This month we’ve reviewed books on many different topics. We move from sustainable design to undercover UX and iPhone design.

Undercover User Experience Design

Type: practical
Edited by: James Box / Cennydd Bowles
Publishers: New Riders
ISBN: 978-0321719904
Details: 192 pages, paperback

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According to it’s cover this book will learn you ‘how to do great UX work with tiny budgets, no time and limited support’. In about 180 pages it will introduce you to the world of UX design and tries to can help you create better products in a company that has never even heard of the term UX.

The moment you open the book you get all sorts of practical tips and methods to create better products. There are a total of seven chapters: ‘exploring the problem’, ‘generating ideas’, ‘making it real’, ‘refining your solution’, ‘working with’ and ‘where next’. Each chapter shortly introduces the theme and gives you mainly hands-on advice on how to do stuff. This ranges from the creation of low cost personas to making good sketches and doing simple usability testing. The explanations are very clear and to-the-point, don’t expect extensive explanations, variations and cases to dive into a subject.

All this is really interesting for people who are new to the field or who want to introduce UX into their organization. All the information in the book isn’t new, it has been collected and written in a very accessible way. The thing I found most interesting was the ‘generating ideas’ chapter and the explanation on how you should deal with different disciplines in a company. In that part of the book you can feel the true experience of the writers, where they show that you shouldnt just work from your UX point of view, but should also understand where the other people (programmers, designers, CEOs, marketers, etc) come from and how you could best work with thim.

As a conclusion I would say this is a very interesting read for people who are new to the field. It gives a short and simple explanation on every step of the process and great tips on how to do your job. For experienced UX designers there shouldn’t be any surprises in the book.

Product Design in the Sustainable Era

Type: case studies
Edited by: Dalcacio Reis / Julius Wiedemann
Publishers: Taschen
ISBN: 978-3-8365-2093-5
Details: 440 pages, flexicover

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Over the past years sustainable design has been a hot topic. As designers we want to have to have the feeling we design for the good of the planet. In this book Taschen has tried to create a good overview of the different products and initiatives worldwide to create a more environmentally friendly world. This has resulted in a beautifully designed book full of cases ranging from cradle-to-cradle shoes to new ways of generating energy.

I found it a very inspiring book, but at the same time it shows the hype around sustainable design. There are many great examples that would inspire every designer, but the book also contains several examples that have nothing to do with the core beliefs behind sustainable design. In any case it’s a good overview of the current status of sustainable design.

The Internet Case Study Book

Type: case studies
Edited by: Rob Ford / Julius Wiedemann
Publishers: Taschen
ISBN: 978-3-8365-1895-6
Details: 384 pages, hardcover

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Usually I’m not a big fan of books that show collections of websites. Most of the times the examples are already outdated a week before the book goes to print. But for some reason I kept turning pages in this one. In total ‘The Internet Case Study Book’ has 60 different cases in four different categories: campaigns, e-commerce, promotional, social media and corporate. Each case has four short paragraphs describing the brief, the challenge, the solution and finally the result. This simple approach really helps to get a quick overview of the project and to get inspired for your own projects. I must admit that sometimes I felt the descriptions were a bit short (and personally I always want to know what went wrong), but still it’s a great overview with inspiring examples. If you want to buy the book do so within half a year, otherwise the cases are too old.

Designing the iPhone User Experience

Type: practical
Edited by: Suzanne Ginsburgy
Publishers: Addison-Wesley
ISBN: 978-0321699435
Details: 336 pages, paperback

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In the book ‘Designing the iPhone User Experience’ Suzanne Ginsburg explains in an easy way how to design intuitive, easy, powerful and useful apps for the IPhone. The purpose of this book is to provide a clear foundation to interaction and visual designers when starting to design iPhone apps. But also for developers the book is interesting to get an understanding of user needs, planning, visualization and usability-testing skills.

Suzanne describes a user-centered approach to sketching and prototyping. The following subjects are treated; overview of the iPhone hardware and iOS application styles, step-by-step advice on how to conduct upfront user research, tips for analyzing user research and evaluating the competition and an explanation how to develop and refine your app concept.

The book is clearly written and provides many interesting examples and case studies – interviews with superb iPhone designers and developers, providing first-hand insights into the thought processes behind their apps.

It is a pity that the parts about user research, generating ideas, prototyping and usability testing are very general. As almost everybody that will this book, has already been in design processes, the principles explained are most probably already known to them. What is interesting though, is what aspects differentiate this topic for the iPhone app in specific. This interesting, relatively ‘new’, context of the iPhone could be elaborated more. Moreover, the summaries at the end of each chapter are not very substantial. So reading the summary, doesn’t provide you the knowledge of the chapter.

