Chapter 1. The User Experience Mindset

	"Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location."
	--Reid Hoffman

Let's begin by introducing the first topic that every User Experience (UX) practitioner, and business stakeholder needs to understand about UX: The mindset of UX and what it means to think like a UX practitioner. However, before we do that, let's understand something about UX itself.

UX is a skill. It's a practice. It's about where to place a button on a website and how to organize content. It's about how to improve screen and interface design. It's about wireframes, focus groups, and usability studies. These are the things we know about UX, but what else should we know?

UX is also about collaboration. It's about solving problems and finding solutions. UX is about looking at the world with a unique perspective and a unique mindset. UX is also about focusing on the right people at the right time, including customers, end users and also stakeholders whose business goals and objectives are directly related to UX decisions. As you will see, however, UX is harder to get across than you might think. Good design may seem like a no brainer, but, it is not that simple.

In this chapter we will look at:

• The myths about mindset
• Solving problems effectively
• Examples of using the UX mindset
• The perils of ignoring UX

Let's begin with a story, a myth if you will, that needs to be dispelled if we expect to deliver better design though UX, better solutions and help those who need our help to understand our true value.