There’s no faster, cheaper prototype in the world than a sketch on a sheet of paper. What’s unclear in words is suddenly crystal clear in a sketch, and you—and your team—can tackle problems in entirely new ways. Play around with ideas. Document your process. Think on paper. Visual thinking brings a whole new power to work.Think you can’t draw? Don’t worry! The simplest sketches are the most effective at communication and problem solving, so you can begin drawing in less time than your average coffee break. Pictures and visual communication harken back to the stone age for good reason--they’re natural, they’re quick, and they work. And they’ll work for you.If you’re looking for the next tool to help you solve your hardest (and most interesting) challenges at work, try a paper and pencil. This book teaches you how to use them well--and have a bit of fun along the way.With contributions from Amelie Sarrazin, Aleksandra Micek, Taylor Reese, Dan Brown, Daniel Cook, Kate Rutter, Eva-Lotta Lamm, Matthew Magain, Sunni Brown, Cristina Negrut, Daryl Meier Fahrni, Marc Bourguignon, Laura Klein, David Gray, Melissa Kim, Mike Rohde, Brian Gulassa, Andrew Reid, Rolf Faste, Raph Koster, Stone Librande, Robin Hunicke, Alicia Loring, Erin Malone, Stephen P. Anderson, Giorgia Lupi, Alex Osterwalder, Noelle Stransky, James Young, and Dan Roam.

    In this thought-provoking book, authors Jonathan Shariat and Cynthia Savard Saucier explain how poorly designed products can anger, sadden, exclude, and even kill people who use them. The designers responsible certainly didn't intend harm, so what can you do to avoid making similar mistakes?Tragic Design examines real case studies that show how certain design choices adversely affected users, and includes in-depth interviews with authorities in the design industry. Pick up this book and learn how you can be an agent of change in the design community and at your company.You'll explore:Designs that can kill, including the bad interface that doomed a young cancer patientDesigns that anger, through impolite technology and dark patternsHow design can inadvertently cause emotional painDesigns that exclude people through lack of accessibility, diversity, and justiceHow to advocate for ethical design when it isn't easy to do soTools and techniques that can help you avoid harmful design decisionsInspiring professionals who use design to improve our world

    Boasting a full-color interior packed with design and layout examples, this book teaches you how to understand a user's needs, divulges techniques for exceeding a user's expectations, and provides a host of hard won advice for improving the overall quality of a user's experience. World-renowned UX guru Eric Reiss shares his knowledge from decades of experience making products useable for everyone...all in an engaging, easy-to-apply manner.Reveals proven tools that simply make products better, from the users' perspective Provides simple guidelines and checklists to help you evaluate and improve your own products Zeroes in on essential elements to consider when planning a product, such as its functionality and responsiveness, whether or not it is ergonomic, making it foolproof, and more Addresses considerations for product clarity, including its visibility, understandability, logicalness, consistency, and predictability Usable Usability walks you through numerous techniques that will help ensure happy customers and successful products!

    Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relational graphics, data maps, multivariate designs. Detection of graphical deception: design variation vs. data variation. Sources of deception. Aesthetics and data graphical displays. This is the second edition of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Recently published, this new edition provides excellent color reproductions of the many graphics of William Playfair, adds color to other images, and includes all the changes and corrections accumulated during 17 printings of the first edition.

    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.

    Description:- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change We can always change. In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg translates cutting-edge behavioural science into practical self-improvement action, distilling advanced neuroscience into fascinating narratives of transformation.Why can some people and companies change overnight, and some stay stuck in their old ruts? The answer lies deep in the human brain, and The Power of Habits reveals the secret pressure points that can change a life. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook Stephen Covey's THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE took the self-help market by storm in 1990 and has enjoyed phenomenal sales ever since. With over 15 million copies in print, the book has become a classic. Now a touchstone for millions of individuals, as well as for families and businesses, the integrated, principle-centered 7 Habits philosophy has helped readers find solutions to their personal and professional problems, and achieve a life characterized by fairness, integrity, honesty, and dignity. Covey's tried and true step-by-step approach can now be even more thoroughly explored in this new workbook.

