Table Of ContentSmashing UX Design: Foundations
for Designing Online User
Experiences
Table of Contents
Part I: UX Processes and Projects
Chapter 1: Understanding the User-Centered Design Process
The virtuous circle
Research
Design
And research again…
UX And Development processes
Waterfall development
Agile Development
Case Studies: UCD in Practice
Light-touch UX Project to Improve an existing website
UCD Project to redesign an existing website from the ground up
Project to design the mobile version of a new travel website
Resources
Chapter 2: Planning UX Projects
Getting started with UX planning
Selling user-centered design to your clients
What does a user experience project look like?
What are the business requirements?
What are the user requirements?
What is the best design solution?
How much time and budget should you make available for UX?
Choosing UX tools and techniques
Planning UX: Case studies
Doing UX on a Shoe-String Budget
A user-centered redesign project
A new website not converting as expected
New Product Launch
Tips for working with…
Product managers
Project managers
Visual Designers
Developers
UX experts
SEO experts
Content specialists
Resources
Part II: UX Research and Evaluation Tools and Techniques
Chapter 3: Planning and Conducting Effective Stakeholder Interviews
Why are Stakeholder iNterviews important?
When to Conduct stakeholder interviews
What are stakeholders?
Who should you talk to?
How to Conduct stakeholder interviews
Planning stakeholder interviews
Conducting stakeholder interviews
Analyzing and reporting your findings
Reflect your clients’ answers back to them
Generate a shared understanding
Resources
Chapter 4: Organizing and Running a Successful Requirements Workshop
Why are requirements workshops important?
When to run a requirements workshop
How to run a requirements workshop
Planning a requirements workshop
Running the workshop
After the workshop
Resources
Chapter 5: Planning, Conducting, and Analyzing a Usability Test
When to Perform a usability test
How can You benchmark this existing design/ mobile app/ paper form?
How do You gather the user’s requirements?
Why isn’t this working as well as it should?
How good is the competition?
You’ve reached a stalemate in Your project; no one can decide what to do next!
Your client has asked for something “innovative” that will win awards
You’ve had an idea but You’re not sure that it will work
Why is usability testing important?
How to Conduct a usability test
Planning your usability test
Conducting a usability test
Analyzing and reporting your findings
A typical usability testing project schedule
Three weeks before testing
Two weeks before testing
One week before testing
The week of the testing
Day of the testing (assuming it’s only One day long)
Week after the testing
Different types of usability testing
Lab-based usability testing
Remote usability testing
Guerilla usability testing
Resources
Chapter 6: Gaining Useful Insights from Competitor Benchmarking
When to Perform competitor benchmarking
Why is competitor benchmarking important?
Scenario 1: You or your client has no existing product or service
Scenario 2: You or your client has aN existing product
Gathering ideas
How to Perform a competitor benchmark
Be clear on what you want to learn from it
Who should you benchmark against?
How should You compare one competitor to another?
What does a competitor benchmark look like?
Spreadsheet checklist
Detailed analysis
Annotated screenshots
Resources
Chapter 7: Conducting Effective Contextual Research
When to conduct contextual research
Why is contextual research important?
You get an understanding of the user’s context of use
You Observe more natural user behavior
It encourages you to leave your preconceptions at the door
It uncovers cheatsheets, workarounds, and artifacts
Going to your users saves them taking time out to come to you
How to conduct contextual research
Setting clear objectives
Recruiting Interviewees
Preparing your research
Conducting your research
Taking photos
Reporting your findings
Resources
Chapter 8: Using Analytics to Uncover Interesting User Behavior
Why are analytics important?
When to use analytics
When Redesigning an existing product or service
When Designing a new product or proposition
When fixing a specific component of a product such as a checkout process on a website
When conducting an expert review
Using analytics to help shape your other UX deliverables
Using analytics to help with requirements gathering
Using analytics to help with task models
Using analytics to help with personas
Using analytics to help with wireframing and protoyping
Using analytics to help with your user research
Different types of analytics you can use
Classic web analytics
Search log analysis
A/B and multivariatE testing
How to use analytics to uncover user behavior
Set your own objectives for the time you have
Get to know the analytics tool
What should you be Measuring?
Collating the data and presenting it back to clients
Resources
Chapter 9: Designing, Launching, and Analyzing a Successful Survey
When should you launch a survey?
How to design an online survey
Pros and cons of different question types
How to build a survey using an online tool
Create a new survey
How to launch your survey
How to analyze the results of a survey
Reporting your findingS back to your client
Chapter 10: Conducting a Useful Expert Review
Why are expert reviews important?
When to conduct an expert review
How to Conduct an expert review
Who are your target users?
What are your users’ key tasks?
Context of use
UX guidelines
Conduct your review
Analyzing and reporting your findings
time to allow
Resources
Part III: UX Design Tools and Techniques
Chapter 11: Planning and Running Successful Ideation Workshops
Why are ideation workshops important?
