User-Centered Development Book

• Introduction
• What's Inside?
• Who Is This For?
• Getting Started
• Technologies Used
• Download PDF
• Conclusion

Introduction

Welcome to the User-Centered Development Book repository! This book is all about creating software as a service (SaaS) with a strong focus on the user experience. It's designed to help you build products that people will love. The "book" is a living document and work-in-progress. It is still a personal experiment and at this time a collection of my personal notes.

What's Inside?

This book covers a wide range of topics related to user-centered development, including:

• User research and personas
• Usability testing and iteration
• Design thinking and prototyping
• Accessibility and inclusive design
• Metrics and KPIs for user experience

Who Is This For?

This book is perfect for:

• SaaS developers who want to improve their user experience skills
• UX designers looking to understand the development process better
• Product managers who want to create user-centered products
• Startup founders building their first SaaS product

Getting Started

This book is written using org-mode. To create a PDF version of the book, the repository provides a containerized build.

Prerequisites

• Podman (or Docker) — https://podman-desktop.io/downloads
• just (task runner) — https://github.com/casey/just
• PowerShell (pwsh) — required by the justfile; optional if running podman commands directly: https://learn.microsoft.com/powershell/
• Emacs (with org-mode) — optional for local exports: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

Quick steps (recommended)

1. Clone the repository.
2. Pull the build container: just pull-container
3. Build the PDF: just build-pdf Output: ./public/pdf/
4. Build Markdown or HTML: just build-md just build-html

Direct podman example (if pwsh not available) podman run --rm --userns=keep-id -e "PUBLISH=PDF" -v "$(pwd):/home/book:Z" code.metalisp.dev/marcuskammer/org-builder:latest

Exporting locally with Emacs (optional)

• Open an org file in Emacs and use the Org export dispatcher: C-c C-e — choose l (LaTeX/PDF) or h (HTML). This is useful for previewing a single chapter without the container.

Notes

• The repo treats src/*.org as canonical. Prefer editing source files, not files in public/.
• There are no automated tests or linters in this repo.

Troubleshooting

• If Podman isn't available, Docker can be used; the podman command shown may need adjustment.
• If just fails because pwsh isn't installed, run the podman command directly.

Technologies Used

This book is written using org-mode, a powerful format for note-taking and documentation. The development and tooling involve Emacs Lisp, a powerful programming language for extending the Emacs text editor.

Download PDF

Download the book as PDF file

Conclusion

I hope you find this book helpful in your journey towards creating user-centered SaaS products. Happy reading!