Reddit reviews About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
We found 19 Reddit comments about About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Depends on what you want to do — UX is a pretty broad field. I'm a user interface designer with a UX background, which means I've designed sites, web apps and mobile apps, but there's plenty of UX positions that don't require any sort of visual design or front-end development experience.
For example, there are labs that conduct user research and interviews, run focus groups, or do user testing. Hell, you could even apply to be a user tester at a site like usertesting.com. Not sure how much money you can make from that, but it's something.
Also, there are UX positions that go from beginning research and discovery for projects up through the wireframing, which doesn't require any visual design experience. You'll usually hand off your UX work to a designer or a developer to implement.
Some good books to read about UX are:
There's also plenty of online resources about UX. Smashing Magazine has a ton of articles on it.
If you are good at puzzles, love solving complex problems, and contain any shred of empathy, user experience could be a good field for you.
This one is recent and has received good reviews from people I trust. This one is from a respectable author/series. This one will appease the Joel fanboys.
Also, keep in mind that many of the very best books on UI/usability are over 10 years old. Software changes quickly, but people generally don't.
Rettig on paper prototyping:
www.iua.upf.es/~jblat/material/.../paper_prototyping/paper_prototyping.pdf
Game Design Workshop book:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=oTDZ0DoAchUC&dq=game+design+workshop&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=Ep03S7ylLtK7lAfXoYCUBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Jesse Schell on game design:
http://artofgamedesign.com/
Design methods in general (very very useful book):
Cooper on Interaction Design:
http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/0470084111/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-1593361-6218447?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174682941&sr=1-1
If you are designing in an urban setting, look at Lynch's Image of the City and Alexander's A Pattern Language.
If you have specific things you are interested in, ask!
I used to teach a course on design of geographic spaces (games, 3d viz, etc) so I have lots of detailed stuff if you have specific questions.
I'm sorry if the reply turned out a bit too general, but the individual steps depend a lot on the specifics :)
As I said before, it's crucial that you understand the problem domain as good, or better than your customers. I like to think of it as the Fog of War in strategy game maps. I can only effectively perform once I have explored enough territory to see the big picture. Here's roughly how I would try to wrap my head around such a challenge, if the company hired me to help:
Customer
Who are the customers? It's actually possible to think of the customers just in terms of their needs and desires. But it's useful to know their demographic attributes, so you can choose whether your solution is going to be a lateral or a niche one. For instance.. Trello is a lateral solution, because the kan-ban methodology can be applied to many different types of problems. On the other hand, It could be argued that 500px is a niche solution, because it caters to photographers more than meme authors. It's very easy for 500px to figure out where photographers hang out online and in the real world, should they choose to reach out to them in any way.
The job (Problems / Desires)
The customers usually have some sort of job to be done. That job is driven by their desire for a benefit, or a lingering problem that needs solving. Those benefits can range from monetary to peace of mind or social status. And problems can range in severity. Furthermore, different customer segments can rate some problems and benefits as more important than others. This is the combinatorial explosion of stakeholders and their points of view, that informs a strategy of a good product designer, and causes an uninformed designer to arrive at an optimal solution only through brute force or sheer luck.
Solution
Sometimes the solution has to be drawn up from scratch, optimized or entirely re-imagined. So what is the existing solution? What would an utopian solution look like? A complex problem might require a solution in the form of a toolkit of multiple core activities (Like Google, HubSpot or Moz). A focused solution though, can be embodied in a single product (Caffeine.app keeps your mac from going to sleep). If a solution is complex behind the curtains, but you make it simple and gratifying from the user's point of view, it may seem like magic to them.
Business
The things that you do behind the curtains are some core activities, that might require some key resources. That's how the business makes sure it spends less than it earns on a customer (unit economics). It's easy to paint a picture where the world is split between sociopathic capitalists with a greedy agenda & empathic designers, who champion the user's priorities. But a similar solution with a sound business foundation will always be better for the customer, because it stands a better chance of outperforming the economically inferiour solution in the long run. It's the job of a designer to balance between the two aspects. So much so, that the Elements of User Experience places big emphasis on both Business Objectives & User Needs.
Communication
Once you love your people, and you have a way to show it to them, you'll have to start and maintain some sort of relationship. You can identify Touch Points or Channels. If, for instance, your customers are tourists looking for a place to grab a meal before boarding the next train, you can administer your solution right then and there, at the train station. But most of the time you'll be reaching out to your potential users somewhere between you and them, probably through a third party (online publication, app or ad network). It may take multiple exposures in different contexts, before somebody decides to give your solution a try. So a customer might bump into your message at certain touch points, open a communication channel like a newsletter or notification subscription, and only then decide to commit. There's often talk about a multiple stage funnel, through which we try to shove as much of our target market. But you can also look at customer lifetime stages as vertebrae in the cohort spine. For instance.. Slicing out customer segments by lifetime lets SoundCloud identify differences between a newcoming podcaster & a long-time podcaster, and communicate with each of them appropriately, even though most of the people that care about SoundCloud are producers and record labels. Staying on top of communication also helps you avoid conversion attribution mistakes, so you can communicate more effectively.
