The main textbook for this course is:
Goodman, E., Kuniavsky, M., and Moed, A. Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research. Second Edition. Morgan Kaufmann, 2012.
It is available at the campus bookstore.
Please note that we are using the second edition. (Yes, I wrote it.) This new edition is very different from the first one. It has been completely updated and reorganized. If you try to use the first edition in this class you will get very confused.
We will also have some readings from:
Rubin, Jeffrey, Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests. Wiley, 1994
You do not have to buy it, but it is a classic. If you are going to be doing a lot of usability testing, consider buying the new edition, 2008.
We will also occasionally refer to the Usability Body of Knowledge, an encyclopedia with brief descriptions usability methods and related topics, and links to readings. Descriptions are too brief for our purposes, and references are often old, but it’s useful as a sort of dictionary for UX methods.
A periodically updated stream of links to other user research resources is available here.
Readings and Other Resources
Scanned readings are on bspace.berkeley.edu. You should see them under the “Resources” link in the folder for this class. If you cannot access bspace, let me know.
To access electronic readings from journals and conference proceedings and e-books available through UC, you need to connect from on-campus or use the Library Proxy Service to connect from off-campus.
A considerable amount of information relevant to this course is online in various forms. There is an archive of relevant links here. Many consulting firms post information for clients. There’s also an active community of UX professionals. So company websites, Slideshare, and other such sites are valuable — there’s more info relevant to this course in these formats than in formal publications. However, much of it is brief and superficial– a lot of the best material is proprietary. Linking to materials on other sites does not necessarily mean that the teachers of this course endorse the source or the sponsor. Nor does the university.
Several of the recommended books are available electronically in one form or another. As you work on your projects, you may decide you want to own one or more of these books, and you may want them fast. Unfortunately, some of the publishers (e.g., Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier) charge more for e-books. However, some books are available (more cheaply!) from Amazon in Kindle format. You don’t have to own a Kindle to read Kindle books – you can read them on your computer.