New User!
Observing the User Experience
By: Mike KuniavskyImprint: Morgan Kaufmann
Format: ePub Encrypted (DRM)
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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.
·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
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| Title of Computers eBook: Observing the User Experience | |
| Release Date: 04-08-2003 | |
| Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann |
This eBook download is available in the following formats:
| Parent title | Observing the User Experience |
|---|---|
| Encrypted (DRM) | Yes |
| SKU | 9780080497563 |
| File size | 2623 |
| Security | n/a |
| Printing | Not allowed |
| Copying | Not allowed |
| Read aloud | No Sys requirements Download reader |
| Devices | Samsung Tablet, Apple Ipad & Iphone, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo eReader, Aluratek Libre, Iliad, Nokia, Blackberry, Hanlin |
| Note | Excellent navigation features are available via Adobe such as bookmarks and a quick access table of contents. Text search is easily accessible. An Adobe DRM-protected file is different than a pdf file in that it uses Adobe DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology, which authors and publishers use to protect their content from illegal online distribution and to set certain privileges such as restrictions on copying and printing. |
Observing the User Experience
Chapter One
Typhoon: A Fable
Sometimes it takes a long time for something to be obvious: a shortcut in the neighborhood that you've known all of your life, a connection between two friends, the fact that your parents aren't so bad. It can take a while for the unthinkable to seem clearly natural in retrospect.
So it is with Web sites and user research. For a long time in the short history of Web development, the concept of putting an unfinished product in front of customers was considered an unthinkable luxury or pointless redundancy. The concerns in Web design circles were about branding ("make sure the logo has a blue arc!") or positioning ("we're the amazon.com of bathroom cleaning products!") or being first to market. Investigating and analyzing what users needed was not part of the budget. If a Web site or a product was vaguely usable, then that meant it was useful (and that it would be popular and profitable and whatever other positive outcomes the developers wanted from it). Asking users was irrelevant and likely to damage the brilliance of the design.
Recent history has clearly proved that model wrong. It's not enough to be first to market with a blue circle arc and an online shopping cart. Now it's necessary to have a product that's actually desired by people, that fulfills their needs, and that they can actually use. That means user research. User research is the process of understanding the impact of design on an audience. Surveys, focus groups, and other forms of user research conducted before the design phase can make the difference between a Web site (or any designed product) that is useful, usable, and suc
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