Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works


Janice G. Redish - 2007
    Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won't read very many words on your website -- and what to do about it.-- Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group"There are at least twelve billion web pages out there. Twelve billion voices talking, but saying mostly nothing. If just 1% of those pages followed Ginny's practical, clear advice, the world would be a better place. Fortunately, you can follow her advice for 100% of your own site's pages, so pick up a copy of Letting Go of the Words and start communicating effectively today."--Lou Rosenfeld, co-author, Information Architecture for the World Wide WebOn the web, whether on the job or at home, we usually want to grab information and use it quickly. We go to the web to get answers to questions or to complete tasks - to gather information, reading only what we need. We are all too busy to read much on the web.This book helps you write successfully for web users. It offers strategy, process, and tactics for creating or revising content for the web. It helps you plan, organize, write, design, and test web content that will make web users come back again and again to your site.Learn how to create usable and useful content for the web from the master - Ginny Redish. Ginny has taught and mentored hundreds of writers, information designers, and content owners in the principles and secrets of creating web information that is easy to scan, easy to read, and easy to use.This practical, informative book will help anyone creating web content do it better.Features* Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book. * Written in easy-to-read style with many befores and afters.* Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents.* Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.Janice (Ginny) Redish has been helping clients and colleagues communicate clearly for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, her focus has been helping people create usable and useful web sites. She is co-author of two classic books on usability: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas), and User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos), and is the recipient of many awards.

Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose


Nicole Fenton - 2014
    You’ll learn how to write web copy that addresses your readers’ needs and supports your business goals.Learn from real-world examples and interviews with people who put these ideas into action every day: Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic, Tiffani Jones Brown of Pinterest, Gabrielle Blair of Design Mom, Mandy Brown of Editorially, Randy J. Hunt of Etsy, Sarah Richards of GOV.UK, and more.Topics:* Write marketing copy, interface flows, blog posts, legal policies, and emails* Develop behind-the-scenes documents like mission statements, survey questions, and project briefs* Find your voice and adapt your tone for different situations* Build trust and foster relationships with readers* Make a simple style guide and collaborate with your team

Interdisciplinary Interaction Design: A Visual Guide to Basic Theories, Models and Ideas for Thinking and Designing for Interactive Web Design and Dig


James Pannafino - 2012
    It addresses how people deal with words, read images, explore physical space, think about time and motion, and how actions and responses affect human behavior. Various disciplines make up interaction design, such as industrial design, cognitive psychology, user interface design and many others. It is my hope that this book is a starting point for creating a visual language to enhance the understanding of interdisciplinary theories within interaction design. The book uses concise descriptions, visual metaphors and comparative diagrams to explain each term's meaning. Many ideas in this book are based on timeless principles that will function in varying contexts.

Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder


David Weinberger - 2007
    Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder

Remote: Office Not Required


David Heinemeier Hansson - 2013
    Moms in particular will welcome this trend.  A full 60% wish they had a flexible work option. But companies see advantages too in the way remote work increases their talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens their real estate footprint, and improves the ability to conduct business across multiple time zones, to name just a few advantages.  In Remote, inconoclastic authors Fried and Hansson will convince readers that letting all or part of work teams function remotely is a great idea--and they're going to show precisely how a remote work setup can be accomplished.

Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work


Andrea S Kramer - 2016
    Women start their careers on parity with men but generally end them far earlier, having achieved less status, lower compensation, and less satisfaction than men. Breaking Through Bias explains that it is the stereotypes about women, men, work, leadership, and family that hold women back, and it presents an integrated set of communication techniques that women can use to avoid the discriminatory consequences of these stereotypes. Women define career success in a wide variety of ways. But whatever a woman’s personal definition, if she is in a traditionally male-dominated career—virtually all high status, highly compensated fields—her career is at risk because of pervasive gender stereotypes. This highly practical book makes clear that women don’t need to change who they are to succeed in their chosen careers, and they certainly don’t need to act more like men. Women do, however, need to be attuned to the negative gender stereotypes that surround them; they need to anticipate the biases these stereotypes foster, and they need to manage the impressions they make to avoid or overcome these biases.Based on the authors’ personal experiences as business leaders and practicing attorneys, involvement in compensation and hiring decisions, extensive mentoring activities, and numerous scientific and academic studies, Breaking Through Bias presents unique, practical, and effective advice about how women can at last break through gender bias in the workplace and win at the career advancement game.

The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in the a World of Screens


Stephen Apkon - 2013
    The recent technological revolutions in video recording, editing, and distribution are more akin to the development of movable type than any other such revolution in the last five hundred years. And yet we are not popularly cognizant of or conversant with visual storytelling's grammar, the coded messages of its style, and the practical components of its production. We are largely, in a word, illiterate. But this is not a gloomy diagnosis of the collapse of civilization; rather, it is a celebration of the progress we've made and an exhortation and a plan to seize the potential we're poised to enjoy. The rules that define effective visual storytelling—much like the rules that define written language—do in fact exist, and Stephen Apkon has long experience in deploying them, teaching them, and witnessing their power in the classroom and beyond. In The Age of the Image, drawing on the history of literacy—from scroll to codex, scribes to printing presses, SMS to social media—on the science of how various forms of storytelling work on the human brain, and on the practical value of literacy in real-world situations, Apkon convincingly argues that now is the time to transform the way we teach, create, and communicate so that we can all step forward together into a rich and stimulating future.

