Who Are You?

This book was written for people who are responsible, in some way, for the user experience their product provides. In today's software and Web development world, this could be any number of people in the trenches, and in fact, the responsibility may shift from person to person as a project progresses. Basically, if you've ever found yourself in a position where you are answering for how the end users are going to see the thing you're making, or how they're going to interact with it—or even what they're supposed to do with it—this book is for you.

This means that you could be

• A program manager who wants to know how to spec out the next version of the software

• An interface designer who needs to know how to make people best understand the task you're designing for them

• A marketing manager who wants to know what people find most valuable in your products

• An information architect who needs to know which organizational scheme works

• A programmer creating a user interface, trying to interpret an ambiguous spec

• A consultant trying to make your clients' products better

Regardless of your title, you're someone who wants to know how the people who use the product you're making perceive it, what they expect from it, what they need from it, and whether they can use what you've made for them.

What's in this book?

This book is divided into three major sections. The first section (Chapters 1 though 4) describes why end-user research is good, how business tensions tug at the user experience, and it presents a philosophy that will create balanced, usable, and profitable products.

It also contains a short chapter on a technique that will teach you in 15 minutes everything you need to know to start doing user research tomorrow. Really.

The second section (Chapters 5 through 16) is a cookbook that describes in depth a dozen ways for you to understand people's needs, desires, and abilities. Each technique chapter is self-contained, presenting everything you need to know about when to do research, how to do it, and how to understand the results.

The third section (Chapters 17 and 18) describes how to take your results and use them to change how your company works. It gives you ideas about how to sell your company on how user-centered design can make your company run better and more profitably.