Reviews: Book Reviews

Interest in design thinking as a professional practice seems to ebb and flow. Currently, we’re in a period when there is great interest in design thinking. This trend may lead to some confusion or even consternation among my UX colleagues, who may see design thinking as a faux version of User Experience that dilutes interest in the real work that UX professionals do. Other criticisms of design thinking are that it is derivative of other innovation methods and that its reliance on empathy is a poor stand-in for doing real user research.

While these criticisms are fair, they may be misdirected. Certainly, design-thinking workshops take certain shortcuts. An abbreviated description of design thinking might emphasize the need for multiple iterations and the fact that an innovation process diverges at the beginning, then converges on possible solutions. The assumption is that insights arise from a project team alone, with little to no interaction with users. However, design thinking has made creativity and design processes accessible to more people and introduced new ways of building consensus. Read More

Author: Jeff Patton, with Peter Economy

Publisher: O’Reilly Media

Publication date: September 2014

Formats: Paperback, ebook, and Safari Books Online. 324 pages in print.

Print ISBN: 978-1-4919-0490-9 and 10:1-4919-0490-9

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4919-0485-5 and 10:1-4919-0485-2

List Price: Paperback, $34.99; ebook, $29.99

Overview

If you are or soon will be working in an agile development environment, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product, by Jeff Patton is a must read for you. This book details story-mapping techniques and explains why they are important for teams that create products to meet user needs. According to Patton, user story mapping is not about creating set of written requirements, but a way of thinking. Telling stories through words and pictures builds understanding and helps solve problems for organizations, customers, and users.

The most important job we have is to focus on the outcome and the impact of the products we are creating. Taking a slightly philosophical view of the importance of project outcomes, Patton writes, “The truth is, your job is to change the world.” Read More

Throughout my time teaching and conducting training on the subject of User Experience, I’ve stressed the point that much, if not most, of a user’s experience with a product or service is not visual. This understandably annoys some people—particularly those who, like myself, have a background in visual design. It’s also understandable that there is a bias toward focusing on visual attributes, which are the easiest for many people to identify and critique. More than 50% of the human cerebral cortex is dedicated to image processing.

But, whether people are trying to order furniture from a Web site, interact with a call-center agent, schedule the installation of cabinets, or find their way through an airport, they are trying to accomplish some goal. That experience can become the basis of a story. With this understanding, we can see that the user experience of a product relates much less to where things are on a screen and how they look and much more to users’ motivations and the obstacles they encounter in trying to achieve their goals. Read More