Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web / Edition 2

by Lukas Mathis

Overview

This book is for designers, developers, and product managers who are charged with what sometimes seems like an impossible task: making sure products work the way your users expect them to. You'll find out how to design applications and websites that people will not only use, but will absolutely love. The second edition brings the book up to date and expands it with three completely new chapters.

Interaction design - the way the apps on our phones work, the way we enter a destination into our car's GPS - is becoming more and more important. Identify and fix bad software design by making usability the cornerstone of your design process.

Lukas weaves together hands-on techniques and fundamental concepts. Each technique chapter explains a specific approach you can use to make your product more user friendly, such as storyboarding, usability tests, and paper prototyping. Idea chapters are concept-based: how to write usable text, how realistic your designs should look, when to use animations. This new edition is updated and expanded with new chapters covering requirements gathering, how the design of data structures influences the user interface, and how to do design work as a team. Through copious illustrations and supporting psychological research, expert developer and user interface designer Lukas Mathis gives you a deep dive into research, design, and implementation—the essential stages in designing usable interfaces for applications and websites.

Lukas inspires you to look at design in a whole new way, explaining exactly what to look for - and what to avoid - in creating products that get people excited.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781680501605
Publisher:	Pragmatic Bookshelf
Publication date:	06/26/2016
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lukas Mathis is the Frontend Lead at Swiss software company Appway, the leader in client onboarding for the financial services industry. His blog on design and usability at ignorethecode.net is read by tens of thousands of people each month, and his essays on design have been published on sites such as UX Magazine and Splashnology. He has created a number of online tools for UI design.

Table of Contents

Before We Start, a Word xiii

Part I Research

1 User Research 3

2 Features Are Not Requirements 7

3 Job Shadowing and Contextual Interviews 11

4 Personas 19

5 Activity-Centered Design 25

6 Time to Start Working on Documentation 29

7 Text Usability 35

8 Hierarchies in User Interface Design 47

9 Card Sorting 51

10 Creating Usable Hierarchies 59

11 The Mental Model 65

Part II Design

12 Keep an Open Mind 81

13 Sketching and Prototyping 87

14 Paper Prototype Testing 97

15 Realism 111

16 Natural User Interfaces 121

17 Fitts's Law 129

18 Animations 135

19 Consistency 145

20 Discoverability 151

21 Don't Interrupt 157

22 Instead of Interrupting, Offer Undo 163

23 Modes 167

24 Have Opinions Instead of Preferences 175

25 Hierarchies, Space, Time, and How We Think About the World 181

26 Speed 191

27 Avoiding Features 197

28 Removing Features 207

29 Learning from Video Games 213

Part III Implementation

30 Designing the Back End 227

31 Guerilla Usability Testing 231

32 The First Run Experience 235

33 Usability Testing 241

34 Testing in Person 251

35 Remote Testing 259

36 How Not to Test: Common Mistakes 269

37 User Error Is Design Error 273

38 A/B Testing 281

39 Collecting Usage Data 289

40 Dealing with User Feedback 295

41 You're Not Done 299

A1 Acknowledgements 301

Bibliography 305

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

"Make good use of this book! It will help you to improve your work."

—David Naef, Creative director, Design Management Visionaer

"This book is smooth and pleasing like Swiss chocolate and has the eloquence of a cherry blossom. It’s a must-read and real gem for everybody who is eager to learn about usability. "

—Michael D. Trummer, Senior Engagement Manager, Appway, Inc.

“Designed for Use distills Lukas’s brilliant insight into the much neglected area of usability, UX, and UI design. An essential, authoritative, and enlightening read."

—Paul Neave, Interaction Designer, Neave Interactive

From the Publisher