The role of a user experience consultant, and specifically is to help guide and shape the development of products and services based on what the user understands and requires.
By Richard Caddick   |   2011   |   UX Documentation

The purpose of the book

Is to help you communicate the user experience more eff ectively by producing insightful documents that successfully communicate the needs of the user to the business. It shows you what needs to go into the documents; what research needs to be done; ideas for facilitating practical workshops. Th ese workshops are designed for the project team and stakeholders to help them understand user goals and behavior, enabling the team to collaborate on process, content and design solutions. Th is book also shows you how to work with PowerPoint, OmniGraffl e, Axure, Word, or Excel to produce these documents (though the theory can be applied to many more applications beyond these, such as HTML prototyping).

The ultimate goal

Is for you to create better products and services that have a transformational, measurable, and lasting impact to their users. We’re mindful of the real-world constraints of time, budget, and resource availability, so throughout the book we’ve included straightforward ways to conduct research and produce documents (call center listening and rapid sketching can transform decision-making in minutes and hours rather than days and weeks). Th e fi delity of the output is less important than the message—although conversely, well-presented documents are often better received because they show care and rigor.

Each chapter is focused on key user experience documents and breaks down into:

  • Th e purpose of the documentation
  • Th e information and emotional needs you are communicating
  • The project team you are communicating to
  • Ideas for research and workshops
  • The simplest and most eff ective ways to rapidly share outputs and ideas
  • Step-by-step instruction for how to develop documentation using common software programs (such as PowerPoint, OmniGraffl e, Axure, and Excel)

Putting the documents into context

Th e documents in this book can be used on their own or in tandem to inform a specifi c area of the user experience. For example, let’s say that you’re working on maintaining an existing site but the team has lost focus of who the users are and what they need. Decisions are being made based on what the project team thinks the users want (this is not and never will be a user centered design process). Developing personas and task models would take the focus away from the project team and put it back on the user, helping to inform the short-term tactical projects and longterm strategic aims. Alternatively you may be creating a product from scratch and able to put together a plan that incorporates several or all of the elements described in this book. To provide context, Figure 9 shows a typical project process, user experience activities, and documents produced. You’ll notice the repetition of validation and benchmark testing throughout.

Enjoy yourselves!

Facilitating and engaging in user-centered design projects is rewarding for you and the project team. You’ll help people love the products and services you produce, and, in turn, those products and services will become more successful.

—Richard (@richardcaddick) and Steve (@steve_cable).