"User experience design is the discipline of creating a useful and usable website or application - one that's easily navigated and meets the needs of both the site owner and its users. But there's a lot more to successful UX design than knowing the latest web technologies or design trends: it takes diplomacy, project management skills and business savvy. That's where the book Project Guide to UX Design comes in." This is a short review and description of the book Project Guide to UX Design from Peachpit.com.
We were very lucky to have Russ Unger the co-author of the Project Guide to UX Design, at our Edmonton UX book club’s October meeting. His cheerful, fun and down-to-earth nature made this meeting a blast. Our book club members not only learned a lot from talking to Russ but also enjoyed an evening full of laughter.
Russ Unger is the director of experience planning for Draftfcb, the largest advertising / marketing agency in the Midwest. He has been involved in the information architecture of large-scale public-facing sites for such companies as Oprah.com and United Airlines. He has taught courses in web and interactive design, and contributes to Boxes and Arrows. He also serves on the board of the Information Architecture Institute. You can read more about Russ at http://userglue.com/bio.php.
The evening started with Russ relating why he decided to write the book with co-author Carolyn Chandler. His reasoning struck a chord with me. He pointed out that the UX community’s future lies in how much we invest in training people who are new to this field. We can not grow the field if we are too busy doing things that we have been doing before. We need more people in this field so that we can focus our energy on being the leaders and taking this field to the next level.
The book’s idea was very much confirmed in a story that Russ shared with us. He once asked a few folks in a dinner meeting what would they call themselves and they replied: “We are UX designers, and what would you call yourself?” Russ replied: “I’m a problem solver.” His anecdote drives home the realization that the role of a UX designer is becoming broader as a UX designer is asked to fulfil many other project roles, or work with people who hold different roles.
As the evening ended, everyone knew that they would be holding on to their books and referring to them throughout their projects, even if they hold quite dissimilar roles in an organization!
The book ends on a very wise note: the projects should not die. They should be the springboard into new projects that are geared towards continually improving the user experience design.
Russ Unger’s and Carolyn Chandler’s wise and helpful techniques throughout this book will certainly help us keep our projects alive and a continuous success!
You can listen to our conversation with Russ Unger by downloading the interview recording.
Also stay up-to-date with UX book club news and events at our Facebook group or at UX bookclub dot org!
Posted in on November 23, 2009
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