If you are an organization that really needs to start grokking UX this book is also for you. " -- Chris Bernard, User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft User experience design is the discipline of creating a useful and usable Web site or application--one that's easily navigated and meets the needs of both the site owner and its users. But there's a lot more to successful UX design than knowing the latest Web technologies or design trends: It takes diplomacy, project management skills, and business savvy. That's where this book comes in. Authors Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler show you how to integrate UX principles into your project from start to finish. - Understand the various roles in UX design, identify stakeholders, and enlist their support- Obtain consensus from your team on project objectives- Define the scope of your project and avoid mission creep- Conduct user research and document your findings- Understand and communicate user behavior with personas- Design and prototype your application or site- Make your product findable with search engine optimization- Plan for development, product rollout, and ongoing quality assurance

    Expert Secrets helps people find their message and then create a mass movement of people who will pay them for that advice.

    But David Airey’s “Logo Design Love” is something different: it’s a guide for designers (and clients) who want to understand what this mysterious business is all about. Written in reader-friendly, concise language, with a minimum of designer jargon, Airey gives a surprisingly clear explanation of the process, using a wide assortment of real-life examples to support his points. Anyone involved in creating visual identities, or wanting to learn how to go about it, will find this book invaluable. - Tom Geismar, Chermayeff & GeismarIn Logo Design Love, Irish graphic designer David Airey brings the best parts of his wildly popular blog of the same name to the printed page. Just as in the blog, David fills each page of this simple, modern-looking book with gorgeous logos and real world anecdotes that illustrate best practices for designing brand identity systems that last. David not only shares his experiences working with clients, including sketches and final results of his successful designs, but uses the work of many well-known designers to explain why well-crafted brand identity systems are important, how to create iconic logos, and how to best work with clients to achieve success as a designer. Contributors include Gerard Huerta, who designed the logos for Time magazine and Waldenbooks; Lindon Leader, who created the current FedEx brand identity system as well as the CIGNA logo; and many more. Readers will learn:• Why one logo is more effective than another• How to create their own iconic designs• What sets some designers above the rest• Best practices for working with clients• 25 practical design tips for creating logos that last

    By instructing writers in the basics of self-publicity and readership development, 'Get Known Before the Book Deal' increases their odds of landing a book deal and having greater impact on sales when their book comes out.

    With this practical book, you’ll learn how to design effective microinteractions: the small details that exist inside and around features. How can users change a setting? How do they turn on mute, or know they have a new email message?Through vivid, real-world examples from today’s devices and applications, author Dan Saffer walks you through a microinteraction’s essential parts, then shows you how to use them in a mobile app, a web widget, and an appliance. You’ll quickly discover how microinteractions can change a product from one that’s tolerated into one that’s treasured.Explore a microinteraction’s structure: triggers, rules, feedback, modes, and loopsLearn the types of triggers that initiate a microinteractionCreate simple rules that define how your microinteraction can be usedHelp users understand the rules with feedback, using graphics, sounds, and vibrationsUse modes to let users set preferences or modify a microinteractionExtend a microinteraction’s life with loops, such as “Get data every 30 seconds”

    Based on Donald Miller’s bestselling book Building a StoryBrand, Claire Diaz-Ortiz applies the seven principles of the StoryBrand Framework to help you build an effective, long-lasting social media plan for your brand. Social Media Success for Every Brand teaches readers how to incorporate the StoryBrand 7-Part Framework into their social media channels to increase engagement and see better results. Readers will understand exactly what they need to do with their social media to drive growth to their organization through the practical guidance of the five-point SHARE model:STORYHOWAUDIENCEREACHEXCELLENCESocial Media Success for Every Brand does not require the reader to be familiar with Building a StoryBrand but provides enough foundation to prepare the reader for practical success with their social media content. Together with the StoryBrand Framework, Claire’s SHARE model will help boost customer engagement and grow the organization’s brand awareness and revenues.

