User Experience (aka UX) is the backbone for everything we as designers and developers do. Whether you are building the next google, or accounting software, how the user interacts with the application is paramount.

Officially (at least according to Wikipedia) UX “is a subset of the field of experience design which pertains to the creation of the architecture and interaction models which impact a user’s perception of a device or system. The scope of the field is directed at affecting all aspects of the user’s interaction with the product: how it is perceived, learned, and used.”

What I find interesting is most people who design applications don’t seem to take the user experience very seriously at all. “Does it look cool?” is typically the only question asked. I say that because it is the only explanation for a website that hides the navigation in some way or an application that is incoherent and difficult to use (but it looks cool). Now, if that is the point of the app, then more power to you…but most sites and applications are meant to be used by people who aren’t all that computer savvy. To make those applications successful, focusing on the user should be a top priority.

So to get all the designers, and developers (or anyone else who is thinking about creating some software) up to speed here is a list of articles, interviews, books, blogs, and podcasts about the rich world of UX.

What is UX?
It may seem like there should only be one definition of what UX design is, but, as you can see, there are actually a lot. What makes them all worth reading is that they each come at the idea of UX from a different angle giving them a unique perspective.

Semantic Studios discusses the User Experience Honeycomb model.

Creating Passionate Users offers up their simple formula for crafting a user experience.

The folks at goodexperience detail the #1 problem with UX (hint…its not failing to have your XHTML or CSS validate).

Thomas Baekdal explains the difference between usability and user-experience.

Frank Spillers “demystifies usability” by explaining (in big text) the importance of UX.

Jeffrey Veen explains why user experience is more than just design.

If you want to know what the government thinks about usability (and really…who doesn’t), then this is the place to go.

Applying UX
So now you know the definition of UX, how do you go about using some of the concepts described in those definitions? Here are some articles on doing just that.

Jeremy Johnson breaks down the “nuts and bolts” of a UX project to see what goes into making an app “user friendly”.

Sim D’Hertefelt explains why UX design should be a priority from day one (he focuses on web apps, but his argument applies to any kind of system).

Adobe, and author Adam Greenfield give lessons that were learned from experience design.

Amy Hillman from boxesandarrows has a great article on crafting a user experience process.

Sharon Lee crafts a really well written piece on A List Apart about how to design for human-to-human interaction.

Another A List Apart article (this one by Aaron Gustafson) explains how to ruin a user’s experience.

Going more practical, the folks over at Pebble Road give a detailed account of how to improve UX with In-page navigation.

Peter Jones of the Design Management Institute breaks down how understanding the fit between product and person inspires innovation.

Personas are a common tool when focusing on User-Centered Design. Zef Fugaz explains what to do with them.

The 80/20 rule applies everywhere, especially in software design. Most designs go for the core (or the 80%), but LukeW makes a case about designing for the edges rather than the mainstream.

Mark Hurst details improving the online customer experience.

Sometimes selling UX to the business folks can be a challenge. John Rhodes usines some UX business Judo to get the point across.

Measuring UX
So your app is built and it uses all the concepts talked about in the articles above. How do you measure how effective the different concepts are?

Erez Kikin-Gil puts the Honeycomb to use as a way to measure the user experience (includes a cool tool that works in Excel).

The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab has created guidelines for web credibility…in other words…”ways to make your site more credible to users”. Credibility is a big deal to customers (especially if you are selling something), so it is definitely something to keep in mind.

Robert Rubinoff on sitepoint explains how to quantify the user experience.

Books!
Goin’ offline and want to catch up on all the various theories on user focused design? There are about a million books out there. Here are just a few. Note all links are to Amazon, but they aren’t referrals…Amazon was just the easiest place to find ‘em.

The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web by Jess James Garret.

Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky.

Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell. I got this book at TechEd, but I haven’t read much yet. Although what I have read is well written and it has pictures (always important).

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.

Built for Use: Driving Profitability Through the User Experience by Karen Donoghue.

Everything else
Some articles just don’t fit nice and neatly into a category (or they are a category in and of themselves), but they definitely deserve a read if you are interested in the topic of user focused design.

Jakob Nielson (yes that Jakob, and yes his site is ugly…but usable) asks the question “should designers and developers do usability“.

UX matters explains how audio fits into the user experience and how to account for it.

Reshma Kumar interviews Jon Wiley, a UX designer for Google about Google Apps and the process for making them so darn user-friendly.

Color blindness is a real issue that should be taken into account when designing for accessibility. Here are a couple of links related to that:

Vischeck is a tool that you can use to simulate the vision of a color blind person (3 different types) on various websites.

If you want to see tests for color blindness (not really related but cool nonetheless), take the Ishihara test.

If you want to listen rather than read check out the UX podcast by Gerry Gaffney.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, big ole Microsoft spends a lot of money on usability and design. As such they have designed the IUI (Inductive User Interface) which is a process they use to design interfaces. Here are some snippets from their guidelines.

Michael Bierut explains how the Sorpanos taught him everything he knows about design.

Whew…so there you have it. This is a big topic and there are a lot of resources out there. If I missed one, please feel free to contact me and I will rectify the situation ASAP!