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.

Supermarketwala: Secrets to Winning Consumer India


Damodar Mall - 2014
    Damodar, in Supermarketwala, provides the very basics for the growth of modern retail and consumerism in India, through interesting and carefully studied consumer behaviour, an art that few in his domain possess. Supermarketwala, is intended to be the go-to book for all consumer business enthusiasts and readers alike, who wish to understand how and why we as consumers behave in a certain manner at different places. These insights, which are the analyses of the sector so far, could become the pillars for shaping successful consumer products and retail businesses in the huge consumer economy that India will soon be. Rita, the young bahu, avoids buying personal products from the family grocer. Sonu's breakfast table on a Sunday represents global cuisines. Do you know how it is possible? Where do big corporates and MNC retailers fumble, and what helps simple DMart get its model right? What is Ching's Sercret that is not Knorr's, Maggi's, or Yippie's?

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites


Peter Morville - 1998
    How do you present large volumes of information to people who need to find what they're looking for quickly? This classic primer shows information architects, designers, and web site developers how to build large-scale and maintainable web sites that are appealing and easy to navigate. The new edition is thoroughly updated to address emerging technologies -- with recent examples, new scenarios, and information on best practices -- while maintaining its focus on fundamentals. With topics that range from aesthetics to mechanics, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web explains how to create interfaces that users can understand right away. Inside, you'll find:* An overview of information architecture for both newcomers and experienced practitioners* The fundamental components of an architecture, illustrating the interconnected nature of these systems. Updated, with updates for tagging, folksonomies, social classification, and guided navigation* Tools, techniques, and methods that take you from research to strategy and design to implementation. This edition discusses blueprints, wireframes and the role of diagrams in the design phase* A series of short essays that provide practical tips and philosophical advice for those who work on information architecture* The business context of practicing and promoting information architecture, including recent lessons on how to handle enterprise architecture* Case studies on the evolution of two large and very different information architectures, illustrating best practices along the way* How do you document the rich interfaces of web applications? How do you design for multiple platforms and mobile devices? With emphasis on goals and approaches over tactics or technologies, this enormously popular book gives you knowledge about information architecture with a framework that allows you to learn new approaches -- and unlearn outmoded ones.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience


Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - 1990
    During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness, unlock our potential, and greatly improve the quality of our lives.

How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps


Lawrence Krubner - 2017
    When inexperienced entrepreneurs ask my advice about their idea for a tech startup, they often worry "What if Google decides to compete with us? They will crush us!" I respond that far more startups die of suicide than homicide. If you can avoid hurting yourself, then you are already better off than most of your competitors. Startups are a chance to build something entirely original with brilliant and ambitious people. But startups are also dangerous. Limited money means there is little room for mistakes. One bad decision can mean bankruptcy. The potential payoff attracts capital, which in turn attracts scam artists. The unscrupulous often lack the skills needed to succeed, but sometimes they are smart enough to trick investors. Even entrepreneurs who start with a strong moral compass can find that the threat of failure unmoors their ethics from their ambition. Emotions matter. We might hope that those in leadership positions possess strength and resilience, but vanity and fragile egos have sabotaged many of the businesses that I’ve worked with. Defeat is always a possibility, and not everyone finds healthy ways to deal with the stress. In this book I offer both advice and also warnings. I've seen certain self-destructive patterns play out again and again, so I wanted to document one of the most extreme cases that I've witnessed. In 2015 I worked for a startup that began with an ingenious idea: to use the software techniques known as Natural Language Processing to allow people to interact with databases by writing ordinary English sentences. This was a multi-billion dollar idea that could have transformed the way people gathered and used information. However, the venture had inexperienced leadership. They burned through their $1.3 million seed money. As their resources dwindled, their confidence transformed into doubt, which was aggravated by edicts from the Board Of Directors ordering sudden changes that effectively threw away weeks' worth of work. Every startup forces its participants into extreme positions, often regarding budget and deadlines. Often these situations are absurd to the point of parody. Therefore, there is considerable humor in this story. The collision of inexperience and desperation gives rise to moments that are simply silly. I tell this story in a day-to-day format, both to capture the early optimism, and then the later sense of panic. Here then, is a cautionary tale, a warning about tendencies that everyone joining a startup should be on guard against."

This is Service Design Thinking: Basics – Tools – Cases


Marc Stickdorn - 2010
    Service Design is a bit of a buzzword these days and has gained a lot of interest from various fields. This book, assembled to describe and illustrate the emerging field of service design, was brought together using exactly the same co-creative and user-centred approaches you can read and learn about inside. The boundaries between products and services are blurring and it is time for a different way of thinking: this is service design thinking.A set of 23 international authors and even more online contributors from the global service design community invested their knwoledge, experience and passion together to create this book. It introduces service design thinking in a manner accessible to beginners and students, it broadens the knowledge and can act as a resource for experienced design professionals.

The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation


Henri Lipmanowicz - 2014
    So do professors, facilitators and all changemakers. The challenge is how. Liberating Structures are novel, practical and no-nonsense methods to help you accomplish this goal with groups of any size.Prepare to be surprised by how simple and easy they are for anyone to use. This book shows you how with detailed descriptions for putting them into practice plus tips on how to get started and traps to avoid. It takes the design and facilitation methods experts use and puts them within reach of anyone in any organization or initiative, from the frontline to the C-suite.Part One: The Hidden Structure of Engagement will ground you with the conceptual framework and vocabulary of Liberating Structures. It contrasts Liberating Structures with conventional methods and shows the benefits of using them to transform the way people collaborate, learn, and discover solutions together.Part Two: Getting Started and Beyond offers guidelines for experimenting in a wide range of applications from small group interactions to system-wide initiatives: meetings, projects, problem solving, change initiatives, product launches, strategy development, etc.Part Three: Stories from the Field illustrates the endless possibilities Liberating Structures offer with stories from users around the world, in all types of organizations –– from healthcare to academic to military to global business enterprises, from judicial and legislative environments to R&D.Part Four: The Field Guide for Including, Engaging, and Unleashing Everyone describes how to use each of the 33 Liberating Structures with step-by-step explanations of what to do and what to expect.Discover today what Liberating Structures can do for you, without expensive investments, complicated training, or difficult restructuring. Liberate everyone’s contributions –– all it takes is the determination to experiment.

