User Experience (UX) and User Experience Design (UXD) challenge existing usability models by changing the emphasis from task and usage to a broader understanding of experience and purpose. UX techniques are gaining popularity across a range of current digital media design and development areas.
Today's designers need to create work that will impact positively on everyone who is exposed to it, as work is delivered across diverse digital platforms accessible to huge populations. It may be passive and immutable or interactive and dynamic, but the success of the design will depend largely on how well the user experience is constructed.
Basics Interactive Design 02: User Experience Design introduces an approach to graphic design that puts human experience at the forefront of the design process. Throughout the book, Gavin Allanwood and Peter Beare show how design skills can be improved by undertaking practical exercises and reviewing the work, style and motivations of leading practitioners.
An accessible, visually compelling introduction to UXD, this book offers that big picture which will help motivate students to learn more about the field and its methods. -- Jeffrey Bardzell, Indiana University
This is an extremely useful reference/activity hand book if you are a Design Teacher, a Project Leader, a Design Team Member or if you are mentoring a Design Team for example. Use for guidance, to stimulate ideas and to plan project meetings. The book is a good resource to aid lesson planning, or to compile presentations. Also stepping away from focusing on the work of a design team a little, know the book can work very well for a digital or search engine marketer to dip into for snippets of information ... Illustrations of graphic design work is eye catching. -- tssreviews
Although user experience design (UXD) is now a familiar refrain, this volume by Allanwood and Beare (both, Univ. of Central Lancashire, UK) should engage even the most jaded readers. Using a highly visual, interactive approach, it provides a stimulating process-oriented overview with colorful illustrations. Focusing on digital media design, the authors introduce basic concepts for novice readers while providing details on user research, design methods, and the design process that will enrich more experienced individuals. User behavior based on such aspects as emotional response and memory, design aspects of usability, and design methods such as personas, storyboards, and card sorting are only a few of the topics covered in this work. The five chapters include related step-by-step activities, most of which require only paper and pencil. These activities encourage user research and exploration of prototypes and solutions. Interviews with professional practitioners and a case study reinforce the implications and importance of the UXD approach. Additional readings, a glossary, and a detailed index are valuable inclusions. Though this book was reviewed in its print version, the book's physical arrangement and layout should transition well to e-book format. Summing Up: Highly Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. --CHOICE
