In any design project, you are going to have one or more stakeholders. These are the people who sponsored the project, and/or are the product managers responsible for the product being design, and/or are VPs responsible for a particular division……
UX 101
My introductory book on user experience, written in serial form.
#UX101: The software development life-cycle
by Joseph Dickerson • April 30, 2013
Why a section on software development process in an introduction to user experience? Because you will need to know and integrate with such processes as part of your job as a UX professional, that’s why. You will need to know…
#UX101: On working with developers and project managers
by Joseph Dickerson • April 18, 2013
No man is an island – to be an effective UX professional you need to work and partner with people with different backgrounds, skills, and priorities. If you don’t build solid relationships with the many people responsible for executing the…
#UX101: A few words on Content Strategy and Service Design
by Joseph Dickerson • April 7, 2013
User experience design is a pretty broad discipline, with many different areas of focus you can align your career to. There’s information architecture, user research, usability testing, requirements modeling, wireframing, prototyping… each with a different focus, approach and outcome. I…
#UX101: The User Centered Design Process
by Joseph Dickerson • March 31, 2013
One of the things I get asked a lot by people interested in user experience design is “How do you do what you do?” The sometimes want specifics, but often the question is broad… what is your process? So, let’s…
Best Practices in UI Form Design
by Joseph Dickerson • March 22, 2013
I looked back over some of my older writing and realized that I had written about form design in three separate posts. These posts, while similar, contained different ideas and recommendations. Thus, I have decided to combine them here. Keep…
#UX101: A (brief) history of user experience
by Joseph Dickerson • March 14, 2013
What we now call “user experience design” began a lot longer ago than many people realize. In fact, you can trace UX design WAY, WAY back… all the way to when humans created the first tools. A tool in its…
#UX101: What is UX, anyway?
by Joseph Dickerson • March 10, 2013
I am writing my new book UX 101 the same way that two of my literary idols, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens, did: in serial, one chapter at a time. I hope to post a new segment every week…
When creating web and mobile application UIs, what is better: "Flat Design" or "Skeuomorphic Design"?
by Joseph Dickerson • February 16, 2013
It depends. Yes, I know, that's a cop-out, but not really… There are benefits and drawbacks to both, and what your are designing and who you are designing for is just as important as the design "style" ("Flat" or "skeuomorphic")…
Should companies with in-house UX teams evaluate their own work or engage external UX consultants to do so?
by Joseph Dickerson • February 12, 2013
Bringing in an external consultant to evaluate a team's work is a BAD idea, for several reasons. First off, the consultant can be the best UX professional in the world who makes the most cogent points possible… but he or…
What are best practices for participatory design sessions?
by Joseph Dickerson • February 11, 2013
Participatory design is a great way to have an engaging conversation with users about a particular task or situation. The main thing to remember about participatory design is this obvious point: Users aren't designers. During the design session they are…