Here are some resources related to those subjects:
A bit more business related:
Once I have a good understanding, I would focus on Information Architecture, Experience Design, Production & Iteration. I can't spare the time to write about those now, but here are some related resources:
I might write more about the specific subjects of IA and UX later, when I find the time. In the meanwhile, check any of the three books with italicized titles, if you haven't already.
Peace o/
Interaction Design
Interior Design
Landscape Architecture
Lighting Design
Product Design
Product Design
Sound Design
Urban Design
* Cities for People by Jan Gehl
Web Design
I lead design teams, and have been a designer of many colors for years. I start EVERYONE that asks this question with Tufte, because he's Not a designer, explores information design (which UI design is largely a subset of, IMO) from various angles, and non-designers have heard of him on NPR or some other bullshit, so they feel "in the know" once they read a book, and get more interested. I don't agree with many of his assertions, but one could start off much worse. Next, Alan Cooper and Rob Reimann's About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design is excellent, also Moggridge's Designing Interactions (dated, but always applicable). There's plenty of other stuff out there, many of the Amazon "people who bought this" recs that show up on Rob's book are solid books by solid designers.
Edit: EVERYONE -> everyone not hired to do design that asks about it at work
Edit 2: There's a 4th edition of About Face, I just noticed. Really anything Alan or Rob do is excellent.
You should grab this book too if you're going to develop any sort of interface: http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/0470084111/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381110675&sr=8-1&keywords=about+face
You will need to learn some basic principles of graphic design. Although it's not directly about UI design, this book lays out the important principles in a very easy to understand way:
The Non-Designer's Design Book, Robin Williams (no, not that Robin Williams).
I honestly can't recommend this book enough. As a non-artist, it completely changed my way of thinking about screen layout, page layout, text, and visual relationship.
Also check out Robin Williams Design Workshop
I also would consider reading a book about usability, such as Alan Cooper's About Face. This won't help you with design, but it will give you a clearer picture of why some things work better than others. It will be a good complement to what you learn from the graphic design books. Someone else mentioned Don Norman's Design of Every Day Things. That's also a good book and shorter than the Cooper book, although neither really gets you thinking visually -- which is what's so great about Robin Williams.
Disclaimer: I'm not a pro (yet).
First of all, do what they told you: play a game. Pick one and play the shit out of it for some time, but not too much. ;) Don't focus too much on the game itself, rather on your experience with interface, controls, visual and functional aspects of menus, tutorials etc. Change settings, break them, fix them; mess with characters equipment, try to fix it. Don't look for obvious bugs, as you don't care if the game crashes (but you can and should report the bug nevertheless ;)). You do care, however, if anything is hard to do, isn't clear or takes too much time and could be faster/more efficient.
They told you to find one aspect to fix or improve - find it. Maybe something is hard to use because it's small, maybe it's vaguely described, or maybe it's not even there. Ask someone who played the game what (s)he thinks about it. Then ask someone who didn't play (amateurs sometimes have the best ideas).
When you find the thing, or things, that bothers you and someone else, think about a way of improving it. Maybe it just needs small font-lifting, or maybe the entire interface sucks. Draw some sketches and make notes. Ask "WHY?" every time you change something and write the answer (tip: "because it's better" is not a valid answer).
When you have some good solutions, show them to people. Show them to that person who played the game and to someone else. Ask how would they do things in your version of the interface. You may try some paper prototypes, as it's reasonably fast and useful method in that case. Don't ask them if it's better - ask how would they do things in your prototype and listen to any critique, ideas and praises they'll say. Write those things down. If you can improve something even more - do it.
When you have some good ideas and opinions from users (or "users"), you can improve their visual aspects and use your crayons & markers or some wireframing application (Axure is usually "the" wireframing app) but probably in games industry it's safer to stay with paper for now.
Then, fire up your PowerPoint, Impress, Keynote or whatever you use and try to sell your ideas in 20 to 40 slides. Show them what, why and how you did what you did. Tell them what the users said. Explain why your ideas are good (but be open to feedback). Use images, don't kill them with PowerPoint.
If you have some time (and money) get yourself a copy of About Face 3 - it's not game design, but it's an UX bible and definitely a great start for anyone who starts with UxD. (There probably are some "cheaper" options.)
I hope it helps at least a little. :) Let me know if I could explain something better. And good luck, OP!
> Why do people use Sketch more over PS?
Sketch is light weight, easy to use, and largely focused built. PS is a generic image editing tool that isn't.
