights Accept or reject 101 thought-provoking opinions on design Challenge your own ideas on UX Book Description There are countless books about designing for the web. They all give multiple routes and options to solving design challenges. Many of them are plain wrong. This has led to an entire generation of designers failing to make interfaces that are usable, software that is intuitive, and products that normal people can understand. 101 UX Principles changes that, with 101 ways to solve 101 UX problems clearly and single-mindedly. The 101 principles are opinionated. They’ll rub some designers up the wrong way, but these principles are rooted in 20 years of building for the web. They’re not based on theory - they’re based on practice. Simply put, they’ve been proven to work at scale. There’s no arguing with that. Following in the footsteps of Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman, this book is the go-to manual for UX professionals, covering everything from passwords, to planning the user journey. Build a deeper understanding of accessible design and implement tried-and-tested strategies in your company. What you will learn Use typography well to ensure that text is readable Design controls to streamline interaction Create navigation which makes content make sense Convey information with consistent iconography Manage user input effectively Represent progress to the user Provide interfaces that work for users with visual or motion impairments Understand and respond to user expectations Who this book is for This book is for UX professionals (freelance or in-house) looking for shortcuts to making software that users intuitively know how to use across web, desktop, and mobile.

The five-second test (also known as "timeout test" and "exposure test") is one of the most convenient rapid UX testing methods available, although its value can be compromised by ignoring the restrictions of the method. This test involves displaying a visual or informational design for five seconds, removing it from view, then asking what aspects were recalled most easily or vividly. The goal is to understand what stands out most about a design or product, and the impact on the viewer's perception of it. This book uses detailed examples from a collection of more than 300 tests to describe the strengths and weaknesses of this rapid testing method. Readers will learn about the "five-second rules" for getting useful data, and will explore what types of design issues can be resolved by using the method. The book describes the origins of the method and its usefulness in modern UX design research and testing; conveys the need to structure tests carefully so that time, effort, and money are not wasted, and compiled data is not misleading; fosters an appreciation for the method's outcomes and how they can contribute to the success or failure of a proposed design. --

It takes conviction to title a user experience book that stands solidly on a cognitive science foundation as "Magic" but through the practice of the Semantic Interaction Design method this breakthrough book introduces you will appear to many as possessing superhero UX powers.The Semantic IxD method is laser focused on transforming product requirements into experiences guaranteed to result in the minimum cognitive load with the smallest number of screens and fewest flow steps possible. An additional benefit it provides is a 10X speed increase at which designers can achieve these magical results. It provides an antidote to the expensive and endless A/B trials resulting in suboptimal products propagated by the proponents of design Darwinism. It can also mitigate the excessive hours wasted in opinion and personality oriented UX debates during product development meetings.UX Magic builds upon an HCI conceptual model foundation leveraging human natural language understanding and extends it into the GUI layers of design pattern visualization, UX flow and applied game theory to create optimal user experiences that also align well with business objectives. In addition to guiding you to minimize cognitive load from the very start of sketching screens it will also lead to UX designs that scale well into the future as product functionality grows with each successive release.