For User Experience Designers in the Field or in the Making

This is the unedited, unabridged version of what started out as the introduction to the book, but a lot of it got edited out–it made sense to do so, but I think the story is worth telling. –Russ

I’ve been a mentor for the Information Architecture Institute for a couple of years now, and I started to notice a pattern (go figure) amongst the people that I was helping.  Most were either in positions where they were having difficulty landing jobs or they were not aligned with the expectations of prospective employers.  Some had outstanding education, but not always enough practical application of their UX design skills in a project-based setting to help them find ways to become engaged.

Then, I attended the Information Architecture Summit in 2008 and met a lot of new people, including a few people who stopped by the IA Institute’s Mentoring Booth.  The same themes seemed to resonate.  As I spoke to more and more people, it made sense to me that a book like this could be useful to many in the UX design field.

While at the IA Summit, I skipped a session and attended a focus group-like session with Lou Rosenfeld (Rosenfeld Media) and Kevin Cheng to discuss Kevin’s upcoming book “See What I Mean” that will teach you the process of using comics to communicate ideas.  My mind kicked into overdrive and I recall sitting there, trying to add value to the conversation while trying to jot notes onto my phone for future reference.

As is usual when people return from a conference that they got a lot out of, I returned back to Chicago exhausted—and fully energized and ready to take on the world again.  I reviewed my notes and I started creating an outline of what the project process has looked like to me over the years.

Out of the blue, either Carolyn Chandler or myself sent an email to the other, and the topic of my outline came up.  I shared it.  Carolyn sent a response with her own views and opinions.  The outline was revised.  Then descriptions started being created so that the outline made sense to us—and to other people who were kind enough to review what we were creating. Eventually—and by eventually, I mean a few months into the book with Peachpit—we came up with our final outline that became the book that is in your hands today.  Instead of trying to tackle the project alone, I found a very willing and capable co-author who was up to the task.

It was clear to me that Carolyn and I had a degree of overlap and very clear areas where one had more depth and focus than the other.  As you’ll see from the chapters, it was clear to us who fit where.  We set out to create a book to help you move through many of the steps of the project process, including some additional information to help you understand just what the heck the project process is, and a few other morsels that should help you if you are setting out to do this on your own as an independent consultant or a freelancer.

As you’ll see in many chapters of this book, we’re not trying to be everything to all people.  You’ll also see that we’re trying to provide you with the core information and knowledge that you should have to perform many of the duties you’ll be assigned as a UX designer.  You’ll see that beyond our own examples, we’re quick to provide you with examples that help you identify ways to jumpstart the basic materials and allow you to mash-up the information and create something newer, better, or even more suited to your own purposes.

We hope that we’ve done a decent job of articulating that this is a pretty good project approach toward UX design based upon the collaboration of a couple of people who received input from other people to get to where we are today.

We’re nothing, if not constantly trying to learn and improve <whatever we do>, with each iteration.  It’s why, to a degree, we’re in this field.

Welcome to “A Project Guide to UX Design”.

(Coming March 16, 2009 on Peachpit Press’ Voices That Matter series)

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