    How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul addresses the concerns of young designers who want to earn a living by doing expressive and meaningful work, and who want to avoid becoming hired drones working on soulless projects. Written by a designer for designers, it combines practical advice with philosophical guidance to help young professionals embark on their careers. How should designers manage the creative process? What's the first step in the successful interpretation of a brief? How do you generate ideas when everything just seems blank? How to be a graphic designer offers clear, concise guidance for these questions, along with focused, no-nonsense strategies for setting up, running, and promoting a studio, finding work, and collaborating with clients.The book also includes inspiring interviews with ten leading designers, including Rudy VanderLans (Emigre), John Warwicker (Tomato), Neville Brody (Research Studios), and Andy Cruz (House Industries). All told, How to be a graphic designer covers just about every aspect of the profession, and stands as an indispensable guide for any young designer.

    "This book is a guide to how we do product development at Basecamp. It’s also a toolbox full of techniques that you can apply in your own way to your own process.Whether you’re a founder, CTO, product manager, designer, or developer, you’re probably here because of some common challenges that all software companies have to face."

    "Uncle Bob" Martin shows how to bring greater professionalism and discipline to application architecture and design.As with his other books, Martin's Clean Architecture doesn't merely present multiple choices and options, and say "use your best judgment": it tells you what choices to make, and why those choices are critical to your success. Martin offers direct, no-nonsense answers to key architecture and design questions like:What are the best high level structures for different kinds of applications, including web, database, thick-client, console, and embedded apps?What are the core principles of software architecture?What is the role of the architect, and what is he/she really trying to achieve?What are the core principles of software design?How do designs and architectures go wrong, and what can you do about it?What are the disciplines and practices of professional architects and designers?Clean Architecture is essential reading for every software architect, systems analyst, system designer, and software manager — and for any programmer who aspires to these roles or is impacted by their work.

    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

    Three dots to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. Problem solved, and the picture made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers. Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that people simply “get”. In this book Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can’t draw. Drawing on twenty years of visual problem solving combined with the recent discoveries of vision science, this book shows anyone how to clarify a problem or sell an idea by visually breaking it down using a simple set of visual thinking tools – tools that take advantage of everyone’s innate ability to look, see, imagine, and show. THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN proves that thinking with pictures can help anyone discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve their ability to share their insights. This book will help readers literally see the world in a new way.

    This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole--a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code.Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables.When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including:SyntaxObjectsFunctionsInheritanceArraysRegular expressionsMethodsStyleBeautiful featuresThe real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book.With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highly expressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

    Some can generate coherent user experiences, others produce confusing patchwork designs. Some inspire teams to contribute to them, while others are neglected. Some get better with time, more cohesive and better functioning; others get worse, becoming bloated and cumbersome.Throughout this book, Alla Kholmatova, previously a lead designer at FutureLearn, will share an approach and the key qualities of effective, enduring design systems. It’s based on Alla’s experiences, case-studies from AirBnB, Atlassian, Eurostar, TED, and Sipgate, plus 18 months of research and interviews — all attempting to figure out what works and what doesn’t work in real-life products. It may not answer every question, but it will help you figure out just the right strategy for establishing and evolving a design system in your organization.

    This manual is aimed at everyone who works on interactive products in a design and development environment. It contains all of the basic information required for getting started with the project management method Scrum, but also offers a number of in-depth chapters looking at topics which even the most experienced Scrummers have trouble with on a daily basis. If you are experienced, you will find the advanced tips and tricks useful. If you are just considering Scrum, this book will most certainly get you enthusiastic.

    Many designers and researchers view usability and design as qualitative activities, which do not require attention to formulas and numbers. However, usability practitioners and user researchers are increasingly expected to quantify the benefits of their efforts. The impact of good and bad designs can be quantified in terms of conversions, completion rates, completion times, perceived satisfaction, recommendations, and sales.The book discusses ways to quantify user research; summarize data and compute margins of error; determine appropriate samples sizes; standardize usability questionnaires; and settle controversies in measurement and statistics. Each chapter concludes with a list of key points and references. Most chapters also include a set of problems and answers that enable readers to test their understanding of the material. This book is a valuable resource for those engaged in measuring the behavior and attitudes of people during their interaction with interfaces.