A Guide to UX Design and Development: Developer's Journey Through the UX Process

Gain a thorough understanding of the two pillars of any User Experience project: the mission and the process. The mission is to keep the user in mind at each step or milestone as the developer progresses through the project. The process is how that mission is accomplished through collaboration and the use of research, design and development technologies. This book walks you through a developer's journey through the UX process, from start to finish.

A Guide to UX Design and Development concentrates on the intersection of what is called “DesignOps” and “DevOps.” That intersection is where collaboration between all members of the team, including stakeholders and clients, occurs and neither DesignOps nor DevOps can go beyond being considered just buzzwords if they instead silo design and development. To highlight the UX Mission and illustrate the responsibility developers also hold for the user experience, authors Tom Green and Joseph Labrecque take you through a hypothetical project involving the development of a parking app for a municipal parking authority. As the book progresses, they concentrate on the developer's journey through the whole project from discovery to product release. In this journey, you will see how developers can make an impact and contribute to the user experience.

This will include such topics as why there is a need for both a user journey map and a technical journey map. The authors explain why prototyping is not as complicated as it is made out to be because it is simply an early low-cost and disposable minimal viable product that gives the developer a deep understanding of the project's intent in support of the UX Mission. You will also explore the creation and use of design systems and why the developer's role is just as important as the people who create the design system. The role and responsibility of the developer in user testing is discussed in the context of a variety of testing and assessment methods conducted to achieve the UX mission.

Finally, you’ll gain an understanding of how design and development deliverables are negotiated, prepared and sent out for research at each step of the process, and how the developer is involved.

What You Will Learn

• Understand the evolving role of the developer in a team-based environment
• Learn the five stages of the UX process
• Discover the importance of collaboration and communication with stakeholders, designers, and developers at every stage of the process
• Learn a variety of design and development documents created during the UX process

Who This Book Is For

Developers and designers involved in the UX Process, as well as developers trying to make sense of the confusing amount of information out there regarding their role in the UX process.

About the Author

​Tom Green is a retired Professor of Interactive Multimedia through the School of Media Studies and IT at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Education in Toronto, Canada. He has created over a dozen UX-based courses for LinkedIn Learning. One course--UX Design for Non-Designers, released 2 years ago--has been completed by over 35,000 learners throughout the world. Tom has written numerous books on UX design software for, among others, Apress, Que, Pearson Education, friendsofED, and New Riders. Along with his work with LinkedIn Learning, Tom has developed video-based training courses for Infinite Skills, Envato, Video2Brain, and others. He was the Graphics Software expert with the former About.com and has written hundreds of articles and tutorials for a variety of magazines and websites over the past 20 years. He has spoken and lectured at more than 50 international conferences and over a dozen universities throughout China and the U.S., including the University of Wisconsin, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, WuHan Institute of Technology, and Shenzhen Polytechnic. In his spare time, you can catch him hiking a local trail or paddling across a lake in Northern Ontario.

Joseph Labrecque is a creative developer, designer, and educator with nearly two decades of experience creating expressive web, desktop, and mobile solutions. He joined the University of Colorado Boulder College of Media, Communication, and Information as faculty with the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design in Autumn 2019. His teaching focuses on creative software, digital workflows, user interaction, and design principles and concepts. Before joining the faculty at CU Boulder, he was associated with the University of Denver as adjunct faculty and as a senior interactive software engineer, user interface developer, and digital media designer.

Labrecque has authored a number of books and video course publications on design and development technologies, tools, and concepts through publishers which include LinkedIn Learning, Apress, Peachpit, Packt, and Adobe. He has spoken at large design and technology conferences such as Adobe MAX and for a variety of smaller creative communities. He is also the founder of Fractured Vision Media, LLC, a digital media production studio and distribution vehicle for a variety of creative works.

Joseph is an Adobe Education Leader, Adobe Community Expert, and member of Adobe Partners by Design. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Worcester State University and a master’s degree in digital media studies from the University of Denver.