As far as I can tell, the term “user experience design” emerged in the 90s as a branch of human-computer interaction (HCI), information architecture (IA) and other software-design disciplines revolving around the practice of usability. The term itself is frequently credited to Don Norman. 1 Although the ideas and influences for UX have been around since the 1950s in Henry Dreyfuss’ “Designing for People,” 2 it was not until Apple released the first iPod and then the first iPhone in 2007 3 that the term came into widespread use as the role of a designer who is creating the entire end-to-end experience using a user-centered design philosophy. Putting ‘Recent Projects’ at the top of the home screen will improve data quality because users will have easier access to keeping their data current.” And the ability to deal with this fact is what makes us better designers! Constraints is one of the reasons that the world needs a designer: because other people couldn’t figure out how to make everything work because of them.

It’s beneficial for two people who share the same vocabulary to discuss their work and make each other better. This is a great skill for every designer to have, and it will go a long way toward helping you be articulate with stakeholders.” ⭐️ Chapter 2 — Great Designers Are Great CommunicatorsThe stakeholders are not reasonable at all: is it possible that your stakeholders are unreasonable? Yes! But most of the time this is not what happens. In any case, we cannot also disregard the possibility that these people are used to doing everything their own way. Greever takes an approach that I would characterize as UX for UX. He walks us through the primary venue for explaining design—the meeting—and applies a user-centered design process to the design meeting as though it were a project. Indeed, a design meeting is an experience and, as UX designers, we should be capable of delivering a good meeting experience.

All organizations embraced the web because it was an inexpensive mass medium, first, for communicating your message, then for selling your product, and now for actually being the product itself. This evolution caused a shift in how organizations think about design. Based on what you know about the people you’re working with, you should be able to anticipate how they will react to your designs. In the previous chapter, we identified the influencers on our projects and called out some of their values and motivations. When we combine what we know about their perspective with the values they carry in their role, we can make some pretty good guesses about how they’ll respond to our designs. The good news is that most people are fairly predictable. That is, they tend to obsess over and react to the same kinds of things every single time. If you’ve met with them before, anticipating their reaction becomes much easier. It will take a few meetings to really hone in on how people are wired, but I’ve found that anticipating reactions is much more formulaic and predictable than you might expect.Clear and effective communication of design decisions conveys how well the designers have understood the business requirements and the effort and thought process they used to arrive at the solution. This instills a sense of confidence in clients about the designers’ capabilities and expertise, building trust and credibility. Moreover, it gives reassurance to clients that their product is in good hands and they will get the best results for their investment. 3. Steers the design team

When you see a phrase in quotation marks highlighted, it means that it is an excerpt taken from the book. You’re wrong,” she said. “None of that really matters. The most important thing you could ask me...the very first thing you should always ask is, ‘What are we trying to communicate?’” To understand how designers fit into corporate culture, we need to understand the changing shift and attitudes toward design as something more than just an aesthetic. When our job was to make the company look good, it didn’t matter as much who got their way on the final design. Now that we’re solving problems that affect the bottom line, everyone has an opinion on the best way to solve it. Over the course of the project, I came up with an extremely innovative way of simplifying that had not been tested before. In parallel, there was already a product tested, approved by the user and that was already making a profit. Because I deal with the financial world, my product has a series of legal requirements and not all of them I agreed to have.

But why does this matter? If we are the experts, why should we have to justify our decisions to nondesigners? The reason is that UX has gone “mainstream,” in the organization and even within pop culture. The most popular and interesting companies have put design at the fore-front of their product offering, creating a buzz culture that drools over every new release and a fan following that promotes their brand for them. I’m not only thinking of Apple, but also brands such as IKEA, innovators like Tesla, and unique problem-solving designs from Dyson, Segway, or Nest. These brands command respect, elicit strong opinions, and foster loyalty from the people who follow them. SOCIAL MEDIA HAS CHANGED HOW PEOPLE VIEW DIGITAL PRODUCTS Schools are responding to the changing demand for designers by offering courses in information architecture, interface design, and usability testing techniques, and rightly so. But, the majority of people working in UX today didn’t come from a school that specialized in the field nor did we take a class to teach us a user-centered approach. We migrated into UX from other areas within the company: marketing, IT, design, research. Even human behaviorists and psychologists are finding their relevance in the explosive field called UX. IT’S A NEW ROLE Although it is less important to the overall user experience, I often find myself justifying design decisions based solely on the branding standards of the organization. Sometimes, things are the way they are because the company has a specific image it’s trying to establish and our applications have to reflect this, as well. This is more true with the use of color, fonts, or language than with specific interactions but it’s important to call out. If you chose that style because that’s what the marketing department told you to do, bring that to the attention of your stakeholders.