    This book recognizes that we’ve come to a place where people can represent their real identity—both personal and professional—and use the social filters on the Web to connect with the world around them.” —Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer, Facebook “...A must-read for CEOs and other executives who want to understand Facebook and more importantly take the right actions to stay relevant and stay competitive.” —David Mather, President, Hoovers, Inc. The ‘90s were about the World Wide Web of information and the power of linking web pages. Today it’s about the World Wide Web of people and the power of the social graph. Online social networks are fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and interact. They offer businesses immense opportunities to transform customer relationships for profit: opportunities that touch virtually every business function, from sales and marketing to recruiting, collaboration to executive decision-making, product development to innovation. In The Facebook Era, Clara Shih systematically outlines the business promise of social networking and shows how to transform that promise into reality. Shih is singularly qualified to write this book: One of the world’s top business social networking thought leaders and practitioners, she created the first business application on Facebook and leads salesforce.com’s partnershipwith Facebook. Through case studies, examples, and a practical how-to guide, Shih helps individuals, companies, and organizations understand and take advantage of social networks to transform customer relationships for sales and marketing. Shih systematically identifies your best opportunities to use social networks to source new business opportunities, target marketing messages, find the best employees, and engage customers as true partners throughout the innovation cycle. Finally, she presents a detailed action plan for positioning your company to win in today’s radically new era: The Facebook Era. Join the conversation—www.thefacebookera.com. Fan the book—www.facebook.com/thefacebookera. Right this minute, more than 1.5 million people are on Facebook. They’re interacting with friends—and talking about your brands. They’re learning about your business—and providing valuable information you can use to market and sell. In the Facebook Era, you’re closer to your customers than ever before. Read this book, and then go get them! Clara Shih offers best practices for overcoming obstacles to success, ranging from privacy and security issues to brand misrepresentation, and previews social networking trends that are just beginning to emerge—helping you get ahead of the curve and ahead of the competition, too.  Includes a practical 60-day action plan for positioning your company to win in the Facebook Era For companies of all sizes, in all industries—and business functions ranging from marketing to operations By Clara Shih, creator of Faceconnector, the first business application on Facebook Learn how to… Understand how social networking transforms our personal and professional relationshipsWhy social networking will have business impact comparable to the Internet Use online social networks to hypertarget your customersHone in on precise audience segments and then tailor custom campaigns with powerful personal and social relevance Define and implement your optimal social networking brand strategyAsk the right questions, set the right goals and priorities, and execute on it Implement effective governance and complianceUnderstand and mitigate the risks of social networking/Web 2.0 initiatives

    Communications expert Carmine Gallo has studied and analyzed the very best of Jobs's performances, offering point-by-point examples, tried-and-true techniques, and proven presentation secrets in 18 "scenes," including:Develop a messianic sense of purposeReveal the Conquering heroChannel your inner ZenStage your presentation with propsMake it look effortlessWith this revolutionary approach, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to sell your ideas, share your enthusiasm, and wow your audience the Steve Jobs way."No other leader captures an audience like Steve Jobs does and, like no other book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs captures the formula Steve uses to enthrall audiences."--Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group"Now you can learn from the best there is--both Jobs and Gallo. No matter whether you are a novice presenter or a professional speaker like me, you will read and reread this book with the same enthusiasm that people bring to their iPods."--David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR and World Wide Rave

    Start using it strategically. Identify specific, actionable goals. Apply business discipline and proven best practices. Stop fearing risks. Start mitigating them. Measure performance. Get results. You can. This book shows you how. Jason Falls and Erik Deckers serve up practical social media techniques and metrics for building brands, strengthening awareness, improving service, optimizing R&D, driving better leads--and closing more sales. "Conversations" and "communities" are wonderful, but they're not enough. Get this book and get what you really want from social media: profits. Think social media's a passing fad? Too risky? Just a toy? Too soft and fuzzy? Not for your business? Wake up! It's where your customers are. And it ain't going away. Does that suck? No. It doesn't. Do social media right, and all those great business buzzwords come true. Actionable. Measurable. And...wait for it...here comes the big one. Profitable. Damn profitable. Want to know how to do it right? We'll show you. And, yeah, we know how because we've done it. This is the bullshit-free, lie-free, fluff-free, blessedly non-New-Age real deal. You're going to learn how to use social media to deliver absolutely killer customer service. How to R&D stuff people actually want. Develop scads of seriously qualified leads. You'll figure out what you want. You know, the little things like profits, market share, loyalty, and brand power. You'll figure out how to measure it. And then you'll go get it. One more thing. We know what scares you about social media. Screwing up (a.k.a., your mug on the front page of The Wall Street Journal). So we'll tell you what to do so that won't happen. Ever. No B.S. in this book. Just facts. Metrics. Best practices. Stuff to warm the hearts of your CFO, CEO, all your C-whatevers. And, yeah, you. So get your head out from under the pillow. Get your butt in gear. Let's go make some money.