(review Designing the iPhone User Experience by Rose-Anne Dottinga)

In this round-up of book reviews we are moving from usability testing to business ideas and children. We reviewed Steve Krug’s ‘Rocket Surgery Made Easy’, a collection of essays called ‘Mobile Technology for Children’, 37Signals’ ‘Rework’ and Donna Spencer’s newest book ‘A Practical Guide to Information Architecture.’

Rocket Surgery Made Easy

Type: theory & practical

Authors: Steve Krug

Publishers: New Riders

ISBN: 978-0321657299

Details: 161 pages, paperback

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Need to convince your boss or a client that they need to do more usability testing? This book does the trick.

This book is Steve Krug’s follow up to the very successful ‘Don’t Make Me Think’. In the first book Krug told (and showed) us in an easy way what web usability is all about, while the purpose of this book is to get people to actually start user testing. The audience for the book isn’t usability professionals, but everybody involved in creating new websites that don’t do any testing right now. It is written in the same style as ‘Don’t Make Me Think’, which is very amusing to read and enthusing to pick up what he recommends.

In the book Krug explains that usability testing isn’t as complicated and scary as it looks. He explains not just why you should do test, but also when and how. The book isn’t trying to downgrade professional usability testing, but it is explaining that the more you test the better. It’s better to do multiple small tests with three users during the development of a website in contrast to doing one big-scale usability test at the end of a project.

This book isn’t for people who know what the power of usability testing is. But if you’ve never done a usability test before: buy this book. It will surely make you a believer. I do believe the book is also a perfect gift for clients at the start of a project. It shows them the power of testing and makes them less scared to invest in this.

Mobile Technology for Children: Designing for Interaction and Learning

Type: theory

Edited by: Allison Druin

Publishers: Morgan Kaufman

ISBN: 978-0-12-374900-0

Details: 353 pages, paperback

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The book consists of a collection of essays from various experts providing insights on how children use mobile technologies and how these technologies can support children’s learning and development. There is no doubt that children use technology very differently than adults; especially the youngest generation, which grow up using all kind of technologies as part of their normal daily life.

However the use of mobile technologies to support children’s learning started only a few years ago and it is still a topic of debate among parents, teachers and educational systems. Very often when children step into the classroom they have to leave their cell phone, mp3 player, portable gaming device, etc. aside as educational systems have not found a way to cope with the potential of these technologies. There is no clear answer on how to design and really take advantage of them, yet.

Among the benefits of using mobile technologies is that they have the potential to reach children in isolated or economically disadvantaged communities, this could provide them with a way to access information cheap and without the use of traditional computing devices. As a consequence learning and development opportunities can be equal for all children.

The book is clearly written and provides many interesting examples and case studies. But the down side of being a compilation of essays is that some basic information about mobile technologies repeats it self several times, which is a shame. At the end you don’t have a set of tools to work with, it’s clearly a theoretical approach.

Rework

Type: management

Authors: Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Publishers: Crown Business

ISBN: 978-0307463746

Details: 288 pages, hardcover

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A short, but inspiring book about starting your own software business.

In this book Jason Fried and David Hansson of 37signals share their thoughts and learnings on creating a successful business. It’s a typical business book in which you see dozens of taglines on how to do business differently. But I have to admit that the message they try to bring across does sound interesting. And why not? They are the ones who’ve set up a highly successful company.

The book is a compilation of dozens of short (two page) columns. These columns are grouped in about twelve themes, ranging from hiring people to the culture of your company, but also damage control, competition and productivity. In each theme you see columns that are obvious, but also ones that contradict everything you learned at school. The theme I liked most is ‘Productivity’. Here the writers claim that you should not be a hero; if something can’t be fixed in a defined time, ignore it. Another point they try to make is that you have to make tiny decisions and good enough is fine.

Some other great insights I’ve gained by reading this book (I will only share five, otherwise I am copying the book):

• Underdo your competition: focus all your efforts on the core of your product, don’t make it a Coldwar game with the competition;
• Why grow? If companies are successful they want to grow. Why? A small company is very flexible and capable of responding to market change;
• Hire great writers: if you don’t know who to hire, hire the best writer. These are people who know how to think clearly and how to structure;
• Focus on what won’t change: a lot of companies and designers focus on the next big thing, but the core of your business should be built around things that don’t change. Make the core better;
• Let customers outgrow you: “When you let customers outgrow you, you’ll most likely wind up with a product that’s basic [...] There’s an endless supply of customers who need exactly that.”

It’s a very interesting read for people working in a business. If you are an avid reader of the 37signals blog ‘Signals vs Noise’ you’ll probably learn nothing new. But in any case it’s a nice collection of small insights.

A Practical Guide to Information Architecture

Type: practical

Authors: Donna Spencer

Publishers: Five Simple Steps

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An introduction to information architecture.

