FRONT - A Strategy, Design and Technology Studio

User experience design is hugely important to our work here at Front. Everything we plan, design and build is used by real people, so we take every opportunity we can to get better at designing experiences that matter.

Thanks to everyone who came last night. It’s great to travel and meet like-minded people at events like dConstruct and Web 2.0, but the discussion last night showed that there are plenty of great people and ideas here in Belfast too.

I was also impressed by the fact that UX Bookclub is attracting web and product designers, developers, educators and students – so we’re not the only ones who care about user experience. As always, we’re proud to be able to contribute to Belfast’s thriving creative community (we’ll also be speaking at the upcoming Pecha Kucha night, don’t miss it!).

Speaking personally, the Bookclub has also been a great motivator to finally get round to reading all those books that we’ve been meaning to for years. (Sound familiar? Come along to the next one!).

Last night’s Bookclub sparked some great discussion about achieving the balance between simplicity and complexity, and also some lively debate about whether we as designers can sometimes go too far, creating ‘simple’ designs that users see as ‘boring’. It’s also interesting to note that ‘Laws of Simplicity’ was written just before Twitter forced us to boil an idea down to 140 characters, and a few people felt that Maeda’s already concise book (100 pages) could have been summed up in a few tweets.
 
Next month’s UX Bookclub will be held on Monday 11th October, here at our studio. We’ll be reading either Alan Cooper’s ‘The Inmates are Running the Asylum’, Dan Saffer’s ‘Designing for Interaction’, or Jesse James Garrett’s ‘Elements of User Experience’. If you’re thinking about coming along next time, have a preference of which book we should read, or have any questions, let us know in the comments below. You can follow @UXBelfast for updates, and click here to register for next month (anyone is welcome, the only requirement is that you read the book!).