UX for Business

Table of contents

1. Preface
   1. Will You Risk It?
   2. How Did We Get Here?
   3. “Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Face”—Mike Tyson
   4. OK, Cut to the Chase: What’s the Secret?(How This Book Is Organized)
   5. Wait, Go Back. What Was That About Money?
   6. Why Should You Believe Anything I Write?
2. The What
3. The Right Thing
   1. How Do You Know You’re Designing the Right Thing?
   2. UX Is a Process: Humans Are the Constant
   3. UX Is a Process: Business Is Always Different
   4. The VDP Framework for UX in Real Life
4. Value
   1. V = Value
   2. User Needs + Business Needs = Value
   3. Value Is User First, Business Second, and Always Both
   4. OK, but Seriously, What Is a Business Model?
   5. Value for the User, Not Lingo for the UX People
   6. Efficiency: Do More with Less
   7. Entertainment: Good Feelings
   8. Value for the Business: Efficiency
   9. Value for the Business: How Does It Grow?
   10. Great. So, What Are You Making?
   11. Let the Business Model Guide You
   12. Value Summary
5. Diagnosis
   1. “We Tried That; It Didn’t Work”
   2. Allow Me to Introduce Diagnostic Design
   3. Imagine a Doctor
   4. Now Imagine Like  a Doctor
   5. Take a History: Context Is Everything
   6. Ask Basic Questions First: Who, What, When, Where, Why
   7. Identify Symptoms
   8. How Do Symptoms Change Over Time?
   9. Make a List of Symptoms
   10. Find Clusters of Symptoms
   11. Formulate the Problem
   12. Test to Confirm (Ideally, with Real Users)
   13. Hypothesis + Positive Test Result = Diagnosis
   14. You Are the Doctor; Your Designs Are the Patients
   15. Diagnostic Design Comes with a Lot of Big Benefits
   16. Diagnostic Design Is Battle-Tested
   17. On a Personal Note...
   18. Diagnostic Design, in Summary
6. Probability
   1. Don’t Be Lucky; Be Smart
   2. All Things Being Equal, What Will a User Click?
   3. Probability Intuition: You Can’t Do the Second Thing Before You Do the First Thing
   4. Effort and Time Both Work This Way
   5. Incentives (Motivations) Also Work This Way!
   6. “Yeah, but Who Would Do That?”