If there is one thing that can be said about Donna Spencer’s new books, it’s that it is very practical. This book is a great primer for anyone just getting started with Information Architecture, or someone who is looking to get a refresh on the guiding principles of the field. One of the best aspects of the Donna’s book is the tone in which she writes, it’s playful but very instructional. This allows for the reader to become truly engaged with the content, and makes for a wonderful learning experience.

The specific role of Information Architecture and Information Architects is a bit hazy. Donna breaks it all down very nicely though. She describes what skills are most needed by an Information Architect, and also how the role of IA applies to projects that live off of the web. Readers also are able to gain a sense of how best to collaborate with other roles when designing out an information architecture, for teams where the specific activities cross role responsibilities.

Another fine gem of the book is the overview of Information Architecture Patterns.  Patterns for hierarchies, databases, hypertext, linear, catalog, and more are displayed along with real world examples.  While this just scratches the surface of this topic, it exposes the overall depth patterns and how they can be applied.

If there is one area of the book that I wanted to see more of was recommendations on how long some of the described activities take. This type of information is vital for someone just getting started in the field, or trying to introduce an information architecture process to their organization.  Providing realistic estimates are always a challenge, but essential for planning projects accordingly and creating organizational buy-in.

Overall, Donna’s book was an engaging and educational read. It should be a staple for any UX Bookshelf, and required reading for junior information architects. It’s filled with bit of humor, and contains many real world examples to back up the lessons she is providing.

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Love reading books? Especially for you we made a bookstore full of the best books in our field. Check out our UX Book store. The above book reviews were written by: Anahi Bagu, Brad Nunnally and Jeroen van Geel

In this round-up of book reviews we are trying to broaden your perspective a little bit. We review the typical UX books, like ‘Beyond the Usability Lab’ and ‘User Experience Re-Mastered’, but we also try to get inspiration from ‘Innovators’ and ‘Layout Essentials’.

Beyond the Usability Lab

Type: theory
Authors: Bill Albert, Donna Tedesco, Thomas Tullis
Publishers: Morgan Kaufman
ISBN: 978-0123748928
Details: 328 pages, paperback

When you are new to the business and need a hands-on tour through the UX process.

Online usability testing seems to have become ‘the new kid on the block’. In the last few months we’ve received four books from different publishers that all covered this topic. Is it really a topic so complex that it needs several books explaining you how to do it?

Of course you can start directly with online usability testing, gathering valuable information about your users and product. There are enough easy tools to help you along the way (e.g. Loop 11 and Usabilla). But this book does provide some valuable background and guidelines to help you get the best out of your usability tests. It is a very complete guide, containing a lot of valuable information, even more basic information and probably a bunch of information that will never be useful for you.

The book is very clearly written and provides a lot of examples.

Here is an overview of the topics

• An introduction to online usability testing
• Planning the study
• Designing the study
• Piloting and launching the study
• Data preparation
• Data analysis and presentation
• Building your online study using commercial tools
• Discount approaches to building an online study
• Case studies
• Ten Keys To Success

User Experience Re-Mastered

Type: theory
Authors: Chauncey Wilson (editor)
Publishers: Morgan Kaufman
ISBN: 0123751144
Details: 396 pages, paperback

When you are new to the business and need a hands-on tour through the UX process.

In the last few years loads of real specialized UX books have been released. All of them contain hundreds of pages focusing on one specific subject, ranging from sketching to creating personas. For most designers these books contain too much information. For them ‘User Experience Re-mastered’ might be a great alternative. This book gives an overview of the design process, including practical examples. But it doesn’t do this by rewriting what has already been said in other books; it is a collection of chapters from existing books. I really like this approach, because there is already so much great stuff around… why do it again?

The content of the book is great for students and people who are new to the field, but there isn’t much new under the sun. One disadvantage of re-using chapters from exisiting books is that some examples and images do seem to be a bit old. There are even some pictures that are bad quality, which is a shame. But don’t let this scare you away, there are still some really interesting chapters such as ‘User Needs Analysis’, ‘Persona Conception and Gestation’ and Bill Buxton’s ‘Sketching: A Key to Good Design’.

Innovators: Shaping Our Creative Future

Type: inspiration
Authors: multiple
Publishers: BIS Publishers
ISBN: 978-94-9022-801-9
Details: 408 pages, hard cover

Be inspired by the innovators that are shaping our future.

There were high expectations when we received a copy of this book; it isn’t every day that a book tries to give an overview of the innovators of our creative future. Did it succeed? The fact that multiple friends already ordered their own copy might give an answer to that.

The idea behind the book was to let “international experts from twelve fields of creative practice, from fine art and photography to graphic design, architecture and ecology [...] each select five people who are making significant contributions to the way we experience life and visual culture.” This resulted in a beautiful book with 60 innovators and their work. Each innovator is introduced by a short text with a lot of graphic. The book screams to be looked.