    They are the struggle to be heard in a world of media noise and clamor. Today, most brand messages and mass appeals for causes are drowned out before they even reach us. But a few consistently break through the din, using the only tool that has ever moved minds and changed behavior—great stories.With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, viral storyteller and advertising expert Jonah Sachs takes readers into a fascinating world of seemingly insurmountable challenges and enormous opportunity. You’ll discover how:• Social media tools are driving a return to the oral tradition, in which stories that matter rise above the fray• Marketers have become today’s mythmakers, providing society with explanation, meaning, and ritual• Memorable stories based on timeless themes build legions of eager evangelists• Marketers and audiences can work together to create deeper meaning and stronger partnerships in building a better world• Brands like Old Spice, The Story of Stuff, Nike, the Tea Party, and Occupy Wall Street created and sustained massive viral buzzWinning the Story Wars is a call to arms for business communicators to cast aside broken traditions and join a revolution to build the iconic brands of the future. It puts marketers in the role of heroes with a chance to transform not just their craft but the enterprises they represent. After all, success in the story wars doesn’t come just from telling great stories, but from learning to live them.

    How do you make your readers believe your characters are falling in love? How do you show that sizzle of attraction? How do you write a good kissing scene? How do you bring in the much-needed tension but still have your characters flirting and getting closer? In this book I take one of my romance novels (Acting Married) and I go through the entire novel with you, basically interrupting myself to tell you what I was thinking as I was writing the novel. It's like watching a movie with commentary. I pull back the curtain so you can see why I started it the way I did, why I decided to put certain scenes in, and what pushes the romance forward in the book. I preface all this with what I consider the essentials of a good romance novel, and I end with my list of well-loved romance tropes that you can draw from in order to write your own bestselling romance novel.

    Using a layout style that was later copied by Wired, McLuhan and coauthor/designer Quentin Fiore combine word and image to illustrate and enact the ideas that were first put forward in the dense and poorly organized Understanding Media. McLuhan's ideas about the nature of media, the increasing speed of communication, and the technological basis for our understanding of who we are come to life in this slender volume. Although originally printed in 1967, the art and style in The Medium is the Massage seem as fresh today as in the summer of love, and the ideas are even more resonant now that computer interfaces are becoming gateways to the global village.

    What is especially useful is that he does not just stick with small startups, let alone dreamy “inventors”. He finds innovation in big companies and even within governments.' - Matt Ridley, The Times__________________________David Rowan travels the globe in search of the most exciting and pioneering startups building the future. He’s got to know the founders of WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Xiaomi, Didi, Nest, Twitter and countless other ambitious entrepreneurs disrupting businesses in almost every sector. And yet too often the companies they’re disrupting don’t get it. They think they can innovate through jargon: with talk of change agents and co-creation gurus, ideas portals and webinars, make-a-thons and hackfests, paradigm shifts and pilgrimages to Silicon Valley. It’s mostly pointless innovation theatre — corporate nonsense that has little to do with delivering real change. But during this quest he's also discovered some genuinely exciting and transformative approaches to innovation, often in places you might least expect. Get ready for:· The airline that rewards passengers for walking their dog· The bank that performs surgery· The country that’s an app store And many more. Packed full of tips for anyone looking for radical ways to adapt and thrive in the digital age, this carefully curated selection of stories will reveal ideas for creating genuine innovation from some of the world’s most inspiring leaders.___________________________

    The first and only comprehensive guide to content marketing, this book explains the social, analytical, and creative aspects of modern marketing that are necessary to succeed on the web. By first covering the theory behind web and content marketing and then detailing it in practice, it shows how it is not only critical to modern business but is also a lot of fun.

    The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality video games. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses—one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer—and will understand how to do it.