Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research - Softcover

Mike Kuniavsky; Elizabeth Goodman; Andrea Moed

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0123848695 ISBN 13: 9780123848697

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann, 2012

Synopsis

The gap between who designers and developers imagine their users are, and who those users really are can be the biggest problem with product development. "Observing the User Experience" will help you bridge that gap to understand what your users want and need from your product, and whether they'll be able to use what you've created. Filled with real-world experience and a wealth of practical information, this book presents a complete toolbox of techniques to help designers and developers see through the eyes of their users. It provides in-depth coverage of 13 user experience research techniques that will provide a basis for developing better products, whether they're Web, software or mobile based. In addition, it's written with an understanding of how software is developed in the real world, taking tight budgets, short schedules, and existing processes into account. This title: explains how to create usable products that are still original, creative, and unique; is a valuable resource for designers, developers, project managers - anyone in a position where their work comes in direct contact with the end user; provides a real-world perspective on research and provides advice about how user research can be done cheaply, quickly and how results can be presented persuasively; and, gives readers the tools and confidence to perform user research on their own designs and tune their software user experience to the unique needs of their product and its users.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Goodman is a PhD candidate at the UC Berkeley's School of Information. Her writing, design and research focus on interaction design for mobile and ubiquitous computing. She has also been a part of exploratory research teams at Intel, Fuji-Xerox, and Yahoo!. Elizabeth has a masters degree in interaction design fromNew York University, and is a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow and an Intel PhD Fellow. Mike Kuniavsky is a user experience designer, researcher and author. A twenty-year veteran of digital product development, Mike is a consultant and the co-founder of several user experience centered companies: ThingM manufactures products for ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things; Adaptive Path is a well-known design consultancy. He is also the founder and organizer of Sketching in Hardware, an annual summit on the future of tools for digital product user experience design for leading technology developers, designers and educators. Mike frequently writes and speaks on digital product and service design, and works with product development groups in both large companies and startups. His most recent book is Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design. Andrea Moed believes that research is essential in designing to support human relationships. She has been a design researcher and strategist for over 15 years, observing users of websites, phones and other mobile devices, museums, retail environments and educational and business software. She is currently the Staff User Researcher at Inflection, a technology company working to democratize access to public records. Andrea has master's degrees from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and the UC Berkeley School of Information, and has taught at the Parsons School of Design in New York. Her writing on design and technology has appeared in a variety of publications.

From the Back Cover

Wow! So many of the user experience research methods we have refined and used over the years are now organized and described in detail in one book.
--Christian Rohrer, Manager, User Experience Research, Yahoo!

I love Observing the User Experience! This comprehensive guide approaches user experience research like never before, and is well-written, easy-to-read, and quite user friendly. It provides a real-world example of how research is done in just enough detail that it can both inform a CEO of the role of usability research as well as introduce methodology to someone starting out in the field. Bravo!
--Kelly Braun, Usability Manager, Ebay


The gap between who designers and developers imagine their users are, and who those users really are can be the biggest problem with product development. Observing the User Experience will help you bridge that gap to understand what your users want and need from your product, and whether they'll be able to use what you've created.

Filled with real-world experience and a wealth of practical information, this book presents a complete toolbox of techniques to help designers and developers see through the eyes of their users. It provides in-depth coverage of 13 user experience research techniques that will provide a basis for developing better products, whether they're Web, software or mobile based. In addition, it's written with an understanding of how software is developed in the real world, taking tight budgets, short schedules, and existing processes into account.

Features and benefits:

·Explains how to create usable products that are still original, creative, and unique

·A valuable resource for designers, developers, project managers―anyone in a position where their work comes in direct contact with the end user.

·Provides a real-world perspective on research and provides advice about how user research can be done cheaply, quickly and how results can be presented persuasively

·Gives readers the tools and confidence to perform user research on their own designs and tune their software user experience to the unique needs of their product and its users

Edition details

• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0123848695
• ISBN 13: 9780123848697
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 664