Customer Reviews

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm a user experience and interaction design professional, so here's my take from a slightly more informed perspective. As of 2009, this book is frequently recommended for UX practitioners through the UX Book Club movement.
What's good about the book is that it's shiny. It's stirring and inspiring, and offers a lot of wisdom along the way about the nature of the best design processes and the importance of lightweight sketching and trying, trying, trying. It will make you feel very good about design, whether you do it or know people who do, and I think that's why it's caught on so much with the UX Book Club.
On the other hand, many UX people want their books to provide useful frameworks or other practitioner-focused guidelines. This one doesn't, really. This is not a problem if you're looking for a more theoretical treatment of design. Of course, most practitioners aren't--many of them, underscoring one of Buxton's main points, sneer at "theory" in an excellent demonstration of what's wrong with designers. The problem is when a book suggests it's one thing but is actually another. Of course, a "theory" book would sell about as well as cold dog poop, so...

It's got a stunning design-related bibliography for the serious practitioner or researcher, and good tips for people starting out. It may well remind you of the right answer as you read. It's not going to make you a designer; arguably, it may not even make you a better designer in most situations. I can think of about a dozen UX books you should buy before you get this one. It's worth reading, but I don't know about a purchase. To paraphrase the author...it's designed right, but I don't know if it's the right design, or if it presents itself accurately as what it really is.

Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton

This is a great book, for anyone involved with innovation, product management, communication of new ideas or product development.

Bill Buxton has put forth some great examples of what a Sketch is how it is a prelude to a prototype and how to "create" the future cheaply for testers and user groups to experience things with in expensive and fast tools. The idea is to create rapid examples of future good and services to see how well they work.

As Buxton mentions in the book, fail fast and early, learn fast and early. Redesigning a product or relaunching one is very expensive. This is a great read and deals with products and services in their "wholistic" setting. A new idea exists in a context and that context determines its success or failure. I would strongly recommend you buy this book or e-mail me and I might just lend you my copy. I keep only 1 of 10 books I read, but this one I will be holding onto or lending out.

Some fun quotes from the book:

Tell me and I forget, Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand. Confucius

And a personal favorite of mine from an anthropologist:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Meade

Also from Buxton himself: Innovation in process trumps innovation in product. The idea is that corporations that innovate processes or better yet internalize innovation as a process will win hands down over those focused on tweaking a product.

And finally Buxton closes the book with a quote from T.E. Lawrence:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.


Buxton's last words are: May you dream in the day.

This isn't your average designer hand book and if you want to be an above average creator this is a powerful tool.

If you're interested in ways to improve the process of design and design thinking, this is a book for you. The theme is sketching for design but the underlying idea is really about a better design process. I found it extremely practical and thought that the early chapters did a good job of conveying both the creative and business aspects of design...something most design books I've read don't discuss together. If you're a designer, this book should be in your library. If you're in business and design plays an important role in your product or service, this book should be in your library.

I bought this book because it was recommended by Andy Rutledge in his
podcast "Design View". I knew it wouldn't be bad given the nature of
the podcast and the host but I really wasn't sure what to expect
either. With no expectations or biases I started reading and later
found out that it was the ideal way to experience this title.

If had expected a practical book with a more hands-on approach on user
interface design, I would have been disappointed. The book discusses
primarily on how we should do design rather than explaining how to
design any particular things. Bill Buxton also writes about the role
of the user experience design and the designer itself in today's
businesses. The best thing in the book is that the content is full of
interesting stories and rich examples of user experience design in
real life. The text moves from stories to theory to examples and back
again keeping the reader hooked even when the subject at hand might be
a bit too heavy to digest on the first reading. Everything is well
written and the author more than "knows his stuff". The examples come
with extraordinary pictures that are a great source for inspiration.
The book is also a good reference of other books about the subject.

If you are looking for a hands-on guide or a text-book to user
experience/ interface design this not your pick. Also it is not a book
for usability enthusiasts or engineers either. Sketching User
Experiences is a book for those designers and would-be designers who
want to get new ideas and perspective on their profession and the
design business itself.

At least I am sure that I'll be sketching more in the future than
before reading this book...

This book pulled me in like a fictional thriller, but I read it little by little, ensuring I had quality time and head space to savor each chapter. Bill Buxton's narrative style is engaging but not wasteful--it's got the deep content of a textbook, yet is very fun to read.

Every single page has something you can apply as a designer or software engineer. There are so many great ideas and insights that I found myself pausing often, staring off into space, visualizing my own scenarios and sketches, jotting notes in my notebook.

This highly influential book has already helped me get breakthroughs in my thinking I couldn't have achieved without diving in and acting things out, drawing, or building a simple model. It has shaped the way I approach my work.

I'm going to be direct and to the point in this review, something that Buxton appears to be unable to do in his book.

1. Buxton whines about how designers aren't treated with enough importance.
2. He assumes his audience is too stupid to get a point the first time he says it, has to reiterate again and again like he's talking to schoolchildren.
3. Spends a paragraph about how he's going to make a point, uses another paragraph to talk about how you'll disagree with the point, then in the third paragraph actually makes the point.
4. Takes 104 pages to finally start talking about sketching at all.
5. Appears to have not had an editors help on the book, and possibly had the whole thing dictated.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. IT IS A WASTE OF MONEY.