   7. UX Is a Numbers Game
   8. Data + Understanding Probability = Insights
   9. More Users, More Predictable
   10. Probability Is How We Optimize
   11. Design Is Redesign: Your Second Try Is Often Luckier Than the First
   12. There Is a Lifetime of Nuance to This
   13. Probabilistic Design, in Summary
7. VDP: Put It All Together
   1. Make It Work, Make It Right, Make It Scale
   2. Value, Diagnostics, and Probability Work Together
8. Quick Detour: Advice
   1. Most Advice Is Bad Advice
9. A Simple Button
   1. A Button Is One of the Simplest Things to Design. Or Is It?
   2. It’s Just a Button. How Hard Can It Be?
   3. Is a Button the Right Answer?
   4. Take a History: What Does This Button Do?
   5. Constructive Buttons Add Value
   6. Constructive Buttons Need Higher  Probability
   7. Special Buttons: Constructive Buttons That Are Make-or-Break
   8. Destructive Buttons Reduce Value
   9. Destructive Buttons Need Lower  Probability
   10. Appropriate Friction
   11. Ethical Note
10. A Modal
    1. No Button Is an Island
    2. Constructive and Special Modals Need Higher  Probability
    3. Destructive Modals Need Appropriate Friction
11. A Page
    1. Let’s Combine a Few Design Clusters into a Whole Page
    2. Take a History: What Does This Page Do?
    3. Take a History: A Lead Generation Page
    4. Take a History: Pricing Page
    5. You Know Too Much
    6. Prioritize the Clicks You Prefer
    7. Scrolling Is Navigation
    8. Protip: Looking Versus Seeing
    9. It Is Hard to Stop Scrolling!
    10. Visual Hierarchy
    11. Use Visual Hierarchy to Control Probability
    12. Design Good Comparisons
    13. Be Ethical When You’re Designing Choices
12. A Flow
    1. One Type of Information Architecture: A Flow
    2. Conversion
    3. Take a History: What Is the Purpose of This Flow?
    4. Design Is a Two-Way Conversation
    5. A Flow Includes Time
    6. Design Each Flow for What It Does
       1. Optional or Required?
       2. Get the Valuable Stuff First!
       3. How Familiar Are the Questions?
       4. Speed or Accuracy? 
       5. Information or Conversions?
       6. How Necessary or Valuable Is It, for the User?
       7. Easier Steps or Fewer Steps? 
       8. How Often Will the User Do This Flow?
       9. Are You Just Getting Input, or Are Users Making Choices?
       10. Is It Long?
       11. Are There Legal, Financial, or Security Risks?
    7. How Should We Measure a Flow?
13. Quick Detour: Redesign
    1. Design Is Redesign
    2. Reasons to Design More Than One Version of the Same Thing
    3. Should Everything Be Responsive?
    4. Consistency Isn’t Always a Good Thing (Functional Inconsistency)
    5. Brand Isn’t UX
    6. A/B Testing Is Science, Not Guessing
14. A Structure
    1. Another Type of Information Architecture: Structure
    2. Build Structure Around Value, Not Semantics
    3. Probability Should Define the Structure
    4. Don’t Stop Yet! Leaving Is Still an Option.
    5. Analytics: Diagnose Structures as a System
    6. A Three-Screen Banking App
    7. We Also Need Settings
    8. Diagnosis: This Is an Efficiency App
    9. Probability: Make It More Efficient
    10. Another Structure: A Three-Page Portfolio Site
    11. Is a Portfolio Efficiency or Entertainment?
    12. Diagnosis: Users Only See One Project?!
    13. Probability: Why Only That Project?
    14. Why Does a Loop Work?
    15. Little Loops Become Big at Scale
15. A Simple Business
    1. Let’s Start with an Ecommerce Site
    2. Understand the Brand!
    3. Value 1: Browsing and Finding Products
    4. Value 2: Buying Products
    5. Aim for Perfection
    6. Be Quantitative and  Qualitative
    7. Think About More Than One Visit
    8. Think in Comparisons
    9. Use Probability to Sell More
16. Content-Heavy Products and Services
    1. Content Is the Purpose
    2. Revenue Without Conversion
    3. Page Views as a Priority
    4. Time-per-Visit as a Priority
    5. Diagnosis: Balancing User Value and Business Value
    6. Conflict: User Value Versus Business Value
    7. Another Conflict: Paywalls Versus Ads
    8. Observe Long-Term Trends
    9. Probability: Your Best Content and Users
17. A More Complicated Structure
    1. Most Real Products and Services Are Not Simple
    2. When a Site Is Big, Structure Is Very Important
    3. What Should Be in the Main Menu?
    4. Information Density
    5. Put the Business Value Near the User Value
    6. Don’t Get That Backward!
    7. Navigate All the Things: Shortcuts Are Powerful
    8. Search, Menus, Scrolling, Dynamic Content...It’s All One Thing
18. Search as Navigation
    1. Search Is Just a Sophisticated Menu—Or Not
    2. Google Is the Internet’s Main Menu
    3. Bad Search Can Be Worse Than No Search
    4. Good Search Can Add a Lot of Value
    5. Search Is Hard to Predict: Data Is Your Friend
    6. Search Should Have a Purpose
    7. Probability: Order Things with Data
19. Marketing-Driven Versus Revenue-Driven Products
    1. Too Much Agency Work Can Warp Your Sense of Value
    2. Brand Value or Business Value?
    3. The Purposes Are Different
    4. The Real Difference Is in the Inputs and Outputs
20. Quick Detour: Competitive Advantages
    1. Real Competitive Advantages Are Long-Term
21. A Marketplace
    1. Complex Products and Services Are More Than the Sum of Their Features
    2. Supply and Demand as Products
    3. Marketplaces Make Money in Specific Ways
    4. Diagnosis: How Do Users Look for Each Other?
    5. Diagnosis: What Percentage of Users Find a Match?
    6. Diagnosis: What Else Do Users Need to Make a Decision?
    7. Cheaters Gonna Cheat
    8. Probability Kills a Lot of Marketplaces