The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems


Richard Tanner Pascale - 2010
    What if they'd already been solved and you didn't even know it? In The Power of Positive Deviance, the authors present a counterintuitive new approach to problem-solving. Their advice? Leverage positive deviants--the few individuals in a group who find unique ways to look at, and overcome, seemingly insoluble difficulties. By seeing solutions where others don't, positive deviants spread and sustain needed change.With vivid, firsthand stories of how positive deviance has alleviated some of the world's toughest problems (malnutrition in Vietnam, staph infections in hospitals), the authors illuminate its core practices, including:· Mobilizing communities to discover "invisible" solutions in their midst· Using innovative designs to "act" your way into a new way of thinking instead of thinking your way into a new way of acting· Confounding the organizational "immune response" seeking to sustain the status quoInspiring and insightful, The Power of Positive Deviance unveils a potent new way to tackle the thorniest challenges in your own company and community.

Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide


Craig Larman - 2003
    Larman offers a concise, information-packed summary of the key ideas that drive all agile and iterative processes, with the details of four noteworthy iterative methods: Scrum, XP, RUP, and Evo.

Designing Interactions


Bill Moggridge - 2006
    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

Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now


Margaret J. Wheatley - 2011
    Now What?In this era of increasingly complex problems and shrinking resources, can we find meaningful and enduring solutions to the challenges we face today as individuals, communities, and nations?In Walk Out Walk On, we invite you on a learning journey to seven communities around the world to meet people who have walked out of limiting beliefs and assumptions and walked on to create healthy and resilient communities. These Walk Outs who Walk On use their ingenuity and caring to figure out how to work with what they have to create what they need.From Mexico to India, from Columbus, Ohio to Johannesburg, South Africa, we discover that all communities have the intelligence and inventiveness to solve their seemingly insolvable problems. "We discovered a gift inside ourselves," one Brazilian said, "something that was already there."Walk Out Walk On is the winner of a silver medal in the social change category of the 2012 Nautilus Book Awards.

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster


Alistair Croll - 2013
    Lean Analytics steers you in the right direction.This book shows you how to validate your initial idea, find the right customers, decide what to build, how to monetize your business, and how to spread the word. Packed with more than thirty case studies and insights from over a hundred business experts, Lean Analytics provides you with hard-won, real-world information no entrepreneur can afford to go without.Understand Lean Startup, analytics fundamentals, and the data-driven mindsetLook at six sample business models and how they map to new ventures of all sizesFind the One Metric That Matters to youLearn how to draw a line in the sand, so you’ll know it’s time to move forwardApply Lean Analytics principles to large enterprises and established products

To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design


Henry Petroski - 1985
    More than a series of fascinating case studies, To Engineer Is Human is a work that looks at our deepest notions of progress and perfection, tracing the fine connection between the quantifiable realm of science and the chaotic realities of everyday life."Alert, inquisitive, unspecialized, wholly human...refreshingly eclectic." --The Spectator"Henry Petroski is an ardent engineer, and if he writes more good books like this, he might find himself nominated to become the meistersinger of the guild. [This is] a refreshing plunge into the dynamics of the engineering ethos...as straightforward as an I-beam."--Science

UML 2 and the Unified Process: Practical Object-Oriented Analysis and Design


Jim Arlow - 2001
    Even for people not working with the Unified Process, the book is still of great use. UML 2 and the Unified Process, Second Edition is a must-read for every UML 2 beginner and a helpful guide and reference for the experienced practitioner."--Roland Leibundgut, Technical Director, Zuehlke Engineering Ltd."This book is a good starting point for organizations and individuals who are adopting UP and need to understand how to provide visualization of the different aspects needed to satisfy it. "--Eric Naiburg, Market Manager, Desktop Products, IBM Rational SoftwareThis thoroughly revised edition provides an indispensable and practical guide to the complex process of object-oriented analysis and design using UML 2. It describes how the process of OO analysis and design fits into the software development lifecycle as defined by the Unified Process (UP). UML 2 and the Unified Process contains a wealth of practical, powerful, and useful techniques that you can apply immediately. As you progress through the text, you will learn OO analysis and design techniques, UML syntax and semantics, and the relevant aspects of the UP. The book provides you with an accurate and succinct summary of both UML and UP from the point of view of the OO analyst and designer.This book providesChapter roadmaps, detailed diagrams, and margin notes allowing you to focus on your needs Outline summaries for each chapter, making it ideal for revision, and a comprehensive index that can be used as a reference New to this edition:Completely revised and updated for UML 2 syntax Easy to understand explanations of the new UML 2 semantics More real-world examples A new section on the Object Constraint Language (OCL) Introductory material on the OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) The accompanying website providesA complete example of a simple e-commerce system Open source tools for requirements engineering and use case modeling Industrial-strength UML course materials based on the book

Doodle Revolution


Sunni Brown - 2013
    They actively applied a deceptively simple tool to think both smarter and faster: the doodle. And so can the rest of us-zero artistic talent required.Visual thinking expert Sunni Brown has created The Doodle Revolution as a kick-starter guide for igniting and applying simple visual language to any challenge. The instinctive and universal act of doodling need only be unleashed in order to innovate, solve problems, and elevate cognitive performance instantly.