Quantum leaps in technology are enabling organizations to observe and measure people’s behavior in real time, communicate internally at extraordinary speed, and innovate continuously. These new, software-driven technologies are transforming the way companies interact with their customers, employees, and other stakeholders.This is no mere tech issue. The transformation requires a complete rethinking of the way we organize and manage work. And, as software becomes ever more integrated into every product and service, making this big shift is quickly becoming the key operational challenge for businesses of all kinds. We need a management model that doesn’t merely account for, but actually embraces, continuous change. Yet the truth is, most organizations continue to rely on outmoded, industrial-era operational models. They structure their teams, manage their people, and evolve their organizational cultures the way they always have.Now, organizations are emerging, and thriving, based on their capacity to sense and respond instantly to customer and employee behaviors. In Sense and Respond, Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden, leading tech experts and founders of the global Lean UX movement, vividly show how these companies operate, highlighting the new mindset and skills needed to lead and manage them—and to continuously innovate within them.In illuminating and instructive business examples, you’ll see organizations with distinctively new operating principles: shifting from managing outputs to what the authors call “outcome-focused management”; forming self-guided teams that can read and react to a fast-changing environment; creating a learning-all-the-time culture that can understand and respond to new customer behaviors and the data they generate; and finally, developing in everyone at the company the new universal skills of customer listening, assessment, and response.This engaging and practical book provides the crucial new operational and management model to help you and your organization win in a world of continuous change.

    Because no one can be an expert on everything, designers have always had to scramble to find the information and know-how required to make a design work - until now. Universal Principles of Design is the first cross-disciplinary reference of design. Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, this book pairs clear explanations of the design concepts featured with visual examples of those concepts applied in practice. From the 80/20 rule to chunking, from baby-face bias to Ockham's razor, and from self-similarity to storytelling, 100 design concepts are defined and illustrated for readers to expand their knowledge.This landmark reference will become the standard for designers, engineers, architects, and students who seek to broaden and improve their design expertise.

    In user experience, stories help us to understand our users, learn about their goals, explain our research, and demonstrate our design ideas. In this book, Quesenbery and Brooks teach you how to craft and tell your own unique stories to improve your designs.

    

    This handbook equips people in various lines of work to become more innovative. It provides specific guidance for bringing new and lasting value into the world. The key ingredient to successful innovation is the everyday practice of Human-Centered Design: the discipline of developing solutions in the service of people. Every story of a good innovation—whether it's a new product, a new service, a new business model or a new form of governance—begins and ends with people. It starts with careful discernment of human needs, and concludes with solutions that meet or exceed personal expectations. This handbook is your essential resource for innovation. It's a compact reference book describing thirty-six methods of Human-Centered Design, organized by way of three key design skills: - Looking: Methods for observing human experience - Understanding: Methods for analyzing challenges and opportunities - Making: Methods for envisioning future possibilities Each featured method includes a brief description; a pictorial example; a listing of benefits; a sampling of method combinations; and a quick guide with helpful hints for initial application. The full collection of methods is small enough to digest quickly, yet large enough to address myriad challenges. This book does not prescribe a formulaic innovation process. Rather, it introduces a versatile set of methods for practicing Human-Centered Design as a daily discipline in order to be more innovative and drive sustainable growth. Learn more at: luma-institute.com

    A daily tool of the trade for specialists. Handbook of Usability Testing gives you practical, step-by-step guidelines in plain English. Written by Jeffrey Rubin, it arms beginners with the full complement of proven testing tools and techniques. From software, GUIs, and technical documentation, to medical instruments, VCRs, and exercise bikes, no matter what your product, you'll learn to design and administer extremely reliable tests to ensure that people find it easy and desirable to use. * Requires no engineering or human factors training * A rigorous, step-by-step approach--with an eye to common gaffes and pitfalls--saves you months of trial and error * Liberally peppered with real-life examples and case histories taken from a wide range of industries * Packed with extremely usable templates, models, tables, test plans, and other indispensable tools of the trade

    Observing the User Experience will help you bridge that gap to understand what your users want and need from your product, and whether they'll be able to use what you've created.Filled with real-world experience and a wealth of practical information, this book presents a complete toolbox of techniques to help designers and developers see through the eyes of their users. It provides in-depth coverage of 13 user experience research techniques that will provide a basis for developing better products, whether they're Web, software or mobile based. In addition, it's written with an understanding of how software is developed in the real world, taking tight budgets, short schedules, and existing processes into account.

