Sketching User Experiences
by Bill Buxton · first published 2007
62% recommend31% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
Covers early-stage design through sketching, favoring low-fidelity prototypes and exploring ideas before committing to code. Suited to product makers and anyone validating a design.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Sketching User Experiences approaches design and design thinking as something distinct that needs to be better understood-by both designers and the people with whom they need to work- in order to achieve success with new products and systems. So while the focus is on design, the approach is holistic. Hence, the book speaks to designers, usability specialists, the HCI community, product managers, and business executives. There is an emphasis on balancing the back-end concern with usability and engineering excellence (getting the design right) with an up-front investment in sketching and ideatio
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…Manuscript http://www.billbuxton.com/inputManuscript.html Alan Cooper - About Face http://feiramoderna.net/download/pos-positivo/COOPER-Alan/Ab... Vignelli - The Vignelli Canon http://www.vignelli.com/canon.pdf Bill Buxton - Sketching User Experiences http://bscw.wineme.fb5.uni-siegen.de/pub/bscw.cgi/d807887/Sk... (the workshop slides) https://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/lehre/ss14/id/Day%202%20Sketch...
on “Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?” ↗Buxton is a prominent name in the field of UX, and the book referenced in the article (Sketching User Experiences) is a seminal text in the field. I think the failings you point out are more about the inability of the press to shoehorn both introduction and meaning into a thousand words, and less about Buxton himself.…
on “Meet Microsoft's guru of 'design matters'” ↗The author of the article, Bill Buxton, has a book I'd recommend to anyone making a product - "Sketching User Experiences".
on “Why risk is important” ↗…Caroline Jarrett - Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability - Steve Krug - Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web & Mobile Application Design - Robert Hoekman Jr. - Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design - Bill Buxton
on “Ask HN: What is a good book for learning front end design?” ↗…Viktor (not a book, just online: http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/) and I always find it refreshing reminder to think about how we can design technology to help us rather than just create a CRUD interface. ‘Sketching User Experiences’ by Bill Buxton https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/980280.Sketching_User_Ex... and ‘Mental Models’ by Indi Young: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/ we’re both very influential to me as…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?” ↗My three favourites are: → "Sketching User Experiences", Bill Buxton → "The Elements of Typographic Style", Robert Bringhurst → "Understanding Comics", Scott McCloud There are lots of books on concrete design methodologies and particular aspects of the…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book on modern UI/UX?” ↗…hypothesis. Usually a few will already drop dead. Now as you are suggesting you would like to validate by using a product or prototype of some sort? For early validation and testing I would recomment to read "Sketching user experiences" from Bill Buxton [2] - lot of low fidelity ideas to test a product before writing any code at all. You can either use live users to test some hypothesises, use remote usability testing tools or invite…
on “Ask HN: How important is scientific research experience in UX?” ↗…creating code by prompting Claude Code: it gradually robs me of my ability to understand the technical possibility and limitation of the system. [0] This idea has largely been taken from the very good book "Sketching User Experiences: Getting the design right and the right design", about the processus of ideation / sketching.
on “Why are good developers so wary of agentic development?” ↗…particular environment."[1] Focusing on complaints of the above design in all likelihood would, given the mad rabble of audiences online, result in discarding a solid bit of design. [1] Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences, pg 37
on “Complaint-Driven Development” ↗…wireframe look & feel and then when you have the right icon, turn it off again. I remember back in the days Expression Blend had some functionality to apply sketchy lines style (based on Bill Buxton's book - Sketching User Experiences). Also, the prototyping functionality is still rather basic. Axure is much more powerful and ideal for the early sketching and testing phase. But I'm sure Figma will have more sophisticated prototyping…
on “Why Figma Wins” ↗…They are stories on paper that sometimes have legal or royal or personal meaning, but they are always still stories. Geography is a social science, and cartography is as much art as it is evidence. In Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton tells a story about maps, where your Google Glass example breaks down: Imagine that you were kayaking off the coast of Greenland, and needed a chart to find your way. You might have a paper…
on “Build your own Google Glass” ↗Without appropriate design, yesterday's success is tomorrow's straightjacket, since today's great applications are tomorrow's legacy systems. Bill Buxton in Sketching User Experiences, page 209
on “Computer says no” ↗I got the book Sketching User Experiences:The workbook(different from the Sketching User Experience), don't buy that book. It also has Bill Buxton as its author, but has only some references from the original book.
on “Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?” ↗