User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play


Cliff Kuang - 2019
    Spanning over a century of sweeping changes, from women's rights to the Great Depression to World War II to the rise of the digital era, this book unpacks the ways in which the world has been--and continues to be--remade according to the principles of the once-obscure discipline of user-experience design.In this essential text, Kuang and Fabricant map the hidden rules of the designed world and shed light on how those rules have caused our world to change--an underappreciated but essential history that's pieced together for the first time. Combining the expertise and insight of a leading journalist and a pioneering designer, User Friendly provides a definitive, thoughtful, and practical perspective on a topic that has rapidly gone from arcane to urgent to inescapable. In User Friendly, Kuang and Fabricant tell the whole story for the first time--and you'll never interact with technology the same way again.

Remote Research: Real Users, Real Time, Real Research


Nate Bolt - 2010
    In Remote Research, Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte teach you how to design and conduct remote research studies, top to bottom, with little more than a phone and a laptop. TESTIMONIALS "Nate and Tony have done it! They've described beautifully one of the user experience profession's best-kept secrets-conducting remote usability tests. This book is a must-have for anyone thinking about remote testing, since it tackles everything you need from soup to nuts. I can't wait to get a copy for my own bookshelf. Oh, it also will melt your face remotely." ?Jared Spool CEO and Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering "Remote Research is filled with sage advice, entertaining case studies, methods, and clear procedures that will benefit both new and experienced user researchers. Remote Research is an absorbing book that should be on the reading list of every user researcher. Kudos to Bolt and Tulathimutte for an engaging and informative guide to better remote research." ?Chauncey Wilson Senior Manager, AEC User Research, Autodesk, Inc. "The techniques in this book will make every designer's and user researcher's life much easier. Nate and Tony use the attitude and power of Web 2.0 technologies to create a new way of thinking about user experience research. They share their expertise clearly, concisely, and with a great sense of humor, giving practitioners step-by-step details to conduct remote research of virtually any complexity." ?Mike Kuniavsky author, Observing the User Experience "No longer must you only test your interfaces with people who come to your office or some expensive lab. So stop doing boring research! Stop having a boring life! Read this book!" ?Mark Trammell User Researcher, Twitter

Thinking with Type


Ellen Lupton - 2004
    What type of font to use? How big? How should those letters, words, and paragraphs be aligned, spaced, ordered, shaped, and otherwise manipulated? In this groundbreaking new primer, leading design educator and historian Ellen Lupton provides clear and concise guidance for anyone learning or brushing up on their typographic skills. Thinking with Type is divided into three sections: letter, text, and grid. Each section begins with an easy-to-grasp essay that reviews historical, technological, and theoretical concepts, and is then followed by a set of practical exercises that bring the material covered to life. Sections conclude with examples of work by leading practitioners that demonstrate creative possibilities (along with some classic no-no's to avoid).

Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS


Jonathan Snook - 2011
    There is no library within here for you to download or install. SMACSS is a way to examine your design process and as a way to fit those rigid frameworks into a flexible thought process. It is an attempt to document a consistent approach to site development when using CSS. And really, who isn’t building a site with CSS these days?!Get to know Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS

Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web


Christina Wodtke - 2002
    This book is useful for designers, project managers, programmers, and other information architecture practitioners.

The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web


Dave Shea - 2005
    Proving once and for all that standards-compliant design does not equal dull design, this inspiring tome uses examples from the landmark CSS Zen Garden site as the foundation for discussions on how to create beautiful, progressive CSS-based Web sites.

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity [With CDROM]


Avinash Kaushik - 2009
    "Web Analytics 2.0" presents a new framework that will permanently change how you think about analytics. It provides specific recommendations for creating an actionable strategy, applying analytical techniques correctly, solving challenges such as measuring social media and multichannel campaigns, achieving optimal success by leveraging experimentation, and employing tactics for truly listening to your customers. The book will help your organization become more data driven while you become a super analysis ninja Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems


Hugh Beyer - 1997
    This is a practical, hands-on guide for anyone trying to design systems that reflect the way customers want to do their work. The authors developed Contextual Design, the method discussed here, through their work with teams struggling to design products and internal systems. In this book, you'll find the underlying principles of the method and how to apply them to different problems, constraints, and organizational situations.Contextual Design enables you to+ gather detailed data about how people work and use systems + develop a coherent picture of a whole customer population + generate systems designs from a knowledge of customer work+ diagram a set of existing systems, showing their relationships, inconsistencies, redundancies, and omissions

