As this module is all about UX and designing for humans I thought i'd buy a book to read. So I had seen this one on instagram and it got good reviews and it simplifies the UX design process and makes it easier to understand.

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The book presents the most important methods and techniques of UX design in a visual way for an immersive rich experience. The book defines the meaning and value of UX and show the most efficient workflows and makes the case that UX should be user centred and helps the reader to understand more about the user.

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In the summary you can see all of the things the book talks about like Defining UX Design, Methods of UX design, Understanding the user, UX research, tips and tricks and the dark side of UX. As 303 is all about designing for humans this book was a big help in learning more about that.

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I found this picture and thought it was very interesting as it shows all of the different sections of the UX process and then in a different colour it shows the Ui design process to shows how they fit together.

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I then found this image that shows the different jobs for a UX designer and a UI designer and you can see there are differences between the two where the UX designer does all the research into the product, the competitor analysis, information architecture among other things. Where as the the UI designer has more to do with how the product will actually look as they do the interface design, visual design, content, design handoff just to name a few.

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I thought this image was interesting as it gives you a break down of the different steps in the UX process from research to validation.

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I also found a template for doing empathy mapping where you decide on the different things the user will say, do, feel and think. Reading this helped me understand the importance of doing this and I then did it for my own app and it helped me visualise user behaviour and compare it with the users attitude.

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The next thing I found to do through the UX process is user journey mapping. That helps understand further the way your users act and think to certain external factors which then gives you the insight on how to improve customer experience for your website. I did this for my own app and it was very useful and it allowed me to make a few changes to my designs.

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The next step that I found in this book was user personas and this something that I have come across before but it was nice to see it in this book as well. It is a good way to visualise what your customers will be like based on their demographic, income, occupation and you can also see their goals and pain points.

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The final technique I came across was the crazy 8s techniques which is where you divide a page in 8 and give you self 8 minutes and see how many of the squares you can fill in in the time. it is a good way to get designs down on a page and get your creative juices flowing.

I really enjoyed reading this book as it gave me more insight on how the UX process works and also how to carry out each section efficiently and effectively. It along with the lecture content that we have gone through it has really help further my knowledge on UX and UI and what the differences are, I will take all this knowledge with me into my work and in jobs and i will always have the book to reference and will probably read it again.