A Project Guide to UX Design: For User Experience Designers in the Field or in the Making

This book is phenomenal. Having worked in Human Factors designing User Interfaces for quite a few years, seldom have I seen a broad overview that gets it. You won't find exacting details or templates of how to do each step of the UX task, but you will get a complete sense of what you should be doing at each step you find yourself. There is enough information in this book to really get you started. Also if you already knee deep in a project, you can jump to that point.I read the book cover to cover and put over 20 tabs on the book for the references they have provided on the web. I checked quite a few and they are a gold mine of info.I like this book because of its broader appeal. If you sit down and read a text that goes into excruciating detail before you are ready to use that information, reading becomes laborious and you don't retain it. Or you bail on the book and never get the overall picture.This book is a nice balance of the full picture and the ability to get the detail.Mind you, when I say it does not go into detail that might be a bit misleading. For instance, when in the section about Search engine Optimization, it helped explain this concept in enough detail that I had a clue what the issues were when dealing with an advertizing firm. Sure enough there were links listed here to provide even more detail. The User research and persona usage was very up-to-date regarding how these would be used and why you might use varying degrees of details. In the section about Wireframes and Annotations, there were good examples and advice as well as links to get more. The User testing section had interesting information that was very current as well. I could go on and on, but the book speaks for itself. You can view the Table of Contents online.Another thing and it is not a small one, the book is well designed for reading. The font is pleasant and the layout is efficient and provides cues for both "Surfing" and "Deep Dives" of information. In fact they provide sections called Surfing, Snorkeling and Deep Diving, which is very helpful. Nice when a book practice what it preaches and makes itself as usable as the products it's meant to help design.This book is going on my desk for reference and has been recommended to colleagues.

A Project Guide to UX Design is a book that defines the micro and macroscopic views of user experience design and its role in the project life cycle. Russ and Carolyn do a great job of reiterating what the core of user experience design is as well as identifying the different roles that utilize it. The book covers a lot of ground and takes a transcendental approach of showing the underlying purpose for each role in order to promote a synthetic comprehension of user experience design as opposed to shallow memorization.The main target audience of the book are Information Architects, Interaction Designers, User Researchers, and other project stakeholders (Business Analysts, Content Strategists, Copywriters, Visual Designers, and Front-end Developers).To make the contents more inviting, I've created an enclosing outline to provide abstract classifications for several groups of chapters. Each number represents the number of pages in each chapter:+ Introduction - Chapter 1: The Tao of UXD (8) - Chapter 2: The Project Ecosystem (29)+ Business Perspective - Chapter 3: Proposals for Consultants and Freelancers (15) - Chapter 4: Project Objectives and Approach (10) - Chapter 5: Business Requirements (15)+ Research - Chapter 6: User Research (26) - Chapter 7: Personas (13) - Chapter 8: User Experience Design and SEO (17)+ Information Architecture / Interaction Design - Chapter 9: Transition from Defining to Designing (18) - Chapter 10: Site Maps and Task Flows (17) - Chapter 11: Wireframes and Annotations (17) - Chapter 12: Prototyping (15) - Chapter 13: Design testing with Users (25) - Chapter 14: Transition: From Design to Development and Beyond (10)The book also contains frequent references to books, online resources, and user experience groups and authors throughout as opposed to an Appendix or a 'For further reading' section nested in the back. This helps to drive home the thoughts as you read them, rather than 'when you are finished'.As an aspiring user experience professional, I do believe that this book is worth owning, reading, and referencing as a compass to create effective user experience in any project setting.

Russ and Carolyn have really done a service for everyone who is either new to UX or is taking on new responsibities in their organization. This is more than just a project guide, as the name humbly implies - in many ways, it's a career guide to how to navigate the many hats a UX professional has to wear, from practitioner to project manager to evangelist."A Project Guide to UX Design" takes a broad look at the UX world, covering the basics as well as the business side of many techniques, including personas, user-centered design, user testing, wireframes, and prototyping. It's not a deep dive into any one area, but it's a great overview of the field, even for experienced professionals, and could be a life-saver for anyone new to the field who feels like they're in over their heads.

I found this to be a well organized and articulated book of common sense targeted at the project aspects of design projects (rather than at the actual design). The authors state in their introduction that the book is intended to: "...give you the basic tools and context... ...to use UX techniques working with teams".Running some 267 pages, the book is divided into 14 chapters covering topics including: creating proposals, defining objectives and approach, understanding business requirements, doing user research, writing personas, doing site maps and task flows, creating wireframes, etc...To be fair, the book is called a "guide" and doesn't purport to be an exhaustive treatment of the material. I didn't pick it up expecting to be bowled over with bleeding edge techniques - perhaps the reason that I wasn't disappointed?

I have bought this over a year ago and used it for my bachelor thesis. I think it is great and practical guide to UX, it covers the topic thoroughly and is easy to read. Would recommend.

As you would expect being about UX design the layout and editing of the book is excellent. It seems well positioned to be understood by the entry to mid level designer. Not finished it yet so not sure if it gets more indepth later.

The author has provided a pleasing experience of going through the various assets and strategies required to consider to become a skillful user experience designer.

Good read for UX design process...