FRONT - A Strategy, Design and Technology Studio

The consensus was that this book is a perfect introduction to some of the core concepts of User Experience (UX for short). It established a framework for UX enthusiasts to easily digest the bigger picture. At the time of release these ideas were ground-breaking but nowadays it’s simply not enough.

About the book

This book is based on a simple premise that User Experience is critical to the success of any website. How people perceive your website when they use it will determine whether or not they return, check out the competition, or never return again. This book aims to address the wide variety of issues that affect user experience by grouping its main ideas into five areas:

1. Strategy
2. Scope
3. Structure
4. Skeleton
5. Surface

Hindsight is 20:20

At the beginning, Jesse James Garrett rightly states that this isn’t a how-to book. It’s perhaps unfortunate that as practitioners this is sometimes what we crave from books and articles. We want to build on our existing skills and knowledge with actionable, practical advice.

Overall, we agreed that ‘the Elements’ is a good introduction to User Experience Design. However UX has evolved as a discipline since the book was published (2003). Things change. Design should be something that evolves. It should get better and better as we learn more about our users, our domain and the market.

On reflection

Looking back, maybe we should have started the UX book club series with the Elements of User Experience because of its simplicity.  However we’d still completely recommend it.  It is shallow, which is what makes it an easy to read introduction – some of us don’t like jumping in at the deep end, and that’s ok!

This book defined framework that UX practitioners could build upon and develop processes from.  It helped create a common language which UX professionals and those commissioning projects could use as a communication tool.

Next month - 8th November

We’re proposing to read The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper. You can order it now from amazon (£6.25).

You may have heard that there’s a small, yet perfectly formed week-long design event coming up this November – Build.  As the Build fringe programme kicks off the same evening as next month’s book club, we’re expecting large numbers. Register now before we run out of spaces.