Reviews: Book Reviews

Over the last several years, I’ve noticed a shift in the adoption of User Experience within organizations. This is encouraging, but might also require UX professionals to consider the skills and the roles that we bring to product teams. There are two key factors that are now impacting the way UX professionals work with product teams.

First is the adoption of new project-management methods, as well as the integration of UX deliverables into those methods. Early in my career, most software and Web projects followed a waterfall methodology, which is still common in manufacturing industries. The difficulty I frequently encountered with this approach was that it rarely allowed sufficient time for the integration of new knowledge. UX research often got squeezed out because it didn’t directly add business value. Often, from the beginning of a project, a product team essentially had to know exactly what they would deliver at the end of the project. The team’s inability to deviate from the original plan undermined the iterative nature of most UX design approaches. Read More

In recent years, the perception of UX design has changed dramatically. In the profession’s early days, less mature organizations frequently treated UX professionals as another type of graphic designer, as though UX designers were synonymous with Web designers. But, in today’s leading organizations, UX design is a strategic capability that drives innovation and enhances competitiveness. Similarly, the role of UX professionals has shifted beyond creating functional—if not delightful—user experiences by applying usability, information architecture, and design principles. Now, UX professionals are applying more of their understanding of psychology and human behavior to devising design principles in the service of persuasion. Read More

Design thinking. It’s probably something you use in your job every day to tackle thorny design problems. But have you ever thought about using it to design your life?

In their book, Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans outline a step-by-step process, using design thinking, to help people build lives in which they can find fulfillment and joy. This review highlights some techniques from the book that people have used successfully in achieving their professional and career objectives. To get a complete understanding of the Life Design process, though, you need to read the book. Read More