User Experience Design: Notes From An Inspired Designer

Talented designers have always inspired me. They just seem to be able to present information and ideas in ways that would never occur to me. This designer that I’m sharing with you today is a perfect example of that.

I carry around two spiral Bit Rebels notebooks with me everywhere. One is filled from cover to cover with notes from 2009 and 2010. I just began the second one in 2011, and I add to it almost everyday. I especially like to have them in my car so when I’m sitting in the dreadful traffic jams in Atlanta, I can still be productive and record ideas. Amanda Wright, a user experience designer living in London, also keeps notes, but wow, I’ve never seen notes like this before!

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of user experience design, I will explain it to you. It’s really fascinating. As you know, with all the websites on the Internet competing for our attention, the user’s experience is more important than ever. It doesn’t really matter how well designed a site is, how valuable the content is, or how well the SEO is done if the user experience is bad. Everything to do with a website’s success really comes down to that one thing. If you are a webmaster, you have probably seen examples of very popular sites that dramatically changed designs and user interface, and then suddenly they weren’t popular anymore. I’m not saying that change isn’t good, it is. I’m just saying it’s important to maintain the user experience during the transition.

User experience design is all about creating something that users perceive as valuable. It really adds a little bit of science to the whole design process. It focuses on how the user interacts with the technology itself whether it be an app, software, website, whatever. If you would like to learn more about this, I found two very useful articles to refer you to. One is a post on Mashable entitled 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design and the other is a fabulous post on Smashing Magazine called What Is User Experience Design? Overview, Tools And Resources.

Now back to Amanda Wright, the designer who created these notes. She calls this style of note taking sketchnoting. Amanda, if I ever need a user experience designer, I’m calling you. These are fabulous, and I learned a lot from reading them. If you would like to check out an interview with Amanda, click over to My Modern Met. Thank you for sharing your notebook with everyone!

Header Image Credit: [Banauke / Shutterstock]