When to run an ideation workshop
How to run an ideation workshop
Planning an ideation workshop
Workshop activities
Who to Invite
Before the Workshop
Running the workshop
After the workshop
Resources
Chapter 12: Creating Task Models and User Journeys that Convey Real User
Behavior
Why are task models and user journeys important?
When to develop task models and user journeys
How to develop task models
Understanding users’ tasks
Identifying patterns
Producing a task model diagram
What next?
How to develop user journeys
User journey analysis on an existing product
User journeys and information architecture
User journey diagram for new information architectures
Resources
Chapter 13: Creating Customer Experience Maps to Help Visualize the User
Experience
When to create customer experience maps
You want to understand more about how users go about doing a particular activity
You want to understand how well a website is meeting the needs of its users
You want to create a strategic document or roadmap to define the future development of a
website or service
Why are customer experience maps important?
They help you design more usable products and services
They help you understand how other people see the world
They help you compare different channels
They help you spot content and functionality gaps
How to create a customer experience map
Step 1: Conduct some research with representative users
Step 2: Analyze your results and build the user layer
Step 3: Analyze your results and build the business layer
Step 4: Document the map in a format that can be edited and shared
Resources
Chapter 14: Creating Useful Persona Profiles
Why are Personas important?
When to develop personas
When personas don’t work
How to create persona profiles
Inputs to personas
Developing personas
What should you include in your personas?
Working with personas
Design
Strategy and Prioritization
Content creation
Evaluation
Resources
Chapter 15: Designing Usable Information Architectures
What does information architecture encompass?
Gathering requirements
Thinking about Users
Defining and designing processes
Planning Content
Designing Structures to house information
Designing Navigation
Designing pages, page components, and functional elements
Designing the Search experience
Why is information architecture important?
How to design a usable information architecture
Discovery tasks
Design tasks
Documenting Your IA in a Sitemap
Bringing it all to life with sketches and wireframes
Testing your interfaces
Guiding your IA through the design and development process
Post launch jobs to keep an IA busy
Resources
Chapter 16: Using Sketching To Generate and Communicate Ideas
When to sketch
Sketch to Generate ideas quickly
Sketch to Share ideas early
Sketch to generate wireframes
Low-cost UX with sketching
Why is sketching important?
How to sketch
Don’t be Scared
Equipment
Rapid sketching exercise
Resources
Chapter 17: Designing Great Wireframes
Why are wireframes important?
Test early
Share with clients
Brief the design and development team
When to create wireframes
How to design wireframes
Before you start
First steps
Wireframing
Wireframing in Practice
Wireframing top tips
Resources
Chapter 18: Using Prototypes to Bring Your Ideas to Life
What are prototypes?
When should you create prototypes?
The pros and cons of prototyping
Prototypes Are Quick and Easy
Prototypes give you something to put in front of users
Clients know What they are getting with prototypes
The nature of a prototype encourages useful feedback
Prototypes give you faith that something will work
Prototyping reveals design problems
Prototypes are essential for designing dynamic interfaces
Tools like Axure give you wireframes and a prototype “for free”
Many prototype templates are available to reuse
Prototypes can be time consuming to build
Prototypes can be time consuming to amend
Quoting design and build time from prototypes can be difficult for other team members
Prototypes won’t always look pretty
How to create prototypes
Paper prototyping
Low-fidelity digital prototyping
High-fidelity digital prototyping
Prototyping for mobile
Prototyping with code
Resources
Part IV: UX Components Deconstructed
Chapter 19: Navigation UX Deconstructed
Key user tasks and questions
Typical business goals
Example navigation wireframe
Top navigation tips
Involve users when you design your navigation
Check your competitors for patterns
Use frequently searched for navigation labels
Design for mutual exclusivity
Plan for every navigation scenario
Use navigation to drive the primary goals of what you are designing
Make navigation look like navigation
Eoes your navigation pass the test?
Common mistakes
Using Brand-based navigation LABELING
Navigation that doesn’t tell you where you are going
Not involving users in the design process
Not following navigation conventions
Check how links will be managed
Catch-all navigation labeling
Resources
Chapter 20: Homepage UX Deconstructed
Key user tasks and questions
I know what I’m looking for; do you provide it?
I’m a returning customer, help!
Let me get in contact with you
I’m lost, help!
Who are you and what do you do?
Do I trust this place?
I have come to do something specific, just let me do it!
Show me the latest content that is personalized to me!
What is the latest information?
Inspire me and show me what is popular
Typical homepage business goals
Promote new products, services, and campaign information
Provide many routes to content via navigation, search, and footer links
Display advertising
Display targeted information to logged-in users
Support the business model of the site
Make a great first impression
Make it simple for users to complete their tasks
Communicate the proposition and why it is unique
Demonstrate that the site is regularly used and maintained
Give users reasons to trust you
Support the fundamental task
Give users ways of promoting you IN their own networks
Example homepage Wireframe