While paging through this book you can enjoy many brilliant ideas. It is a nice way to get energy for your own projects. I personally liked the broadness of the fields, simply because the most unexpected fields seem to inspire me. My personal favorite innovators in the book were web artist Yogo Nakamura, rock band Radiohead and designer Viktor & Rolf. What are yours?

Layout Essentials: 100 Design Principles For Using Grids

Type: practical
Authors: Beth Tondreau
Publishers: BIS Publishers
ISBN: 978-90-6369-211-7
Details: 208 pages, hard cover

Learn to follow the rules and you’ll be able to gain more creative freedom.

As designers we are always struggling to create unique but perfect designs. It takes some time for us to acknowledge that behind each brilliant design isn’t just our bright mind, but also a world of existing rules. Among these rules the one about applying good grids must be one of the most important ones. Almost all good design around you uses a specific grid. Understanding the power of grids can help you become a much better designer, and that’s exactly where this book tries to come in. At it’s core the book tries to focus on graphic designers, but I believe that also interaction designers could benefit greatly from this knowledge. When we understand the power of grids we can understand why certain sources of information (websites, UI, …) are more succesfull than others.

At the start of the book she shortly introduces the vocabulary for grids (columns, modules, margins, modular, multicolumn, ..), but right after that she jumps into the 100 examples. The book itself is beautifully made and the full color plates are really inspiring. Each example shows you the helpfulness of grids without having to lose graphical power and freedom. I really liked this practical approach of showing examples with a bit of theory., but I can imagine that a lot of people like to have more background information before they start applying the grids. So if you love theory: don’t buy this book. If you love the more practical approach: get it.

PS: if you want to directly start using grids for websites, go to the 960 Grid System site.

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There are so many interesting UX books coming out that it’s hard to know which ones are worth your money. So from now on we will try and be your guide. Each month we will share with you our opinion on the newest UX books. And as a bonus we will add a classic you must have.

This month we review Card Sorting, Designing Social Interfaces, Thoughts on Interaction Design, and revisit The Inmates Are Running The Asylum.

Card Sorting

Type: practical
Authors: Donna Spencer
Publishers: Rosenfeld Media
Details: 160 pages, paperback

With this book you can learn card sorting in a few days.

Card sorting is a method for finding patterns about how people categorise content and functionality on a website. In Spencer’s book she sets out to explain how you can successfully apply this inexpensive research method. And she did a good job at this. The book is a handy guide for anybody who wants to do card sorting, ranging from beginners to people who want to do it the proper way.

Spencer splits up card sorting into two variations: open and closed card sorting. In open card sorting participants are given cards which they have to group any way they think best. This version is very useful for creating structures for new and existing websites. Closed card sorting means participants are given cards which they have to sort in pre-defined groups. This version is useful when working with new content in an existing structure. In the book she takes you through every step to make both types of card sorting work.

If I had to name one thing I would have liked to see different in this book, it would have been the focus. Right now it presents itself as the definitive guide to card sorting, but all the examples, cases, and text focus on websites and intranets. It would have been more interesting to see how card sorting can be applied in a wider UX context.

But what I like about the book is that it’s honest and practical. Card sorting isn’t presented as the holy grail in user research, but as an interesting and useful part of it. Spencer notes that if you want to do proper research you have to also use other techniques alongside this one.

Designing Social Interfaces

Type: practical
Authors: Christian Crumlish & Erin Malone
Publishers: O’Reilly
Details: 478 pages, paperback

A practical guide for anybody who is working on social interfaces.

Are you currently working on a social media project? O’Reilly have once again published a trustworthy book full of principles, patterns and best practices. You can save yourself a lot of time on coming up with ways to make it a social environment that works, as long as you are willing to follow the patterns.

The book has been divided into five parts. Each one is a collection of principles, patterns and best practices. These aren’t pre-defined categories, but overlapping themes:

1. What Are Social Patterns?: introduction;
2. I Am Somebody: focusing on the notion of self, my online identity;
3. Objects of My Desire: about the type of activity you want to encourage;
4. A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood: focusing on the social network, shared activities and interest;
5. But Wait… There’s More!: creating an open experience.

The format makes it a wonderful resource you can grab when facing a specific challenge. And I am not just saying this because I think so, but because I actually used it. In the past I’ve bought quite a few practical books that never gave me the answers I needed.

Thoughts on Interaction Design

Type: theory
Authors: Jon Kolko
Publishers: Morgan Kaufmann
Details: 2nd edition, 155 pages, paperback

Understand the story behind our profession on an academic level, but with an accessible tone.

In 2007 Jon Kolko self-published ‘Thoughts On Interaction Design’. These 1,000 copies, now known as ‘The Green Books’, have become treasured items. Fortunately Morgan Kaufmann decided to republish the book (with a blue cover) so that every interaction designer has access to this thought provoking material.

