Summarising the book ‘UX for Beginners’ of Joel Marsh
Chapter 1 — Key Ideas
Some Behind the Scene Stories
If you want to skip this part you can start from the UX Research meme.
There was a time when I used to read books all day. It was kind of a race or competition with my siblings. We used to borrow books from school library and finish it together. Yes!! I’m serious.
In 2008, we got our first pc. And it was quite a gaming one. We started playing Fifa 08 all day. From reading books, our habit changed to playing games. Don’t laugh !!
At the end of 2017, I started working with a UX team of a startup. I started gaining industrial knowledge about UX and it’s process. We tried to run the whole UX process but as it was a startup so it had very small time for every task. I started enjoying designing experience for our users. Specially the market research and user interviews. For me it is very hard to act like a user because I was also completing my graduation on Computer Science and Engineering. So, I thought of reading a book about UX.
One of my fellow mate from my university suggested me the book of Joel Marsh. UX for Beginners: A Crash Course in 100 Short Lessons. It is really a good book and it had 100 lessons. For me, it’s very hard to finish a medium story which is 5–7 minutes read. I had no idea that I couldn’t finish reading the whole book at once.
I must say Joel Marsh is a very good writer. You can’t help but laugh reading this book. I started to read this book and started to relate things with my industrial knowledge. My senior wanted me to share the main ideas of the books with them. but sadly I couldn’t finish the whole book.
After almost 1 year, I came up with an idea to finish the book by summarising it and publishing it to medium. I thought of a formate for every lessons. Which is like :
Title of the lesson
Sub title (With little details)
Descriptive form (Only the main ideas)
I want to push users to read the title first. If user doesn’t get the meaning, will read the sub title which will be very short. Then if user gets more curious, will read the descriptive form which will be only main ideas. I will try to add some small infographics and memes, so that the series doesn’t get boring. If I can finish summarising the whole book, users’ can read the main ideas of the book within very short time. So, I guess it will be very convenient for users’ and me also.
Let’s get start with this meme.
Part 1 —Key Ideas
Lesson 1
What is UX?
‘UX’ is not the user’s experience, but actually doing the whole User Experience Design process.
Process :
- Research to understand the users
- Solving the users’ need
- Merging them with business needs
- Implement to see if it works in real life
A good user experience is not that makes users happy but to make users’ effective.
Lesson 2
Main Ingredients of UX
These ingredients are a must whether you follow the process or not.
Psychology
UX designers have to ignore their own feelings and thoughts. Sometimes their own psychology too.
Usability
Psychology is mostly subconscious, usability is conscious.
Design
Here the design might not have the ‘wow factor’ but it will serve the purpose.
Copywriting
Simple and direct words to get the work done, doesn’t have to be creative.
Analysis
For me this is the main step of the whole process. This keeps the design alive and continuously changing.
Lesson 3
Our perspective
Sometimes our prediction about user’s behaviour might not be accurate.
We can attach our emotions to feel the problem like the user. We have to understand what the users’ want. That’s empathy.
Our users’ might not be smart enough to understand all our features. For me designing for them is the hardest part of UX.
Lesson 4
Users’ Perspective
These questions are for both us and users’.
“What is this?”
We should not expect users’ to understand everything. Sometimes we might have to tell them with simple and direct words. And it’s better.
“What is the benefit for the user?” or “What’s in it for me?”
We should motivate our users to do the task. They should know that they’ll have something for this.
“What should they do next?” or “What do I do?”
After the first two whats the users are ready to do something. We can guide them to the next step.
Such as :
- “What do I click now?”
- “How do I register now?”
- “How do I get started?”
- “Ho do I buy?”
- “NEXT”
Lesson 5
Solutions are ideas
Solutions can be right or wrong but it has to have a meaning for the users’.
Spending a lot of time with a problem which is actually not related to us is really hard. Understanding the problem properly and solving it from the users’ perspective, not from our perspective. This might be unnatural but this is what makes UX unique and valuable.
Lesson 6
The Priorities of UX
User Interface is not the main part.
The invisible and the bigger layers of a pyramid are in the bottom. These will make more impact than the small layers which are in the top. No matter how much time we spend on them small layers or outer layers.
Congratulations!!! You have completed the 1/14 part of the series, Summarising the book ‘UX for Beginners’ of Joel Marsh. It included the main ideas of the first 6 lessons of the first chapter of this book. Soon, I will be summarising the second chapter and add the link here.
Thank you for being so patient. Please let me know how can I improve more. I really want your feedbacks.
Here is the next part of this series where I’ve covered 3 more lessons.
Summarising the book ‘UX for Beginners’ of Joel Marsh (Part 2).
