Book Image

UX for the Web

By : Marli Ritter, Cara Winterbottom
Book Image

UX for the Web

By: Marli Ritter, Cara Winterbottom

Overview of this book

If you want to create web apps that are not only beautiful to look at, but also easy to use and fully accessible to everyone, including people with special needs, this book will provide you with the basic building blocks to achieve just that. The book starts with the basics of UX, the relationship between Human-Centered Design (HCD), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and the User-Centered Design (UCD) Process; it gradually takes you through the best practices to create a web app that stands out from your competitors. You’ll also learn how to create an emotional connection with the user to increase user interaction and client retention by different means of communication channels. We’ll guide you through the steps in developing an effective UX strategy through user research and persona creation and how to bring that UX strategy to life with beautiful, yet functional designs that cater for complex features with micro interactions. Practical UX methodologies such as creating a solid Information Architecture (IA), wireframes, and prototypes will be discussed in detail. We’ll also show you how to test your designs with representative users, and ensure that they are usable on different devices, browsers and assistive technologies. Lastly, we’ll focus on making your web app fully accessible from a development and design perspective by taking you through the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Creating wireframes and interactive prototypes


In the previous section, we discussed how to decide what, when, and how to prototype. In this section, we will focus on creating two very useful kinds of prototypes for UX design--wireframes and interactive prototypes. Wireframes help the team to plan the layout and flow of the website precisely, without the distraction of colors, images, and fonts. Interactive prototypes help the team to understand how users will interact with the website.

Prototyping tools

There are many tools available to create wireframes and prototypes, from lightweight and easy to use but with less functionality, to fully featured but with a high learning curve. It can be difficult to know which to choose. The trick is to choose those that work for you and your team, and stick with them until they don't. Some teams seem to change tools with every project. However, even the simplest tools take time to master; and even if the underlying task and workflow are similar there...