In ‘Thoughts on Interaction Design’ Kolko and several other authors explain to the reader what interaction design is all about. They dive into the history of interaction design and its relationship to engineering and design. In an almost academic, but also realistic way they explain what we do (or should do), how and why. Even though there are several books that have attempted this, Thoughts on Interaction Design is the first that explains it in a way that sticks – it not only makes me proud as an interaction designer, but also gives me knowledge to apply in a discussion.

To give you a feeling of the writing style, here is a sample from the book’s website,

Interaction designers are trained to observe humanity and to balance complicated ideas, and are used to thinking in opposites: large and small, conceptual and pragmatic, human and technical. This is not a jack of all trades. Instead, it is a shaper of behaviour. Behaviour is a large idea, and may, at first blush, seem too large to warrant a single profession. But a profession has emerged nonetheless. This professional category includes the complexity of information architecture, the anthropologic desire to understand humanity, the altruistic nature of usability engineering, and the creation of dialogue.

A must have for every interaction designer.

UX Classic: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

Type: Methods
Authors: Alan Cooper
Publishers: Sams
Details: 288 pages
Published: 1999

See where personas started – and why we needed them in the first place

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, if you’re in interaction design you know about personas. The technique burst onto the scene in Alan Cooper’s 1998 book ‘The Inmates Are Running the Asylum’.

It’s perhaps fitting that a technique that has generated so much debate is found in a equally provocative book. Cooper spends much of  ‘Inmates’ setting up what’s wrong with current products and IT culture, mixed in with a few of his own software exploits for good measure. Luckily he a gift for clear, engaging prose and memorable catchphrases such as “dancing-bearware” (it’s not that it dances/functions well, it’s that it does it at all), “software apologists”, and (my favourite) “programmers act like jocks”. Yes, it can be over-the-top, but you can’t accuse Cooper of lack of passion.

Interesting with a decade of hindsight is Cooper’s horror stories of ’90s Silicon Valley projects. He documents bad products (VCRs, ATMs), Microsoft team battles, and a Job-less Apple scraping by on the power of its brand.

Still, while this is all great, its all a lead-up to Cooper’s tour de force: personas. Developed as “a precise description of our user and what he wishes to accomplish” (p123), Cooper goes through in detail their purpose and how they’re made (for the record, he is emphatic that they’re based on research and they they’re “discovered” rather than “made”). His case study of Sony Trans Com’s P@ssport IFE still holds up today in both demonstrating the process and the final product (the other studies have dated more). How would “Clevis McCloud, crotchety [but spry] septegenarian … slightly embarrassed about the touch of arthritis in his hands” (p126) use your product?

“The Inmates Are Running the Asylum” is worth buying even for the twenty or so pages on personas – it’s not only the first example of it, but still probably the best. Beyond that, it’s a great reminder on what can go wrong in IT. The day all of the examples are irrelevant will be a happy one for interaction designers indeed.

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Overpromise and Overdeliver is a book on how to design and deliver customer experiences in order to create ‘unshakable customer loyalty’. Now the title does make one think this is yet another book trying to convey a theory on how to be the most successful company in the industry, and that assumption is completely right. We’ve seen a lot of them in the last couple of years, which made me wonder; does Overpromise and Overdeliver live up to the theory it’s trying to convey, and to which extend is it applicable to design?

Just to clarify things up
When I started reading the book I assumed that ‘Overpromise and Overdeliver’ means promising a remarkable product or service, and than to deliver even more. But that is only partially right. It’s about delivering exactly what you’ve promised.

The book

The book consist out of two parts. The first one is called ‘Overpromise’, and the second (of course) ‘Overdeliver’. In part one Barrera explains what a brand overpromise actually is and how you can build one. This is where he introduces what he calls ‘touchpoint branding’: the three touchpoints associated with this. These are:

• Product touchpoints: These occur when customers interact with a product or service;
• Human touchpoints: This is the case when a customer directly interacts with the company’s employees;
• System touchpoints: These include things like return policies or a website. Basically all other points of contact between a customer and an organization.

Barrera uses numeral examples and cases to explain why and how these touchpoints influence the whole customer experience (in fact I reckon that a good 60% of the book consists out of analyzed real-world examples). It might sound a bit simple, but it boils down to the fact that all these touchpoints must be in line with an organization’s overpromise in order to be successful. You start with a remarkable product or service and than make sure that the customer always gets what you’ve promised, and what he/she expects from you.

