About the Book
Designing experiences for humans requires balancing many needs – business, behavior, technology, and aesthetics to name a few. But before there’s a designed experience, there are countless activities and artifacts that go into understanding the problem, aligning stakeholders, and exploring possible solutions.
The Practical Guide to Experience Design provides guidance for the process of designing experiences in four phases: discover, define, refine, and build. Each chapter covers a single methodology, providing insight via detailed descriptions, step-by-step guidance, and high-fidelity examples. The book can either be read front to back or by following along with one of the five sample projects within.
Whether you’re new to or experienced in the field of experience design, this book will support you in your practice as you make decisions, influence stakeholders, and bring experiences to life.
Discover
01
Business Analysis
Will people buy my product? How much will they spend? Can we produce the product? For how much?
02
Technology Analysis
What underlying technology is essential to my product or service? Does my company have that capability?
03
Competitive Analysis
Are other companies solving similar problems? What are their solutions? What are their unique selling points?
04
Stakeholder Interviews
Who is important to the success of my project? What do stakeholders think I should know? What risks should I be prepared for?
05
Expert Interviews
What questions should I ask to learn what I don't know? Where can I find experts to interview?
06
User Interviews
What are my users' pain points? What are their favorite moments? How do I frame questions to get the most honest answers?
07
Trendscape
Can I learn from other companies? What non-adjascent experiences can offer relevant input to my project?
08
Immersion
How can I get the best understanding of my users' contexts? How do I reduce the impact of my presence?
09
Experience Audit
What is the current experience? How can I communicate the experience with less subjectivity?
Define
10
Personas
Who will use my product or service? What are their unique needs? What are the bounds of their understanding?
11
Conceptual Model
How do users understand my product or service? What relevent knowledge and expectations do they already possess?
12
Concept Generation
How do we think outside the expected? What solutions does my team already have in mind?
13
Feature Definition
How do we keep features user-centric? How do we capture all aspects of a feature so that they don't get lost?
14
Experience Principles
How do we get stakeholders to align on a direction? How do we stay true to our original vision?
15
Offering Map
How does the user move through different channels and touchpoints? What are users interacting with at different points in time?
16
Experience Journey
How does the user feel throughout their experience? How can we find opportunities for our experience to shine?
17
Key Scenarios
Where should we focus our effort? What are other things the user might be experiencing alongside our product or service?
18
Strategic Roadmap
How do we balance user needs with ease of implementation? How do we maintain a long-term vision while focuses on the details of now?
19
Participatory Design
How can we ensure that we have many perspectives represented in the design process? When should we bring in users to enrich our process?
Refine
20
Information Architecture
How should our product or service be organized? When do we know enough to define an architecture?
21
Interaction Model
How do we organize all of our features so that the user can intuitively access all of them?
22
Function Hierarchy
How do we keep from overwhelming the user? How do we prioritize what a user sees and interacts with?
23
Moodboards
Which combinations of ingredients should we explore? How will different aesthetics make our users feel?
24
Gestural Design
What different ways could our product or service look and feel? How do we align stakeholders on a single aesthetic direction?
25
Mock-Ups
How does our product or service look, feel, and sound? How do we communicate this simply to stakeholders?
26
Motion Studies
How does the product behave over time? What feedback does the user get when interacting with the experience?
27
Component Library
How do we ensure that designs stay consistent across time and teams? How do we keep ourselves organized?
28
Design Guidelines
How do we ensure that our intentions are carried forward by other teams? Where do we keep track of decisions?
Build
29
Detailed Design
When are we ready to dive into the details? How do we prioritize what we design for communication purposes?
30
Flow Diagram
How do we communicate a complex system without hundreds of pages of documentation?
31
Prototype
What type of prototype should we build? How do we get realistic feedback from users?
32
Detailed Documentation
How much documentation is too much documenation? How do we communicate dynamic designs?
33
Design Assurance
How do we ensure quality through execution? What should we expect when collaborating with implementers?
34
Assets
What do engineers and developers need to bring a product to life?
35
User Validation
How do we make sure our product will survive in the wild? When should we seek feedback from users?
36
Design Backlog
Where do we put ideas and features that we don't have time or budget for?