    They don't make us feel happier or richer. Why are they not designed as well as the products we love to use such as an Apple iPod or a BMW? The 'developed' world has moved beyond the industrial mindset of products and the majority of 'products' that we encounter are actually parts of a larger service network. These services comprise people, technology, places, time and objects that form the entire service experience. In most cases some of the touchpoints are designed, but in many situations the service as a complete ecology just "happens" and is not consciously designed at all, which is why they don't feel like iPods or BMWs. One of the goals of service design is to redress this imbalance and to design services that have the same appeal and experience as the products we love, whether it is buying insurance, going on holiday, filling in a tax return, or having a heart transplant. Another important aspect of service design is its potential for design innovation and intervention in the big issues facing us, such as transport, sustainability, government, finance, communications and healthcare. Given that we live in a service and information age, a practical, thoughtful book about how to design better services is urgently needed.

    This extended work is the culmination of forty years' research and shows the belief that we all can, and do, design, and that we can learn to design better. The creative mind continues to have the power to surprise and this book aims to nurture and extend this creativity. Neither the earlier editions, nor this book, are intended as authoritative prescriptions of how designers should think but provide helpful advice on how to develop an understanding of design.In this fourth edition, Bryan Lawson continues to try and understand how designers think, to explore how they might be better educated and to develop techniques to assist them in their task. Some chapters have been revised and three completely new chapters added. The book is now intended to be read in conjunction with What Designers Know which is a companion volume. Some of the ideas previously discussed in the third edition of How Designers Think are now explored more thoroughly in What Designers Know. For the first time this fourth edition works towards a model of designing and the skills that collectively constitute the design process.

    Through clear explanation, specific examples, and practical exercises, Dr. Miller offers a step-by-step process for developing your skillfulness in empathic listening. With a solid basis in sixty years of scientific research, these communication skills are not limited to professionals, and can be learned and applied in your everyday life. Instead of assuming that you know the meaning of what you think you heard, empathic listening lets you develop a more accurate understanding and prevent miscommunication. Empathic understanding can help to deepen personal relationships, alleviate conflict, communicate across differences, and promote positive change. The author also discusses skills for expressing yourself clearly, and for strengthening close relationships and friendships. Through empathic understanding you have access to life experience far beyond your own, and over time, listening well and deeply becomes a way of being, fostering a compassionate and patient acceptance of human frailties--those of others as well as your own. ""The quality of empathic listening that Carl Rogers brought to us decades ago, that unlocks treasures of intimacy, trust, peace and healing, is alive and well in Bill Miller's own unique voice, as he extends the meanings of this vital relational element for today's world. Readily integrated into our everyday lives and the larger cultures of human conflict, my hope is that we choose to live out the delicate yet strong principles of connection that Listening Well offers us."" --Gay Leah Barfield, Co-Founder and Former Director, Carl Rogers Institute for Peace, Center for Studies of the Person, La Jolla, California ""If there ever was a time for Listening Well, it is now. In its pages, we learn to use our ears to dissolve differences, open hearts, and build bridges. Nothing more needs saying."" --Scott D. Miller, Director, International Center for Clinical Excellence ""Listening Well is a super moon in the dark night sky: brilliant, absorbing, and illuminating. Bill Miller, co-developer of the revolutionary motivational interviewing, blends art and science in teaching the quintessential skills of listening and in fostering human connection."" --John C. Norcross, Professor of Psychology, University of Scranton ""Listening Well is a terrific, hands-on book for individuals or groups dedicated to caring relationships. Full of insight and practical exercises to improve listening skills, I highly recommend it to professionals and lay people alike."" --Debra Engquist, Retired Pastor ""Listening Well is about much more than listening. This short, easy-to-read book provides a brief course in human relationships. With many useful explanations, examples, and exercises, the author demonstrates the what, why, and how of empathy in human interaction. The book is eminently useful for those who want to or need to improve their listening and relationship skills at work or in personal settings."" --Howard Kirschenbaum, Former Chair, Counseling and Human Development, University of Rochester Dr. William R. Miller is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico, with over forty years of experience in teaching empathic understanding. His many books include Lovingkindness, Quantum Change, Motivational Interviewing, and Portals: Two Lives Intertwined by Adoption.