In part two Barrera explains how you can optimize these touchpoints in order to overdeliver. In case of a product/service touchpoint the keyword is ‘buzz’. Make sure people are talking about your product. When it comes to system touchpoints he claims that they should be as invisible as possible. Think of the lighting placed within stores; you want to create a pleasant lighting situation without drawing attention to the lights themselves. Human touchpoints are a bit of a different story because human emotions are involved. Though very important Barrera also warns for overreliance on human touchpoints because of the unpredictability of human emotions. The key here is to use human touchpoints only when situations are complicated, and when flexibility and initiative are required to save the day.

Conclusion

Though it’s an interesting and easy read I haven’t had the feeling I was reading something new. That isn’t very strange when you think of the enormous amount of real-world examples Barrera uses throughout the book. Every chapter answers the question stated in the title within the first three or four pages followed by 15 to 20 pages of examples and case-studies. It’s these examples and cases that make it a pleasurable read by sometimes providing you with some inspirational insights. It’s definitely not a ‘must-read’, but if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare… read it.

Book Details
Overpromise and Overdeliver: The secrets of unshakable customer loyalty
author: Rick Berrera
publisher: Portfolio, 2004
details: 240 pages, hardcover

Kim Goodwin distills over a decade’s worth of experience at the design studio Cooper into her debut book Designing for the Digital Age. The result is a 700+ page guide to experience design. It’s filled with examples and commentary ranging from customer interviews to widget mockups, but is it also good?

Though she doesn’t say it, this book could have been called “The Cooper Studio Guide to Experience Design”. (As it turns out, the companion website for the book redirects to the Cooper website)  This is reflected in Goodwin writing at length about techniques unique to Cooper such as Goal-Directed Design, having interaction design generators (IxDG) and synthesisers (IXDS), and of course personas (admittedly these are now mainstream, if debated). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as many of these techniques deserve recognition: her explanation that design synthesisers are useful to help resolve and communicate design concepts is one that designers would do well to take on board. However, if you’re expecting to find out about other books and online resources you’ll be very disappointed as there are next to none. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large book without a bibliography.)

Design Language

Standout for me was Goodwin’s chapters on design language. Using the examples of an office phone and then a web data management app,  Goodwin shows how brand attributes such as “exeptional”, “approachable” and “mature” can be used to create subtly different aesthetics. Given that the biggest impediment for many designers starting out is being able to communicate how their concepts are relevant to their needs, these chapters are a must read.

Goodwin also puts in some useful tips on relevant areas such as presenting (making up slides) and graphic design (grids, grids, grids). Again, pointers to leading practitioners in the field (e.g. Nancy Duarte, Edward Tufte) might have been appreciated.

Bad Navigation

My main complaint with this book was that it was difficult to navigate. Much of the book is set up in multiple columns and large text, so that sections may run over several pages. This is compounded by example text often being near-indistinguishable from the body text and again running over several pages. I would love to see a reformatted version of this book (maybe with less text) as I feel it would do better justice to the content and make it easier to use.

The verdict: a comprehensive and well documented breakdown of experience design techniques as used by Cooper, with standout chapters on design language. You’ll need your post-it notes as this 700+ page book could be better formatted, and it won’t give you any other information leads. But otherwise a recommended reference especially for those interested in general interface (rather than web) design.

Book details
Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services
author: Kim Goodwin
published: Wiley, 2009
details: 739 pages, softcover

‘Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity’ is a book about creativity. It contains a collection of 40 tips on how to be creative. The book is an extension to the ‘How to be creative’ manifesto which the writer (Hugh MacLeod) published a few years ago, so a lot of content has already been available… but it’s still an inspiring book.

The way Hugh MacLeod describes creativity in his book is not in the sense of ‘talent’, but more in the sense of “how to do it”. The book assumes you already have what it takes to be creative (so if you don’t… you’re not going to learn it here). The 40 tips all revolve around getting into the mindset to create something which you believe is everything the world needs. You’ll read it in one evening and when you believe in this enlightening “holy shit” you’ll find a lot of inspiration and good thoughts.

Some advice

“Ignore Everybody” is the first, and perhaps the most important, piece of advice Hugh has to offer. When starting out on something new you, and only you, are responsible for getting things done. This also means taking responsibility for the idea that you’re trying to get out into this world. You need to trust your gut and not place too much value in what people are telling you what you should be doing.

“The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to tell you” – Hugh MacLeod

When starting out on something which has never been done before, the chances are that nobody will understand.

“Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are always initially resisted” – Hugh MacLeod

Hugh reminds us to be on the lookout for “The Innovators Dilemma“.

One of his new tips is: “Savor obscurity while it lasts” the moment you make it. The moment you go from unknown schmuck to hot shit, the world will come knocking, demanding a piece of the action and there is no way to go back to obscurity. Once ‘fame’ happens you will have a whole lot of other responsibilities you have to deal with other then sustaining whatever you did to get you there in the first place. Responsibilities only slow you down when you’re trying to produce. Thats why a lot of famous people did their best work when they were relatively unknown.

