Chapter #1. Anyone Can Be a User Experience (UX) Professional

This guide is for anyone who designs software products as part of their work. You may be a full-time designer, a UX professional or someone who has to make decisions about UX in your organization's products. Regardless of your role, the principles in this guide will improve your products, help you to serve your users' needs better, and make your customers more likely to return to you.

Although various examples throughout this book feature a mobile app, website, web app, or some desktop software, the principles are applicable to a wide range of applications, from in-car UI, mobile games, and cockpit controls, to washing machine interfaces and everything in between.

Empathy and objectivity are the primary skills you must possess to be good at UX. This is not to undermine those who have spent many years studying and working in the UX field—their insights and experience are valuable—rather to say that study and practice alone are not enough.

You need empathy to understand your users' needs, goals and frustrations. You need objectivity to look at your product with fresh eyes, spot the flaws and fix them. You can learn everything else.