Design has become the key link between users and today’s complex and rapidly evolving digital experiences, and designers are starting to be included in strategic conversations about the products and services that enterprises ultimately deliver. This has led to companies building in-house digital/experience design teams at unprecedented rates, but many of them don’t understand how to get the most out of their investment. This practical guide provides guidelines for creating and leading design teams within your organization, and explores ways to use design as part of broader strategic planning. You’ll discover: Why design’s role has evolved in the digital age How to infuse design into every product and service experience The 12 qualities of effective design organizations How to structure your design team through a Centralized Partnership Design team roles and evolution The process of recruiting and hiring designers How to manage your design team and promote professional growth

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

Without words, apps would be an unusable jumble of shapes and icons, while voice interfaces and chatbots wouldn't even exist. Words make software human–centered, and require just as much thought as the branding and code. This book will show you how to give your users clarity, test your words, and collaborate with your team. You'll see that writing is designing.

The ultimate guide to UX from the world’s most popular resource for web designers and developers Smashing Magazine is the world′s most popular resource for web designers and developers and with this book the authors provide the ideal resource for mastering User Experience Design (UX). The authors provide an overview of UX and User Centred Design and examine in detail sixteen of the most common UX design and research tools and techniques for your web projects. The authors share their top tips from their collective 30 years of working in UX including: Guides to when and how to use the most appropriate UX research and design techniques such as usability testing, prototyping, wire framing, sketching, information architecture & running workshops How to plan UX projects to suit different budgets, time constraints and business objectives Case studies from real UX projects that explain how particular techniques were used to achieve the client's goals Checklists to help you choose the right UX tools and techniques for the job in hand Typical user and business requirements to consider when designing business critical pages such as homepages, forms, product pages and mobile interfaces as well as explanations of key things to consider when designing for mobile, internationalization and behavioural change. Smashing UX Design is the complete UX reference manual. Treat it as the UX expert on your bookshelf that you can read from cover-to-cover, or to dip into as the need arises, regardless of whether you have 'UX' in your job title or not.

We design to elicit responses from people. We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you’ll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play. Learn to increase the effectiveness, conversion rates, and usability of your own design projects by finding the answers to questions such as: What grabs and holds attention on a page or screen? What makes memories stick? What is more important, peripheral or central vision? How can you predict the types of errors that people will make? What is the limit to someone’s social circle? How do you motivate people to continue on to (the next step? What line length for text is best? Are some fonts better than others? These are just a few of the questions that the book answers in its deep-dive exploration of what makes people tick.

Today's web sites and intranets are larger, more valuable, and more complex than ever before, and their users are busier and less forgiving. Designers, information architects, and web site managers are required to juggle vast amounts of information, frequent changes, new technologies, and corporate politics, making some web sites look like a fast-growing but poorly planned city -roads everywhere, but impossible to navigate. A well-planned information architecture has never been as essential as it is now. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Second Edition, shows how to use both aesthetics and mechanics to create distinctive, cohesive web sites that work. Most books on web development concentrate either on the graphics or on the technical issues of a site. This book focuses on the framework that holds the two together. By applying the principles outlined in this completely updated classic, you'll build scalable and maintainable web sites that are easier to navigate and more appealing to your users. Using examples and case studies, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web will help you: Develop a strong, cohesive vision for your site that makes it both distinctive and usable; Organize your site's hierarchy in ways that are meaningful to its users and that minimize the need to re-engineer the site; Create navigation systems that allow users to move through the site without getting lost or frustrated; Accurately label your site's content; Organize your site in a way that supports both searching for specific items and casual browsing; Configure search systems so that users' queries actually retrieve meaningful results; Manage the process of developing an information architecture, from selling the concept to research and conceptual design to planning and production. "The world will be a better place when web designers read this book. It's smart, funny, and artfully distills years of the authors' bard-won experience. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web tackles political/organizational challenges as well as content, structure, and user interface. This is not design-lite, but a deep treatment of fundamental issues of information presentation that advances the state of the art. It's light years ahead of the competition." -Bonnie Nardi, Co-author of Information Ecologies- Using Technology with Heart

The scope of the book is UX. It presents a comprehensive guide for readers to better engage with the framing of UX design practice. The guide characterises UX as a movement, whose members are developing shared ideas to specify and to implement HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) as UX. The book is based on the analysis of the conduct and reporting of framing UX design practice, contributed by experienced UX practitioners. It surveys the various means by which UX practitioners conduct and report their design practices. These include trial and error; implement, test, and specify; and implement, evaluate, and iterate. These practices apply UX frameworks, UX approaches, and UX methods and are typically reported in the form of UX case studies. The book differs from top-down, formal, and framework-driven approaches. In contrast, it takes a bottom-up, informal, and practice-driven approach. In a dynamic field such as UX, there is seldom time to stop and think about the wider issues associated with design practice and its related trends. But this book creates that opportunity for UX practitioners to locate and reflect on their design practice—what they are doing and why they are doing it. The guide creates a space in which UX practitioners are informed of current trends that they can incorporate into their own workflows. Readers benefiting from this book include those working in customer experience design, experience-centred design, and human experience design. It will also be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students trying to make sense of the different ways of conducting and reporting HCI as UX. Further, it provides grounding for young researchers making their way in the fast developing world of UX.

A classic reference book on user interface design and graphic design for web sites, updated to reflect a rapidly changing market Consistently praised as the best volume on classic elements of web site design, Web Style Guide has sold many thousands of copies and has been published around the world. This new revised edition confirms Web Style Guide as the go-to authority in a rapidly changing market. As web designers move from building sites from scratch to using content management and aggregation tools, the book's focus shifts away from code samples and toward best practices, especially those involving mobile experience, social media, and accessibility. An ideal reference for web site designers in corporations, government, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions, the book explains established design principles and covers all aspects of web design--from planning to production to maintenance. The guide also shows how these principles apply in web design projects whose primary concerns are information design, interface design, and efficient search and navigation.

Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible. Written by one of the world's top game designers, The Art of Game Design presents 100+ sets of questions, or different lenses, for viewing a game’s design, encompassing diverse fields such as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, puzzle design, and anthropology. This Second Edition of a Game Developer Front Line Award winner: Describes the deepest and most fundamental principles of game design Demonstrates how tactics used in board, card, and athletic games also work in top-quality video games Contains valuable insight from Jesse Schell, the former chair of the International Game Developers Association and award-winning designer of Disney online games The Art of Game Design, Second Edition gives readers useful perspectives on how to make better game designs faster. It provides practical instruction on creating world-class games that will be played again and again.