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Is it just me, or there a new one of these threads once or twice a day now? From a couple of emails I recently sent out: "I'd suggest starting out with 'The N

Is it just me, or there a new one of these threads once or twice a day now? From a couple of emails I recently sent out: "I'd suggest starting out with 'The Non-Designer's Design Book,' which explains the basics of putting elements on a page or screen together in a tasteful way; 'The Humane Interface,' which explains testing and measuring for efficiency and why dialog boxes are often bad and so on and so forth; and 'Designing for Interaction,' which is often cited as a good overview of the practice of interaction design, and I just flipped through it and it seems to be, although I haven't read it." "If no-one [on your team] is a designer and you don't want to hire one, help everyone become a designer. Buy these books, a copy each for everyone, and make everyone read them and discuss them with each other, cover to cover, no exceptions, everyone doing all the exercises in them." "After everyone has dog-eared copies of those three books, have everyone pick a different book from this list and buy it and read it and present it to everyone else, and then repeat that until all the books have been gone through: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=114778998560307&topic=130 http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=114778998560307&to...

petervandijck 16y ago
Instead of reading books, why not organize weekly Friday user afternoons: invite three users to use your product. Or a competing product if yours is not ready. Every freaking Friday. Invite the team, too, with pizza and beers. Better than any book.
- inetsee 16y ago
  There are actually a couple of books that can probably help with this kind of informal user experience testing. Both are by Steve Krug. The first is "Don't Make Me Think" which focuses on design for usability, and includes a chapter titled "Usability Testing on 10 Cents a Day". The second is "Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems" (already mentioned by petervandijck). This is a newer book (2009) that goes much more deeply into usability testing for people whose primary responsibility is design and development rather than user experience. It's a great book in spite of the cutesy name.
- vitovito 16y ago
  I think you need an understanding of the basics before you can start to evaluate why users are doing what they do and how to fix problems they have. The rest of the emails I've sent out recently do recommend that next, though. I just think you need the fundamentals, first!

petervandijck 16y ago

Instead of reading books, why not organize weekly Friday user afternoons: invite three users to use your product. Or a competing product if yours is not ready. Every freaking Friday. Invite the team, too, with pizza and beers. Better than any book.

inetsee 16y ago
There are actually a couple of books that can probably help with this kind of informal user experience testing. Both are by Steve Krug. The first is "Don't Make Me Think" which focuses on design for usability, and includes a chapter titled "Usability Testing on 10 Cents a Day". The second is "Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems" (already mentioned by petervandijck). This is a newer book (2009) that goes much more deeply into usability testing for people whose primary responsibility is design and development rather than user experience. It's a great book in spite of the cutesy name.
vitovito 16y ago
I think you need an understanding of the basics before you can start to evaluate why users are doing what they do and how to fix problems they have. The rest of the emails I've sent out recently do recommend that next, though. I just think you need the fundamentals, first!