Today, every product or service needs to delight its users and that means delivering an outstanding user experience (UX). In this full-color guide, leading user experience designer Anthony Conta guides you step by step through crafting these exceptional user experiences. The Art and Science of UX Design introduces a complete human-centered design framework for success, using practical examples based on his pioneering experience in the field.

Learn to apply design thinking to understand your users' wants, needs, goals, and frustrations as you transform empathy into one of your most powerful design tools. Once you've defined the right problems, you'll master proven ideation techniques to quickly create promising solutions. You'll walk through prototyping preliminary designs, testing and refining them based on users' actual reactions, and clearly communicating all you've learned so colleagues can build what you've envisioned. Finally, you'll learn practical ways to continually iterate and improve your offerings so they stay competitive (and delightful) far into the future.

• Go in depth on how to do UX design by walking step by step through the design thinking process
• See how theories and best practices apply to real-world examples of projects and designs
• Complete exercises that take you through an entire UX design project, end to end
• Learn research techniques for how to solve a problem such as conducting surveys, user interviews, and affinity mapping
• Practice top ideation techniques like brainstorming, sketching, and mind mapping
• See how you can bring your design ideas to life and test them with users
• Discover strategies for creating your own portfolio using the exercises you complete with this book

“With his deep design expertise and an unwavering commitment to teaching, Anthony can bridge the worlds of UX design and education in ways few people can. I'm confident this book will prove to be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in learning both the craft and the process of UX design.”

― Professor Craig MacDonald, Pratt Institute

“Anthony is exceptionally skilled at dissecting complex problems and translating them into delightful, intuitive design solutions. He brings that same thoughtful approach to demystifying UX Design and helping others understand the core fundamentals in an approachable and engaging way.”

― Mark Sherrill, VP of Product Design

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Human-Centered Design

CHAPTER 2 Using Empathy as a Design Tool

CHAPTER 3 Defining the User's Problems

CHAPTER 4 Exploring Ideation Techniques and Tools

CHAPTER 5 Prototyping Solutions

CHAPTER 6 Testing Your Designs

CHAPTER 7 Implementing Your Designs

CHAPTER 8 What's Next?

Appendix: What Good Looks Like

About the Author

Anthony Conta's career in design began when he was four years old, thanks to the carelessness of another student at his school. His mother, Christina, was the school nurse for a K-12 school in New York City. One day, a student forgot their Game Gear in his mother's office. After a month of asking every student who came in if it was theirs and no one claiming it, she gave it to her son and opened his world.

From that day, Anthony knew he wanted to design experiences like the ones he played on that video game system (and many others). But at college, he found that coding those experiences was a lot more difficult than he expected, and he instead focused on understanding behaviors rather than understanding code.

Anthony graduated from Binghamton University with a master's degree in financial economics, a bachelor's in quantitative economics, and a bachelor's in mathematics. His first job was at a law firm, helping uncover illegal anti-competitive behavior by analyzing the economics of market sectors. Two years later, he moved to a consulting firm, where he did similar work.

Bored out of his mind suing people, Anthony pivoted back to what he loved― games. He started his own game company, producing tabletop games with his then girlfriend (and now wife), Carrie. From concept to completion, they came up with game ideas, prototyped them, crowdfunded them via Kickstarter, and eventually published them with large game publishers such as Mattel.

Eventually, Anthony moved on to digital education and entertainment at Nickelodeon, creating interactive television episodes of Blues Clues, Bubble Guppies, and Team Umizoomi. It was there that he gained prolonged exposure to (and interest in) the concepts of user experience (UX) design.

He attended General Assembly's UX certificate program, a three-month intensive learning bootcamp, where he met fellow aspiring practitioners and grew with them as he deepened his knowledge and love for UX. From there, Anthony worked at several companies―Kaplan, Food Network, Vimeo, and Amazon―where he further developed his skillset. As of this writing, Anthony works for Amazon Music, designing digital experiences for millions of customers.

In his spare time, Anthony still educates those who come after him. He writes on Medium, he teaches at several colleges, and he mentors through various services. You can find him in a lot of places―feel free to reach out and say hi!