    9. Marketplace Design Should Increase Probability, Radically
    10. Probability Is in the Nature of a Marketplace
22. B2B Software: SaaS, PaaS, Etc.
    1. What Is B2B?
    2. B2B Versus B2C Versus B2B2C
    3. B2B and B2C in General
    4. Welcome to Sales-Driven UX!
    5. Buyers Versus Users
    6. What Are You Selling, Really?
    7. Design for What You Really Sell
    8. Self-Service Versus Sales
    9. What Does the Company Buy to Make What the Customers Buy?
    10. Revenue Models: How  Customers Pay Is Make-or-Break
    11. Impulse Purchase or Highly Considered Budget?
    12. Protip: Design Around Credit Card Limits
23. Social Networks and Communities
    1. Users Are the Product
    2. Human Connection as a Feature
    3. Free Things Can Make a Lot of Money...Eventually
    4. What Are Network Effects, Really?
    5. Virality Multiplies All of Your Choices Exponentially
    6. A What-Not-to-Do Example: Clubhouse
    7. How You Monetize Determines Your Problems
    8. Social Incentives Are Powerful Weapons
    9. Don’t Wave That Thing Around; It’s Loaded!
    10. Why Algorithms?
    11. The Probability of Content Creation and Consumption
    12. Why Most Companies Kill Their Own Communities
24. Games and Gamification
    1. Deep Game Design Is Beyond the Scope of This Book
    2. Games Are Entertainment, Not Efficiency
    3. Quantified Feelings: Games in a Nutshell
    4. Gamification
    5. The First Taste Is Free
    6. Difficulty Is a Feature
    7. Match the Business Model to the Structure of the Game
    8. Diagnosis and Probability Depend on the Game
25. Internal Tools
    1. Captive Users
    2. Understand What Makes Money, Not Just User Requests
    3. Internal Tools Should Increase Your Capacity
    4. Avoid the Temptation to Prioritize Yourself
    5. Protips: Reliable Symptoms
    6. Data Without Significance: Not Enough Users
26. Machine Learning, AI, and Data Products
    1. AI Is the New Black
    2. Think: New Speed, Not New Knowledge
    3. Data Doesn’t Always Mean AI
    4. Data for What?
    5. Data Quality Is a UX Problem Too
    6. Visualizing Data
    7. Controlling and Confirming Bias
    8. If You Aren’t Comfortable with Numbers, Don’t Take the Job
    9. User Research About Data Is Data!
    10. Does Anybody Even Want the Truth?
27. Ecosystems
    1. What Is an “Ecosystem”?
    2. Probability Still  Defines Structure!
    3. VDP Still Applies!
    4. Strategy: What Kind of Ecosystem Do You Need?
    5. Brand Ecosystem
    6. Ecosystem Value Can Be Very Indirect
    7. A Note About Strategy
28. Meta Design: Design According to Your Problems
    1. “Your Process” Isn’t One Process. Be Flexible.
    2. Only Consider Solutions You Have Researched First
    3. Dogfooding: The Best Research Method Nobody Uses
    4. Dogfooding Should Be Uncomfortable
    5. Don’t Pass the Buck
29. How to Prioritize
    1. VDP Is a Great Way to Prioritize Your Work
    2. The Value of a Feature
    3. V Then D Then P
30. Design in Different Situations
    1. Designing with No Budget
    2. Designing with a Huge Budget
    3. Designing with a Tight Deadline
    4. Designing with No Deadline
    5. Designing with Total Freedom
    6. Designing with Strict Limitations
    7. Designing with Painful Legacy
    8. Designing for Growth Versus Revenue
    9. Designing from Scratch
31. VDP Cheat Sheet
    1. Value Creation
    2. Diagnostic Design
    3. Probability
32. The Who
33. Company Culture Versus You
    1. It’s Not You, It’s Them (Probably)
    2. “How Do I Persuade Stakeholders?”
    3. You Don’t Have to Explain Everything
    4. “Choose the Hill You Want to Die On”
34. Working in Different Companies
    1. UX at Startups
    2. UX at Big Companies
    3. UX as a Team of One
    4. UX in a Big Team
    5. UX at Regulated Companies
    6. UX at Public Companies
    7. UX for a Famous Brand
35. Quick Detour: Documents
    1. Why I Haven’t Focused on Documents in This Book
    2. Everybody Focuses on Documents!
    3. Some Quick Notes About Communicating with Documents
36. Working with Different Stakeholders
    1. Everybody Can’t Do UX
    2. The Benefits and Conflicts of Working Together
    3. UX Versus Sales
    4. UX Versus Marketing
    5. UX Versus Product
    6. UX Versus Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
    7. UX Versus Developers
    8. Why Coders Love “Agile” and UX Designers Don’t
    9. UX Versus Customer Support
    10. UX Versus UX
    11. UX Versus UI
    12. UX Versus Project Managers
    13. UX Versus Finance
    14. UX Versus Leadership
37. Working with Users
    1. User Research in Real Life
    2. Your Biggest Results Will Come from Good Research
    3. I Often Start with Data, Not Users
    4. Why Complicated Methods Are Usually Worse
    5. The Exception: High Volumes of Users
    6. Accessibility
    7. Protip: Make Users Comfortable First
    8. Observation
    9. Surveys
    10. User Tasks
    11. User Interviews
    12. Focus Groups (and Why They Suck)
    13. Don’t Help Users
    14. Everybody Lies
    15. User Testing with External Services
    16. A/B Testing
38. Working with Yourself
    1. We Are Human
    2. How to Convince Stakeholders: Another Perspective
    3. The Right Thing Versus Your Favorite Thing
    4. Make Things Easier for Users, Not Yourself
    5. Discovery Versus Research
    6. Research Theater Is Bad for Everyone
    7. Treat Causes, Not Symptoms
    8. You Can Have Too Much Empathy
    9. “A Paying Customer Wants a Stupid Feature. What Should We Do?”
    10. Pragmatism Should Always Win
    11. No Research and No Strategy = Random Decisions
    12. Design Like You Own the Place
39. Index
40. About the Author