Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design – By Bill Buxton

Posted on 03. Feb, 2009 by Bradley Hebdon in Reviews

While this is definitely an excellent book for designers, it is just as much a resource for executives, product managers and software engineers. To help illustrate many of his points, Buxton takes the reader through real-life case studies.

Buxton is a champion for design, not only as a discipline, but also as a process. In fact, he places huge emphasis on the design process, as he believes it plays a huge role in the success of the product’s adoption in the market place.

As he constantly reinforces how critical design is to the success of any product’s conception and evolution, it was a single page that drove the point home to me. A simple list of roles and positions within a typical company:

Leadership = CEO
Stewardship = COO
Resource Management = CFO
Technology = CTO
Design = ?

The point he’s making here is one of how companies often do not consider design as a critical discipline required for innovation, and furthermore do not have the level of leadership needed to elevate this realization.

As part of the process discussion, Buxton believes that sketches can be employed to suggest, explore, question, propose and provoke in a rapid fashion. Whereas prototypes then serve to describe, refine, answer, test, and resolve. As Buxton mentions in the book, fail fast and early, learn fast and early.

I highly recommend this book, it’s not often that the topic of creating user experience is covered in such a holistic and practical manner. Get the Book!