Everyone Can Be Great at UX
This guide is for anyone who designs software products as part of their work. You may be a full-time designer, a UX professional, or someone who has to make decisions about UX in your organization’s products. Regardless of your role, the principles in this guide will improve your products, help you to serve your users’ needs better, and make your customers more likely to return to you.
Although various examples in this book feature a mobile app, website, web app, or some desktop software, the principles are ready to be tailored to a wide range of applications, from in-car UIs, mobile games, and VR, to washing machine interfaces and everything in between.
Developing the primary skills of empathy and objectivity is essential for anyone to be great at UX. This is not to undermine those who have spent many years studying and working in the UX field—their insights and experience are valuable—rather to say that study and practice alone are not enough.
You need empathy to understand your users’ needs, goals, and frustrations. To “walk a mile in their shoes” requires you to approach user problems with respect—they’re not stupid, your software is just too hard to use. You need objectivity to look at your product with fresh eyes, spot the flaws, and fix them.
User testing is essential and will reveal flaws you never imagined were there—talk to users early and often. It’s easier to fix a product at the beginning—and almost impossible to fix at the end.
With this foundation of empathy and objectivity, you can learn everything else it takes to be great at UX.
Learning points
- UX isn’t a talent you’re born with—you can learn how to be good in this field.
- Objectivity and empathy are the two key personality traits you need to display—your problems and needs aren’t always the same as your users’.
- This book aims to provide a shortcut to success with 101 tried-and-tested principles.