Once you ‘make it’, your work is never the same.

The verdict

I liked it. Though the advice in the book is not exactly ‘new’, (his list on ‘How to be creative‘ has been around for some time now. The book is basically that list + 10 new insights.. but even so: the no-nonsense attitude and cartoons are great fun.

So why buy the book? Well I for one am a sucker for paper. It reads much better in a lazy chair in the sun then baggy eyed behind a screen. And if you’re new to MacLeod’s world then this will get you right into the good stuff. It’s also short, light, direct, funny and refreshingly practical.

A good read but nothing new.

Book details
Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
author: Hugh MacLeod
publisher: Portfolio, 2009
details: 176 pages, hardcover

If you think this book is about sketching: it’s not. If you’re looking for a book that will teach you how to draw pretty pictures, look further. However, if you’re looking for a book that will help you solve almost any problem, then The Back of The Napkin is the book for you. Yes, ANY problem.

Solving problems with pictures

Because, as Dan Roam quite convincingly argues: “Any problem can be made clearer with a picture, and any picture can be made using the same simple set of tools”. And it doesn’t require any special drawing skills at all. If you can draw boxes, arrows and smiley faces, you already have all the drawing skills you need. In fact, being able to draw lines on paper is least important. (Personally, I think designers should be able to do more, but when it comes to just problem solving, it’s okay). Solving problems with pictures is about understanding the visual thinking process: Look – See – Imagine – Show, and applying that. It starts with Looking: collecting and screening information. Seeing is where you become conscious of things. There are six ways of seeing (who/what, how many, where, when, how and why). If you are able to discern these aspects of a problem, the problem already becomes more clear. If you are then able to Imagine what is not there and Show your ideas, you are solving problems through visual thinking.

“Visual thinking is learning to think with our eyes, and it doesn’t require any advanced technology at all”

The hand is mightier than the mouse

As do other ‘drawing-evangelists’, so does Dan Roam argue that, if you want to think visually, leave your computer turned off. This is not to say you should never make pictures on a computer. But right now, the best graphics tablet and most sophisticated software are no match for a pen and, well, the back of a napkin, when it comes to ‘spontaneous, painless editing and instant sharing’. I really agree with him.

“Any problem can be made clearer with a picture, and any picture can be made using the same simple set of tools”

The <6><6> rule of visual thinking

According to Dan Roam, “the biggest and most useful insight in this book is the <6><6> rule of visual thinking.” This comes down to the following: for every one of the six ways of seeing (who/what, how many, where, when, how and why), there is one corresponding way of showing. So for instance, if you see a ‘where’ problem, you use a map. This can be a geographical map, but also a sitemap (where are the web pages located relative to each other?) If you see a ‘when’ problem, you use a timeline. To explain ‘how’ something works, use a flowchart, etcetera. Each type of problem has its own framework. That makes a lot of sense really, but it’s something I often see done incorrectly. An insight I would like to add to that is: don’t try to put everything into one picture. Designers will sometimes try to put too much information into graphs, resulting in sitemaps that require wall-sized paper to print, or combinations of sitemaps and flowcharts that have so many lines no one can make sense of it. Solving different problems with the same picture just doesn’t work.

Since I started reading this book, I’ve become more aware of the times when I use pictures to clearify problems, which, as it turns out, is something I do all the time. And sure enough, it helps every time, especially in meetings with other (non-designers).

Selling ideas

This book is not just about solving problems, it’s about selling your ideas too. The great thing is that for this, you use the same visual thinking process, but aloud: look aloud, see aloud, imagine aloud and show aloud. What I really liked about what Dan Roam says about presenting is this: drawing is like performing, which is what presenting should be. Live drawing captivates the audience like no bulleted list can ever do. We are so used to turn to powerpoint for presentations, that we tend to forget that our presence is the presentation, not the slides. Next to the fact that you don’t have to be an artist in order to create good pictures, a second relief this book offers is that a picture isn’t bad if it’s not self-explanatory. As long as it is explainable. Pictures are not about saving a thousand words, but about eliciting a thousand words.

Conclusion

As said, this book is about solving problems, and well, let that be the thing that us designers deal with every day. This book will give you a number of very hands-on tools to improve your visual thinking skills (not your drawing skills) and be more critical of the pictures you already made. I found the visual codex in particular to be a useful method, that I’m going to try and apply more in my daily work. But in the end, it’s not so much the methods and tools that are most useful, but the awareness that each type of problem requires a certain type of picture.

The book sometimes feels like a bit too much methods for a skill that you may already master as a designer. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting and fun read with plenty of amusing anecdotes. And Dan Roam really practices what he preaches. There are drawings on almost each page, telling and supporting his story, which showed me that even a lot of abstract things can be made visual.

