User-Centered Design: A Developer's Guide to Building User-Friendly Applications

by Travis Lowdermilk

Overview

How do you design engaging applications that people love to use? This book demonstrates several ways to include valuable input from potential clients and customers throughout the process. With practical guidelines and insights from his own experience, author Travis Lowdermilk shows you how usability and user-centered design will dramatically change the way people interact with your application.

Learn valuable strategies for conducting each stage of the design process—from interviewing likely users and discovering your application’s purpose to creating a rich user experience with sound design principles. User-Centered Design is invaluable no matter what platform you use or audience you target.

• Explore usability and how it relates to user-centered design
• Learn how to deal with users and their unique personalities
• Clarify your application’s purpose, using a simple narrative to describe its use
• Plan your project’s development with a software development life cycle
• Be creative within the context of your user experience goals
• Use visibility, consistency, and other design principles to enhance user experience
• Collect valuable user feedback on your prototype with surveys, interviews, and usability studies

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449359836
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/29/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	154
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Travis Lowdermilk has been developing custom software experiences for over 15 years in industries ranging from architecture, business, and health care. Currently, he works for a community hospital in central California. At the hospital, he creates line of business applications for clinical, financial, and performance improvement.

Predominantly using Microsoft frameworks, Travis creates solutions that employ a wide range of technologies such as: web, mobile, touch, and voice. Travis is a certified ASP.NET developer and has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration – emphasizing in Information Systems. He’s currently enrolled in the Master’s program at DePaul University’s College of Digital Media. The focus of his study is Human-Computer Interaction and User-Centered Design.

Travis is the co-host of The Windows Developer Show – a weekly Internet broadcast for Microsoft developers, designers, and enthusiasts (www.windowsdevelopershow.com). To find out more about Travis, please visit: www.travislowdermilk.com or follow him on Twitter (@tlowdermilk).

Travis Lowdermilk has been building software experiences as both a developer and a designer for over 15 years.Currently, Travis is a UX Designer at Microsoft, helping teams apply design thinking to their products.To learn more about Travis, visit: www.travislowdermilk.com

Table of Contents

• Dedication
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Our World Has Changed
• Chapter 2: What Is User-Centered Design?
• Chapter 3: Working with Users
• Chapter 4: Having a Plan
• Chapter 5: Creating a Personal Manifesto
• Chapter 6: Creativity and User Experience
• Chapter 7: Design Principles
• Chapter 8: Gathering Feedback
• Chapter 9: Usability Studies
• Chapter 10: You’re Never Finished
• Chapter 11: Other Resources
• Sample Project Template
• References
• Colophon