Joe Natoli - Think First: My No-Nonsense Approach to Creating Successful Products, Memorable User Experiences + Very Happy Customers

A very practical guide to success in business.

For designers and developers working on any interactive project, understanding strategy and user experience is an increasingly necessary skill. Joe Natolis Think First demystifies these foundational ideas and, like any good user experience, is written in a very conversational, easy to read style. Highly recommended!

Think First is a practical guide to UX that makes sense of strategy and structure . Highly recommended!

Nailed it! In the vein of Rework by Jason Fried, Think First is an insightful, iconoclastic handbook. It unrelentingly strips down aspects of software design to the brass tacks. Joe must possess some magical nutri-design juicer which hes used to extract the nutrients of dozens and dozens of textbooks, websites, references and experience and is providing it to us in a single, filled-to-the-rim shot glass of realistic scenarios, approaches and tools.

Joe fundamentally changed the way we approach design. With a new focus on the underlying design principles, we are able to make decisions grounded in fact, not opinions. We now understand the subtle changes that transform a good design into a great design. The practices we now employ are improving every step of our development practice; from prototype to final product.

Joe has always been a step ahead of me, offering expert advice and producing results that one can only hope for. He has always been the consummate professional 5-stars, in every way, every form, every month. Joe is a hard-working problem solver of the first order, and Id give him a 5-star recommendation to anyone , anytime.

Joe effectively and uniquely brings the two worlds of IT and Design (sometimes at odds) together in order to develop a product or system that works for both the business and the customer. Joe is intelligent, insightful, innovative and extremely talented. His experience and reputation precede him.

What youve put together is pure excellence. Im new to UX Design and have already learned essential advice, principles and methods that I can apply to our product. I hope to share this new knowledge with my team in hopes to get our product and features to the high quality weve been reaching for.

Incredible. Joes class is really impressive and really helps me reflect [ on improving ] my work. I feel like Im learning more in this course than in all the time I spent in college!

Greatest UX course I have ever taken. Joes numerous real-world examples provide an in-depth understanding of UX. Whether youre a developer or designer, this course will show you what UX really is.

Great knowledge and insight! Joe walks you through the course with ease, playfulness, humor, and great insight. With conversation-like ease, Joe exposes insights that you may have never thought of, reasoning behind each, and clear solutions. This course has so many transferable qualities; you will benefit, regardless of the type of design your career path follows.

I found that my knowledge of user experience design didnt even scratch the surface of what Joe covers. I now realize the importance and necessity of knowing and understanding each element of User Experience and how each element is essential to the overall quality and success of your site or app.

Mr. Fred Rogers said in an interview The best teacher in the world is somebody who loves what he or she does and just loves it in front of you. Going through this course, I was reminded of this phrase over and over again. Joe clearly loves what he does, and he inspired me to love UX too! The course material is extremely well thought out, and it is delivered with a contagious joy. Wonderful experience.

Except where other works are noted within, this book is 2015 by Joe Natoli, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Photography by Jarred Sleeth.

ISBN 978-0-9863448-1-7

Published in Baltimore, Maryland, USA by Twofold LLC.

Give Good UX is a registered trademark of Twofold LLC.

Twofold/Give Good UX titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use.

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for Eli, who has always believed.