Don't get caught up in tools though. UXD is a process not a toolset competency.
> Do you guys have any beginner friendly tutorials for a material or flat design interface?
A large chunk of user experience design comes from interaction design which inherits a sizeable chunk from anthropology. So, instead of starting you off on a tutorial which will likely focus you on technology as the process I'd rather start you off with reading.
Plans and Situated Actions - Lucy and other researchers at XEROX Parc defined Interaction Design. This is the birthplace of the idea.
https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Plans_and_Situated_Actions.html?id=AJ_eBJtHxmsC&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y
Lucy Suchman again - Human-Machine Reconfiguration talks about a higher level of thinking when it comes to how people interact with machines.
https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Human_Machine_Reconfigurations.html?id=KES20V7aP4YC&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y
Alan Cooper is one of the early leaders in Interaction Design. In this book he goes over the 101 of user research and how it has been applied in digital technologies.
https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/0470084111
Love him or hate him Donald Norman helped define early Usability and the transition to Interaction design.
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/1452654123
Don't make me think. Was one of the definitive books highlighting the approach of user centred design.
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability/dp/0321965515/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TN8VJJHK9NKZ1KAA10V5
After you get through all of that I recommend that you spend some time in whatever tool you think works for you and then replicate somebody else's design. Say there's a mobile app (choose a small app) that you use all the time. Replicate every single screen and document with a flow chart how you interact with it to get to every single screen. Break them all up into individual interactions.
Make sure that you design it in the most reusable way possible. If your tool lets you make your own widgets then use them. If your tool allows you to inherit multiple layers, like Axure, then use that too.
Now find some people and test with them. Do some User Testing on the product to find flaws. Do some high level User Research to find out what their core goals are. Iterate. Don't forget that you're an amateur, it's okay to reuse your friend base.
I'd be glad to. To start, here are some terms to look for:
"The Crystal Goblet" explains the aim of print design, which is a good precurser to reading about interactive design media.
As far as books go, I strongly recommend About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design. It's a fairly long book, but it's worth reading to build a strong foundation of understanding in IxD.
A lot of IxD is about effectively using visual design to achieve goals. If you want to understand the visual tools of IxD after finding the theory interesting, you might read the mistitled Layout Workbook (or any other overview book; it's not actually a book about layouts — nor a workbook), followed by Bringhurst for advanced traditional typography.
Rocket Surgery Made Easy and other Steve Krug books are commonly suggested for more IxD topics, but I haven't gotten around to reading them. It's likely they're lighter reading than About Face 3.
A change in mind is good start. The Inmates are running the asyslum and About Faces both from Alan Cooper are good books.
Senior Level Software Engineer Reading List
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Development Theory
Philosophy of Programming
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Try Alan Cooper's books: The inmates are running the asylum and About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design. These books are great for the fundamentals of UX design. They might be a little bit outdated technologie wise (responsive design etc.) but they have helped me grow as an UX designer in my early days.
The inmates are running the asylum: http://amzn.com/0672326140
About Face 3: http://amzn.com/0470084111
[edit amazone links]
Haha, I've used this premise as well. About Face really formalized the notion of building user-driven software. They never come out and use the phrase "get laid" as a user goal, but I read between the lines.
While it's not as precise as your example, I think About Face 3 ( http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/0470084111 ) is a good starting point, reference for Interaction Design IMO.
You could also take a look at UX/UI pattern libraries, but overall there's no resource that will show you the bulletproof solution to any problem you're going to try and figure out. Design something, test it, start over. That's pretty much it.
> If I've got to stop looking at just the features, price, design....what direction should i be looking in?
Benefits. Okay this is remedial marketing. What you should do is click the links and read what I'm spoon feeding you. Tech loves features because you can have zero users, and the feature still exists. A benefit only exists if the customer and user says it does. A benefit can only exist if users exist and a customer is willing to pay for it.
You are far ahead of me. You know what the product is.
>How do i find out if my company actually is unique in a certain aspect that the competitor isn't?
Your sales guys will give you some biased half truths. Start there.
I've linked articles. I've written out the title and author of a book in my last comment. Hint. Hint.
== More (Reading, in case that was unclear) ==
About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
A Simple Trick to Turn Features Into Benefits (and Seduce Readers to Buy!)
First, check out Don't Make Me Think! by Steve Krug. It's an easy read and invaluable.
If you really like that approach then you should think about going into Interaction Design (aka usability, user-centered design, UX design, information architecture, etc.). I've been doing it for about 11 years and have only recently gotten into coding. Usually I produce wireframes and specs for the coders, do user research, and conduct usability tests. There nothing quite like watching someone trying to use your design and doing something completely different from what you expected.
I haven't kept up with some of the latest books out there, but some of my formative ones are:
This is completely unrelated to PHP. What is this post doing here?