Communicating the User Experience: A Practical Guide for Creating Useful UX Documentation


Richard Caddick - 2011
    This indispensible and full-color book provides practical guidance on this growing field and shares valuable UX advice that you can put into practice immediately on your own projects. The authors examine why UX is gaining so much interest from web designers, graduates, and career changers and looks at the new UX tools and ideas that can help you do your job better. In addition, you'll benefit from the unique insight the authors provide from their experiences of working with some of the world's best-known companies, learning how to take ideas from business requirements, user research, and documentation to create and develop your UX vision.Explains how to create documentation that clearly communicates the vision for the UX design and the blueprint for how it's going to be developed Provides practical guidance that you can put to work right away on their own projects Looks at the new UX tools and ideas that are born every day, aimed at helping you do your job better and more efficiently Covers a variety of topics including user journeys, task models, funnel diagrams, content audits, sitemaps, wireframes, interactive prototypes, and more Communicating the User Experience is an ideal resource for getting started with creating UX documentation.

Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics


Thomas Tullis - 2008
    They explore each metric, considering best methods for collecting, analyzing, and presenting the data. They provide step-by-step guidance for measuring the usability of any type of product using any type of technology.This book is recommended for usability professionals, developers, programmers, information architects, interaction designers, market researchers, and students in an HCI or HFE program.

Visual Aid: Stuff You've Forgotten, Things You Never Thought You Knew, and Lessons You Didn't Quite Get Around to Learning


Draught Associates - 2008
    So, if you’ve passed through education and still find yourself asking “Where’s your liver?” or “What beats a full house in poker?” and are too embarrassed to ask, this book can help.Visual Aid provides the answers to the little questions in life in a simple colourful and engaging way. Included are: colour wheels, universal flags, star constellations, correct tablesettings, how reflexology works, the Italian wine regions, how to tie a knot, how to use chopsticks, sign language, morse code and many more. This eclectic collection of illustrations and diagrams will get you up to speed on life's basics, without the need for extensive reading—or even your utmost attention. In a small, handy format this accessible guide is perfect for anyone with an interest in visual stimuli or a thirst for general knowledge.

Project Management Lite: Just Enough to Get the Job Done...Nothing More


Juana Clark Craig - 2012
    This easy-to-use, step-by-step, plain English guide to project management shows readers how to hit ground running.For beginners who find themselves in charge of a project but have no clue where to start or those who are struggling or feel overwhelmed, Project Management Lite focuses less on the theory and more on the action with simple worksheets and checklists.Author Juana Clark Craig, PMP, draws on over twenty-five years of project management experience gained while working in Fortune 500 companies to deliver a minimalistic approach to managing your projects without the mumbo-jumbo of traditional project management techniques.

Design Like Apple: Seven Principles for Creating Insanely Great Products, Services, and Experiences


John Edson - 2012
    And all of these capabilities are founded in a deep and rich embrace of what it means to be a designer.Design Like Apple uncovers the lessons from Apple's unique approach to product creation, manufacturing, delivery, and customer experience.Offers behind-the-scenes stories from current and recent Apple insiders Draws on case studies from other companies that have mastered the creative application of design to create outrageous business results Delivers how-to lessons across design, marketing, and business strategy Bridging creativity and commerce, this book will show you to how to truly Design Like Apple.

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions (Theory In Practice, #31)


Toby Segaran - 2009
    Join 39 contributors as they explain how they developed simple and elegant solutions on projects ranging from the Mars lander to a Radiohead video.With Beautiful Data, you will: Explore the opportunities and challenges involved in working with the vast number of datasets made available by the Web Learn how to visualize trends in urban crime, using maps and data mashups Discover the challenges of designing a data processing system that works within the constraints of space travel Learn how crowdsourcing and transparency have combined to advance the state of drug research Understand how new data can automatically trigger alerts when it matches or overlaps pre-existing data Learn about the massive infrastructure required to create, capture, and process DNA data That's only small sample of what you'll find in Beautiful Data. For anyone who handles data, this is a truly fascinating book. Contributors include:Nathan Yau Jonathan Follett and Matt Holm J.M. Hughes Raghu Ramakrishnan, Brian Cooper, and Utkarsh Srivastava Jeff Hammerbacher Jason Dykes and Jo Wood Jeff Jonas and Lisa Sokol Jud Valeski Alon Halevy and Jayant Madhavan Aaron Koblin with Valdean Klump Michal Migurski Jeff Heer Coco Krumme Peter Norvig Matt Wood and Ben Blackburne Jean-Claude Bradley, Rajarshi Guha, Andrew Lang, Pierre Lindenbaum, Cameron Neylon, Antony Williams, and Egon Willighagen Lukas Biewald and Brendan O'Connor Hadley Wickham, Deborah Swayne, and David Poole Andrew Gelman, Jonathan P. Kastellec, and Yair Ghitza Toby Segaran

The User's Journey: Storymapping Products That People Love


Donna Lichaw - 2016
    The User’s Journey will show you how, when, and why to use narrative structure, technique, and principles to ideate, craft, and test a cohesive vision for an engaging outcome. See how a “story first” approach can transform your product, feature, landing page, flow, campaign, content, or product strategy.

Who's Afraid of Contemporary Art?


Kyung An - 2017
    In this easy-to-navigate A to Z guide, the authors’ playful explanations draw on key artworks, artists, and events from around the globe, including how the lights going on and off won the Turner Prize, what makes the likes of Marina Abramovic and Ai Weiwei such great artists, and why Kanye West would trade his Grammys to be one.Packed with behind-the-scenes information and completely free of jargon, Who’s Afraid of Contemporary Art? is the perfect gallery companion and the go to guide for when the next big thing leaves you stumped.