I’ve recently decided to join a team as a designer and front-end developer. We’ll be working on a product and I wanted to start off with the User Experience in mind. I bought the book, The User Experience Team of One on the Kindle app a day before UXHK (as a refresher, because I didn’t want to embarrass myself if I say things that may be incorrect when talking with other people, hehehe). I haven’t finished the whole book, but as the reviews on Amazon said, it is a good guide for those starting to integrate UX more into their products. It is general enough that you can come from any background but is specific enough to give some guidelines as to where to start.

As a designer, I have the tendency to jump right into the visuals even though I haven’t really understood the business goals or clearly identified user goals that would guide the interface design. I keep in mind UX design to an extent, but I’m not usually part of the team when planning the product (or at least the last time that I was, the company doesn’t exactly start with the UX even though it keeps some of it in mind, such as design principles for user interfaces). I attribute it to only being hired as the visual designer (and front-end developer) so I’m not really part of the planning of the product, where design decisions can be made very early on. This time though, with the new job and project I’ll be working on, I could be more active when it comes on identifying key aspects that will affect the product we want to release.

I definitely recommend the book to anyone who wants to put user experience first regardless of their role in a team (or as an individual). It really is a good starting point for designing user experiences.