Effective UX Design Strategies Book Development and Illustration Case Study
Published on March 29, 2025 by BPB + Christopher Reid Becker on Product design
My Role: Author / Illustrator / Sr. Product (UX) Designer
BPB Publishing - Editorial makeup: 4+ (1xPM, 1xEditor, 1xTechnical Reviewer, 1xMarketer)
Timeline: ~14 months: 2 months plannning + outlining / 10 months writing + illustrating / 2 month editing + polishing
Tools: Microsoft Word, Grammarly, Figma/FigJam, Procreate, Notion.so
UX + Human centered design startegy, Design writing, UX team maturity documentation, UX strategy, Design Thinking, Agile Software Development
In late 2023, BPB publishing reached out to me with an opportunity to write a book. After a short back and forth with the contract and the highlevel topics we embarked on creating the book. I started by developing a high level outline which was quickly approved by the editorial team. We established a production timeline and I got started writing the book. Written on nights, weekends, and time between teaching and freelancing as a Sr. Product Designer, I was able to pour my 16+ years of expereince into the pages.
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Overview >
Outline >
Book Illustrations >
Writing >
Outcomes
The book's target is new and aspiring professionals with job roles such as business analyst, user researcher, user experience designer, interaction designer, service designer, or any student seeking to extend their knowledge of design and user experience processes. A basic understanding of design thinking and software application would be helpful in better understanding.
Book Overview
Effective design, from physical to digital systems, continually evolves, demanding strategic approaches to create useful, usable, and accessible products. This guide empowers readers to grasp modern UX, and develop user-centric solutions in today's dynamic digital landscape. By exploring foundational concepts and advanced techniques, readers will gain the practical skills needed to navigate and influence this ever-changing design environment.
This guide begins with the essential principles of human-centered design and explores how UX fits within modern digital product development. You will learn practical skills in user research, including qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys, and discover how to organize complex information using design systems and user flows. Dive into ideation techniques and rapid prototyping with tools like Figma, and refine your designs with UI best practices. Understand the importance of user testing and accessibility standards, and learn how to integrate UX with agile development processes. Become an expert at design handoffs, iteration, and project management, aligning UX efforts with business goals. Finally, explore emerging trends like AI and machine learning, gaining insights into the future of UX.
A view of the Outline for the book.
By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the knowledge and practical skills gained after getting hands-on experience, case studies, and real-world scenarios to confidently apply effective UX design strategies and create impactful and user-friendly experiences in any digital environment.
Book Outline
Book Learning Objectives
- • Foundations of UX design and human-centered design.
- • Qualitative interviewing, quantitative surveying, and human insight documentation.
- • Software problem definition through user research and business requirement definition.
- • UX and software prototyping for better user interfaces (UI) and better software for users.
- • Focus on usability, accessibility, user testing, and improving a user's experience over time.
- • Focus on shipping products and design delivery tools that allow UX designers to improve speed and effectiveness between teams.
- • The latest trends in UX design and what we can expect in the future.
As part of writing the book, I worked BPB team on completing chapters. The process looked like this...
- 1. Outline
- 2. Chapter Draft + illustration descriptions
- 3. Chapter Editorial Draft + Illustration drafts
- 4. Chapter Technical Review
- 5. Chapter Final Version + Final Illustrations
Book Illustrations
As part of writing the book, I also illstrated concepts using Procreate App on my iPad. BPB allowed me the freedom to support the writing content and to make it fun for me I got to dust off my drawing skills and make the content more engaging.
Procreate was useful drawing tool for capturing the sketching quality plus the ability to use type.
Illustrations were done in parallel to the writing at first. Over the production timeline the illustrations were slowing down the writing progress so we used placeholder in the writing drafts and polished the illusrations as part of the Final writing and technical reviews which improved our pace and review feedback loops.
Illustrations were an immalimation of may resources, inspiration, and source materials. All drawing are hand illustrated and composed by the author. Christopher Reid Becker.
Illustration of the idea the UX design and prototyping requires failing fast.
Procreate using many layers.
Illustartion of Design sytems as lego piece.
With procreate I could both freehand drawing as well as trace existing source material to make sure the likeness and communication qualities came through in each visual, diagram, or illustration.
Peter Ferdinand Drucker was an Austrian American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of modern management theory.
The book published in March 2025 was part of BPB's march madness book launch to correlate with the march madness NCAA basketball tournament.
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Some writing samples
Here is sample of the writing from the book
Sample: Chapter 3: User Experience as a Team Endeavor - The Design Part
The design part is hard. UX designers must consider the criteria applicable to solving
problems. Great software is the by-product of countless considerations, millions of design
iterations, numerous failed prototypes, and many rejected ideas. Design members must
have fortitude and git to keep at it. We can make our world better through design and
software. The level of effort from design members to create solutions that scale around
the globe is tremendous and frankly requires people who care about the product and their
users. Creativity can be elusive, and businesses do not always understand or value its
contributions, but it is worth it. The design part is skilled at addressing these challenges,
and we lean on human-centered design methods to infuse empathy, creativity, utility,
simplicity, accessibility, and so much more into every nook and cranny of our outcomes. pg 35 -
Outcomes & Key Take Aways
UX and Product Design is a growth field but anyone looking to grow here must learn a lot and stand on shoulder of those that came before them.
UX and Product Design is a growth field but anyone looking to grow here must learn a lot and stand on shoulder of those that came before them.
Working with BPB publishing, we collaborated and distrubuted knowledge into the world.
1. Planned, outlined, wrote, and illustrated 14 chapters in under 12 months.
2. Delivered 216+ pages of writing on UX.
3. Created an effective writing > editing > polishing > technical polish process.
4. Produced unique hand illustrated samples.
5.Educated the team on improving UX design artifacts that focus on improved human centered principles as well as help communicate the opportunities in a user's experience.
Human centered design is not a luxury that only big teams get to concentrate on. A UX designers our role is add clarity and visualize the problems that exist in our systems. By building and sharing how to improve human centered methods and effecive design strategies I taught way that new and expereience design can improve thier own execution of the design process.
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