Leah Buley’s 2013 The UX Team of One is jam-packed with tips and details on how to go about learning the needs of your business, your users, and yourselves. It takes it a step further with tips and certain methods on what to do with your data once you have collected it. However, there are not many steps after that, which belies the problems of this book.
tl;dr: What was likely a refreshing primer at a time when the word “UX” was not well-understood, the book is a dated reminder of how far we have come with our understanding of the practice.
Love for the book
The strength of the book is clearly in its consistent and predictable format. It does a great job of letting you know not only when to use each method, but how long each is expected to take (with extremely conservative estimates). It also gives you at least one image for each method, which is useful in helping the reader understand how to execute them.
There are several other benefits to this format, including an explicit list of steps to take for each method, and often more info on pitfalls and helpful hints on how to avoid them. I also greatly appreciate the fact that each method has a note on how to execute it remotely (or whether you should avoid doing so), which is not common in similar UX books.
Who is it for?
There seems to be a lot of love for this book online, which is perhaps why I expected so much more from it. But frankly, while it is supposed to be a toolbox for the UX designer, it came across to me as a reference guide for non-UX professionals who want to make a change within their organizations; perhaps someone who wants to transition themselves to UX. I don’t inherently have a problem with this; but considering I am basically the target audience for this book, I was expecting more practical information. I don’t think this is an unreasonable thing to expect, given the name of the book.
If the author spent less time on getting started on a new project and more time on how to actually research and design a user experience, perhaps I would feel more prepared to actually engage in UX activities as a result of reading this book. But I don’t really. Having gone through the entire book, I feel slightly more confident in my ability to take on a brand new task from scratch.
But beyond the confidence, I expected a long list of tools for me to take away from this book. Instead, there are only a few methods among the book’s 230 pages that I feel comfortable using.
The Verdict
I keep wondering how well a newcomer to UX would consider the information in this book. But I can’t help thinking that other books specifically intended to transition someone from lay-person to UX-thinker may serve as better introductions to the field.
The book is well-intentioned, but I feel like it’s poorly executed. What I suspect is that it was far more useful when it came out 6 years ago. But in 2019, we know so much more about the field that the somewhat shallow dive into UX research and design methodologies leaves me wanting more. Just… not in this one-size-fits-all format.
Despite being billed as the “Survival Guide” for UX practitioners, you will certainly survive without it.