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


Joe Natoli - 2015
    Designing anything for people is tough, because we’re inherently complex and...well...messy. Which means that things like market share and ROI don’t come easy. But time and effort spent finding the right problems to solve allows designers, developers and product teams to take quantum leaps forward in exceeding the expectations of everyone involved. In Think First, Joe Natoli shows you exactly how to do this, using lessons learned from his 26 years as a UX consultant to Fortune 100 and 500 organizations. You’ll find proven principles, step-by-step methods and straightforward, jargon-free advice that can be applied to any kind of digital product. Think First proves that while people are indeed messy and complex, designing for them doesn’t have to be. Here’s what a few well-respected UX practitioners and authors had to say about Think First: “A very practical guide to success in business.” – Dr. Don Norman, Director of the DesignLab, UC San Diego and Author of The Design of Everyday Things “Think First is a practical guide to UX that makes sense of strategy and structure. Highly recommended!” – Peter Morville, Bestselling Author of Intertwingled “For designers and developers, understanding strategy and UX is an increasingly necessary skill. Joe Natoli’s Think First demystifies these foundational ideas in a very conversational, easy to read style.” – Ilise Benun, Founder of Marketing-Mentor.com and Author of 7+ Books Author Joe Natoli explains why he believes Think First is unlike any other book on the subject of UX strategy and design: "I didn’t want to write yet another book that covers the narrow, tactical pieces of the design process," he says, "because great design and great UX are the result of multiple activities across multiple people, roles and disciplines. It’s everybody’s business. Think First walks you through everything that must be considered to create great UX — and gives you a roadmap to make it happen." Think First details Joe's no-nonsense approach to creating successful products, powerful user experiences and very happy customers. He share countless lessons learned from more than 26 years as a UX consultant to Fortune 500 and 100 organizations — including a few he's learned the hard way :-) Think First serves as a roadmap to building a solid foundation for UX that’s strong enough to withstand any weather as projects move into design and coding. Here are just some of the things you’ll learn: - Simple user research methods that anyone can perform — even if you’ve never done research of any kind. - The right questions to ask stakeholders and users at the outset of any (and every) project. - The 3 crucial questions you must ask of every client, every time. - How to tell the difference between what people say they need vs. what they really need. - A better, simpler way to generate meaningful UX requirements at the outset of the project. - How to figure out what features and functions will result in great UX and deliver value to both users and the business. - How to avoid scope creep and the never-ending project scenario.

Bulletproof Web Design: Improving Flexibility and Protecting Against Worst-Case Scenarios with XHTML and CSS


Dan Cederholm - 2005
    This work deconstructs a series of real-world Web sites. It provides 10 strategies for creating standards-based designs that provide user control - a component of every Web site.

Understanding Context: Environment, Language, and Information Architecture


Andrew Hinton - 2014
    Now that we live among digital, always-networked products, apps, and places, context is more complicated than ever—starting with "where" and "who" we are.This practical, insightful book provides a powerful toolset to help information architects, UX professionals, and web and app designers understand and solve the many challenges of contextual ambiguity in the products and services they create. You’ll discover not only how to design for a given context, but also how design participates in making context.Learn how people perceive context when touching and navigating digital environmentsSee how labels, relationships, and rules work as building blocks for contextFind out how to make better sense of cross-channel, multi-device products or servicesDiscover how language creates infrastructure in organizations, software, and the Internet of ThingsLearn models for figuring out the contextual angles of any user experience

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation


Tim Brown - 2009
    The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities.This book introduces the idea of design thinking‚ the collaborative process by which the designer′s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people′s needs not only with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short‚ design thinking converts need into demand. It′s a human−centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and more creative.Design thinking is not just applicable to so−called creative industries or people who work in the design field. It′s a methodology that has been used by organizations such as Kaiser Permanente to icnrease the quality of patient care by re−examining the ways that their nurses manage shift change‚ or Kraft to rethink supply chain management. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization‚ product‚ or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Joel on Software


Joel Spolsky - 2004
    For years, Joel Spolsky has done exactly this at www.joelonsoftware.com. Now, for the first time, you can own a collection of the most important essays from his site in one book, with exclusive commentary and new insights from joel.

Beautiful Evidence


Edward R. Tufte - 2006
    Beautiful Evidence is about how seeing turns into showing, how data and evidence turn into explanation. The book identifies excellent and effective methods for showing nearly every kind of information, suggests many new designs (including sparklines), and provides analytical tools for assessing the credibility of evidence presentations (which are seen from both sides: how to produce and how to consume presentations). For alert consumers of presentations, there are chapters on diagnosing evidence corruption and PowerPoint pitches. Beautiful Evidence concludes with two chapters that leave the world of pixel and paper flatland representations - and move onto seeing and thinking in space land, the real-land of three-space and time.

Bottlenecks: Aligning UX Design with User Psychology


David C. Evans - 2017
    The first generation of books on the topic focused on web pages and cognitive psychology. This book covers apps, social media, in-car infotainment, and multiplayer video games, and it explores the crucial roles played by behaviorism, development, personality, and social psychology. Author David Evans is an experimental psychology Ph.D. and senior manager of consumer research at Microsoft who recounts high-stakes case studies in which behavioral theory aligned digital designs with the bottlenecks in human nature to the benefit of users and businesses alike.Innovators in design and students of psychology will learn:The psychological processes determining users' perception of, engagement with, and recommendation of digital innovationsExamples of interfaces before and after simple psychological alignments that vastly enhanced their effectivenessStrategies for marketing and product development in an age of social media and behavioral targetingHypotheses for research that both academics and enterprises can perform to better meet users' needsWho This Book Is ForDesigners and entrepreneurs will use this book to give their innovations an edge on what are increasingly competitive platforms such as apps, bots, in-car apps, augmented reality content. Usability researchers and market researchers will leverage it to enhance their consulting and reporting. Students and lecturers in psychology departments will want it to help land employment in the private sector.