I am an interaction designer for almost 10 years, and I am often disappointed with books on this subject. They are all too basic and tell you the obvious. They don't add much, except validating what you already know and make you feel good about what you do. This book was different. It gave me a different perspective. It pushed me in exploring alternatives, trying different techniques, and don't be intimidated by starting from the old paper-and-pencil sketches. I feel that this was one of the few books that I read which effectively help improving my work.

"Sketching User Experiences" is thorough and thought-provoking, and about much more than sketching.

Buxton discusses the process of design, and the factors that can lead to success. Essentially, he claims that a design process is simply absent, and that the bulk of our industry is organised around two myths: "that we know what we want at the start of a project, and that we know enough to start building it". This is reminiscent of Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition), and indeed this is included in the extensive bibliography.

Buxton ranges wide in his use of examples, examining aspects of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Trek Mountain Bikes. He uses the advent of the mountain bike to discuss how innovation can revolutionise an apparently stable or stagnant industry. It is fundamental to his belief system, he says, that "there is always a mountain bike" (strange echoes of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman here). He also quotes a wide range of academic research, and this thoroughness makes the book even more compelling.

The book is well and liberally illustrated. The range of products discussed ranges from juicers to ski equipment, but the focus is very clearly on the design of interaction and the sketching techniques that can help examine and design interactions.

Buxton hits his stride when he pins down precisely what he means by a "sketch", and identifies it as something which has a specific set of criteria. It must be quick, disposable, plentiful, use a clear vocabulary and distinct gesture, have minimal detail, an appropriate level of refinement, should suggest and explore rather than confirm, and should be intentionally ambiguous. Armed with this definition, he proceeds to broaden our thinking - certainly my thinking - of what might constitute a sketch. He includes hand-drawn conceptualisations, but also sketches consisting of stories, performance, 3D objects, video, animation and mock-ups of various sorts - provided they meet all the criteria. Perhaps unavoidably, the precise but broad definition occasionally seems to allow arbitrary inclusion or exclusion, although he is at pains to distinguish between a sketch and a prototype.

The book has a narrative, and therefore needs to be read in sequence. It's not one that you can easily dip into (although I expect to refer back to it frequently); the thesis is built progressively. It's interspersed, however, with highlighted comments or exhortations, and I found myself fairly active with the highlighter (always a good sign).

A constant theme is the need for those of us in "interaction design" to learn from the traditions and practices of other design disciplines, and Buxton describes the use of corkboards ("awareness servers"), design crits, and more. "All this is the norm," he writes, "and hardly even needs to be said in a traditional design studio. But what we are talking about in this book is not the traditional design studio, but a studio populated by people who come from other traditions than, for example, graphic or industrial design."

Every book should change your life. After reading Buxton's, at the very least, I'll henceforth abandon the term "low-fidelity prototype" since, as he points out, "when... properly used, they are not low fidelity; rather, they are at exactly the right fidelity for their purpose."

A thoughtful and reflective reading of this book by anyone involved in design, product engineering or usability will of necessity change the way you think about your work, its history and tradition, the techniques you use, and their application.

This is a compelling book. It manages to blend business, organizational and design thinking on the user experience. In doing this, Bill Buxton makes the case for (i) the centrality of design in driving business value and (ii) the importance of investing in the design process. The importance of exploration and play in design is called out, and the role of making multiple light, inexpensive sketches of alternatives as an important part of the design process. Buxton also brings together the separate histories of the industrial design (the people who make things) and the software design worlds, sprinkling in some lessons from film making for good measure. And he reinforces the importance of knowing the traditions and their high points if you want to innovate. All of these lessons are vital to our collective future.

I liked this book enough to buy copies for people on my design and business teams, and I will probably give my copy to my boss. I may get a copy for my son as well, who is involved in furniture design in Vancouver.

The book does have a couple of weaknesses. The most serious is that Bill seems to think that people don't sketch in code. I am pretty sure that this is not what he thinks - he has seen plenty of people sketch in code and most of the code created by university researchers is a form of sketch - branching code that explores, plays and demonstrates possibilities. The book can also be read as advocating a waterfall process rather than something more agile. One reason may be that he is focused on the design of interactive objects and environments where there are high production costs. But this kind of waterfall approach is not all that useful for people (such as myself) who are building businesses around the delivery of software as a service. And taking Bill's own advice, and looking out a few years, it seems likely that most of us will have 3D printers in our homes and that eventually these 3D printers will be able to print 3D programmable objects. With shape memory plastics and other such smart materials, one of the things with behaviours (interactions) may even be the shape itself.

Still an important book, and one that points to more thinking and more learning. The gallery of important user experience sketches is worth deep study.

This book is not about drawing technique. It is about how imagining future products and experieces through thnking and visualizing and inviting and so on with a variety of tools including the use of drawing. The author's academic tone is a bit laborious. However, there are great insights and articulation within the pages that make it well worth reading. A great inspiration for me.

He desperately needs an editor to cut the text to 50%. And the layut is great and the images are great, but somebody needs to get the image not photoshop for basic color and contrast fixes.

A must read for collaborative (and rapid) product conceptualization for non-artists and artisist alike.