Remote Research

Remote research allows you to recruit subjects quickly, cheaply, and immediately, and give you the opportunity to observe users as they behave naturally in their own environment. In Remote Research, Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte teach you how to design and conduct remote research studies, top to bottom, with little more than a phone and a laptop.

Playful Design

Game design is a sibling discipline to software and Web design, but they’re siblings that grew up in different houses.  They have much more in common than their perceived distinction typically suggests, and user experience practitioners can realize enormous benefit by exploiting the solutions that games have found to the real problems of design.  This book will show you how.

Content Everywhere

Care about content? Better copy isn’t enough. As devices and channels multiply—and as users expect to relate, share, and shift information quickly—we need content that can go more places, more easily. Content Everywhere will help you stop creating fixed, single-purpose content and start making it more future-ready, flexible, reusable, manageable, and meaningful wherever it needs to go.

Web Form Design

Forms make or break the most crucial online interactions: checkout (commerce), registration (community), data input (participation and sharing), and any task requiring information entry. In Web Form Design, Luke Wroblewski draws on original research, his considerable experience at Yahoo! and eBay, and the perspectives of many of the field’s leading designers to show you everything you need to know about designing effective and engaging Web forms.

Writing Is Designing

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.

Who this book is for

• People who make their living writing and leading content strategy for software interfaces, or those who want to transition into this type of role from another writing background.
• Designers and design leaders.
• Product managers, engineers, and executives.

Available from Audible and other major audiobook sellers.

The User Experience Team of One (2nd Edition)

Whether you’re new to UX or a seasoned practitioner, The User Experience Team of One gives you everything you need to succeed, emphasizing down-to-earth approaches that deliver big impact over time-consuming, needlessly complex techniques. This updated classic remains a comprehensive and essential guide for UX and product designers everywhere—you’ll accomplish a lot more with a lot less.

Who Should Read This Book

The techniques and advice in this book are applicable to anyone who is just starting out in user experience, as well as seasoned practitioners who have been in the field for years. In addition, anyone who read the first edition will appreciate this updated edition that features loads of new material that has changed over the past 10 years. There are tips, tools, and techniques throughout the book to improve your performance. The various methods detail exactly how to handle a variety of situations—from the timing involved, the materials, when to use that information, and how to try it out. Look for real-life sidebars from the authors, as well as experts in the field. This book applies to a team of one or a team of many.

Takeaways

• The first section covers the philosophy of the UX team of one—why you do it, how you build support, how to identify common challenges, and how to keep growing.
• The second section of the book, “Practice,” gives you tools and techniques for managing this balancing act with detailed methods.
• The 25 up-to-date methods in Part II prompt a question about a specific topic, answer the question, give the average time it will take to deal with the issue, tell you when to use this material, and give you instructions for “Trying It Out.”
• You can learn about the working conditions that a team of one often experiences.
• The book addresses difficult situations that UX practitioners often encounter (for example, the need for speed in corporate environments).
• Be sure to review the UX Value Loop[TM] that Joe created to define UX.
• Check out sidebars that highlight some of Joe and Leah’s personal real-life experiences.
• The end of each chapter tells you what to do if you can “only do one thing”.
• Finally, notes and tips give you handy techniques and tools to use in your own practice.

Available from Audible and other major audiobook sellers.

Search Analytics for Your Site

Any organization that has a searchable web site or intranet is sitting on top of hugely valuable and usually under-exploited data: logs that capture what users are searching for, how often each query was searched, and how many results each query retrieved. Search queries are gold: they are real data that show us exactly what users are searching for in their own words. This book shows you how to use search analytics to carry on a conversation with your customers: listen to and understand their needs, and improve your content, navigation, and search performance to meet those needs.

Design for Kids

Emotion. Ego. Impatience. Stubbornness. Characteristics like these make creating sites and apps for kids a daunting proposition. However, with a bit of knowledge, you can design experiences that help children think, play, and learn. With Design for Kids, you’ll learn how to create digital products for today’s connected generation.

Project Management for Humans

Project management—it’s not just about following a template or using a tool, but rather developing personal skills and intuition to find a method that works for everyone. Whether you’re a designer or a manager, Project Management for Humans will help you estimate and plan tasks, scout and address issues before they become problems, and communicate with and hold people accountable.

The Product of You

Creative and tech professionals are passionate about applying design and creativity to creating products and solving other people’s problems. But there’s an unknown irony that holds them back – they fail to apply their creative and technical muscles (eg. storytelling, problem solving, critical thinking, research, writing, design, etc) to address problems in their careers. For example, designers often overly design their resume and fail to consider the person who’s actually reading it. Writers often get overly creative when writing their LinkedIn profile and resume, which can backfire as algorithms may surface their profile or application to recruiters and hiring managers.

As a result, many are stuck in unfulfilling jobs, aren’t paid what they’re worth, and lack the confidence to reach their full professional potential. In The Product of You, Sarah Doody teaches you how to have a more fulfilling and successful career by treating it as a designed product.