    You'll get several case studies, including Airbnb, along with interviews with UX strategists from different work environments (startup, agency, and enterprise) about their roles and experience.With this book, UX designers, product stakeholders, and startup founders will learn how to: • Conduct a competitive analysis on the online marketplace• Perform guerrilla user research for your MVP• Design for conversion and develop a funnel matrix for understanding customer acquisition• Extract innovative online opportunities from market research• Validate customer research with continuous feedback loops• Adapt traditional and contemporary business approaches (such as Lean Startup) to implement a successful strategy

    This practical guide explains how to create and use personas to make your site more successful. The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas takes you through each step of persona creation, including tips for conducting qualitative user research, new ways to apply quantitative research (such as surveys) to persona creation, various methods for generating persona segmentation, and proven techniques for making personas realistic. You'll also learn how to use personas effectively, from directing overall business strategy and prioritizing features and content to making detailed decisions about information architecture, content, and design.

    People unconsciously perform ultraordinary actions every day, from throwing a jacket over a chair back to claim the seat, or placing something in the teeth when all hands are full. These "thoughtless acts" reveal the subtle but crucial ways people behave in a world not always perfectly tailored to their needs. Thoughtless Acts? is a collection of dozens of (often humorous) snapshots capturing such fleeting adaptations and minor exploitations. This method of observation demonstrates the kind of common-sense approach that can inspire designers and anyone involved in creative endeavors. Thoughtless Acts? is a privileged peek at how IDEO creates the people-friendly products, services, and spaces for which they are so widely recognized.

     Universal Methods of Design serves as an invaluable compendium of methods that can be easily referenced and used by cross-disciplinary teams in nearly any design project.   Methods and techniques are organized alphabetically for ongoing, quick reference. Each method is presented in a two-page format. The left-hand page contains a concise description of the method, accompanied by references for further reading. On the right-hand page, images and cases studies for each method are presented visually. The relevant phases for design application are highlighted as numbered icons along the right side of the page, from phases 1 (planning) through 5 (launch and monitor).Build more meaningful products with these methods and more: A/B Testing, Affinity Diagramming, Behavioral Mapping, Bodystorming, Contextual Design, Critical Incident Technique, Directed Storytelling, Flexible Modeling, Image Boards, Graffiti Walls, Heuristic Evaluation, Parallel Prototyping, Simulation Exercises, Touchstone Tours, and Weighted Matrix.  This essential guide:Dismantles the myth that user research methods are complicated, expensive, and time-consumingCreates a shared meaning for cross-disciplinary design teamsIllustrates methods with compelling visualizations and case studiesCharacterizes each method at a glanceIndicates when methods are best employed to help prioritize appropriate design research strategiesUniversal Methods of Design is an essential resource for designers of all levels and specializations.

    Designers of digital technology products no longer regard their job as designing a physical object--beautiful or utilitarian--but as designing our interactions with it. In Designing Interactions, award-winning designer Bill Moggridge introduces us to forty influential designers who have shaped our interaction with technology. Moggridge, designer of the first laptop computer (the GRiD Compass, 1981) and a founder of the design firm IDEO, tells us these stories from an industry insider's viewpoint, tracing the evolution of ideas from inspiration to outcome. The innovators he interviews--including Will Wright, creator of The Sims, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, and Doug Engelbart, Bill Atkinson, and others involved in the invention and development of the mouse and the desktop--have been instrumental in making a difference in the design of interactions. Their stories chart the history of entrepreneurial design development for technology.Moggridge and his interviewees discuss such questions as why a personal computer has a window in a desktop, what made Palm's handheld organizers so successful, what turns a game into a hobby, why Google is the search engine of choice, and why 30 million people in Japan choose the i-mode service for their cell phones. And Moggridge tells the story of his own design process and explains the focus on people and prototypes that has been successful at IDEO--how the needs and desires of people can inspire innovative designs and how prototyping methods are evolving for the design of digital technology.Designing Interactions is illustrated with more than 700 images, with color throughout. Accompanying the book is a DVD that contains segments from all the interviews intercut with examples of the interactions under discussion.Interviews with: Bill Atkinson - Durrell Bishop - Brendan Boyle - Dennis Boyle - Paul Bradley - Duane Bray - Sergey Brin - Stu Card - Gillian Crampton Smith - Chris Downs- Tony Dunne - John Ellenby - Doug Englebart - Jane Fulton Suri - Bill Gaver - Bing Gordon - Rob Haitani - Jeff Hawkins - Matt Hunter - Hiroshi Ishii - Bert Keely - David Kelley - Rikako Kojima - Brenda Laurel - David Liddle - Lavrans L?vlie - John Maeda - Paul Mercer - Tim Mott - Joy Mountford - Takeshi Natsuno - Larry Page - Mark Podlaseck - Fiona Raby - Cordell Ratzlaff - Ben Reason - Jun Rekimoto - Steve Rogers - Fran Samalionis - Larry Tesler - Bill Verplank - Terry Winograd - Will Wright