A Guide to UX Design and Development / Design Thinking (PDF)

Gain a thorough understanding of the two pillars of any User Experience project: the mission and the process. The mission is to keep the user in mind at each step or milestone as the developer progresses through the project. The process is how that mission is accomplished through collaboration and the use of research, design and development technologies. This book walks you through a developer's journey through the UX process, from start to finish.

A Guide to UX Design and Development concentrates on the intersection of what is called "DesignOps" and "DevOps." That intersection is where collaboration between all members of the team, including stakeholders and clients, occurs and neither DesignOps nor DevOps can go beyond being considered just buzzwords if they instead silo design and development. To highlight the UX Mission and illustrate the responsibility developers also hold for the user experience, authors Tom Green and Joseph Labrecque take you through a hypothetical project involving the development of a parking app for a municipal parking authority. As the book progresses, they concentrate on the developer's journey through the whole project from discovery to product release. In this journey, you will see how developers can make an impact and contribute to the user experience.

This will include such topics as why there is a need for both a user journey map and a technical journey map. The authors explain why prototyping is not as complicated as it is made out to be because it is simply an early low-cost and disposable minimal viable product that gives the developer a deep understanding of the project's intent in support of the UX Mission. You will also explore the creation and use of design systems and why the developer's role is just as important as the people who create the design system. The role and responsibility of the developer in user testing is discussed in the context of a variety of testing and assessment methods conducted to achieve the UX mission.

Finally, you'll gain an understanding of how design and development deliverables are negotiated, prepared and sent out for research at each step of the process, and how the developer is involved.