I think good designers already understand the power of visual thinking. That’s why I think The Back of the Napkin is not so much a must read for designers, but for everyone else – especially people who deal with problem solving on a daily basis. Interaction designers can still learn plenty from this book too, though, if only this: have a pen and paper with you at all times.

Book details
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
author: Dan Roam
publisher: Portfolio, 2008
details: 278 pages, hardcover

When I picked up this book I thought it would be a biography of Steve Jobs, and doubted whether this would make an interesting read for interaction designers. But it turns out, it’s very interesting for designers indeed. Obviously, there’s a lot of biographical information in it, but it’s not a chronological story of Steve’s life… It’s a book about Steve Jobs’ vision on products, user experience and innovation.

The introduction starts about how Steve Jobs gives as much thought to the box his gadgets come in as the products themselves. Having recently bought an iPhone myself (my first Apple product), I know Apple’s ‘unboxing experience’ is very nice. What I didn’t know is that Jobs already paid a lot of attention to package design in 1984, for the original Macintosh. This illustrates how for Jobs it’s all about the user experience and that every single aspect must be very carefully thought out. I’ve picked a few of the chapter titles to tell you something about this book. Let’s have a look.

Apple’s One-Man Focus Group

This book confirms the image many have of Steve Jobs as a dominant man who likes to control everything and who shouts at his employees. That may be true, but the other side of this coin is that Jobs is incredibly passionate about what he does and truly has a great sense for good design and what the user wants.

People don’t know what they want until you show it to them

It is mentioned that when the Walkman was developed, all the marketing research said it was going to fail, but it they went through with it anyway – and the Walkman became the biggest selling gadget ever. That’s why Jobs doesn’t believe in focus groups. He is quoted: “For something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. People don’t know what they want until you show it to them”. So Steve Jobs doesn’t need user research, because Steve Jobs is a user experience expert. At Apple, ‘the user’ is Steve Jobs. Jobs thinks like a layman, demanding his designers and engineers to make the products as simple as they can be. If he can use it, anyone can use it. That makes Apple a user centered company that never actually talks to its users. Okay, maybe Steve Jobs really is a genius who knows everything best, but I doubt that this kind of approach works for all companies. I personally believe more in open innovation: getting users involved in creating new products, and other big companies show that this works too (take a look at Google).

Perfectionism: Product Design and the Pursuit of Excellence

Steve Jobs is as much of a perfectionist as perfectionists get. It’s not right until it’s absolutely perfect. In order to make things perfect, there needs to be lots of room for iteration. At Apple, only 10 percent of the time is really spent on designing. The other 90 percent is for making endless variations, prototyping and testing, constantly tweaking and refining. This is really the core of Apple’s design process: prototype until perfection. Even the first Apple Store was prototyped: a full-size mockup was made inside a warehouse. Steve Jobs practices his keynote speeches for weeks before the presentation. Apple’s design team make lots of variations of a single design, and lay their prints out on a table to discuss them over and over again. This is something I think interaction designers should definitely aspire to do more: spend less time on design, and more on variations, prototyping and getting the details right.

Instead of adding features with each iteration, Steve will always push his team to make the products as simple as possible. That means they need to focus. And focus means saying no. That’s a very simple truth, but I think we often don’t realize the saying no part. We know we have to focus in order to make good designs, but throwing things away we put time and effort in is rather scary, isn’t it? Steve Jobs has no problems saying no. He’ll cancel projects that have been running for years, if he thinks they are not part of Apple’s core business. That’s what he did when he came back to Apple in 1997 and that focus has saved the company and made it one of the most innovative brands in the world today.

Focus means saying no. Stay focused; don’t allow feature creep

What struck me is that actually, Apple doesn’t practice ‘user experience’ design at all – at least not as we here at at Johnny Holland often talk about it. Apple doesn’t start out with the user. They don’t start out wanting to create a ‘friendly’ PC. They start with the materials and technology, trying out how they can advance the state of the art. Design for them is a craft and an art, not solving user’s problems. In fact, Steve Jobs doesn’t consciously think about innovation at all, because “trying to systemize innovation is like somebody who’s not cool trying to be cool”. He only thinks about making great products.

Total control: The Whole Widget

This is the name of the final chapter and sums Steve Jobs’ vision all up: in order to create the best customer experience, you need to control every aspect. From the hardware to the software, from the packaging to the stores, every touchpoint with the user is controlled by Apple, and eventually, by Steve Jobs. He believes this total control is the only way to guarantee stability, security and ease-of-use, of which the iPod and iPhone are probably the best examples.

At one point in the book, Leander writes about Jobs’ historic speech at Macworld in 2001 about the digital lifestyle (where the first iPod was introduced). While I was reading it, I thought ‘I wish I could look at a video of that keynote’. I then realised I had one of Steve’s products in my pocket, so I took out my iPhone, found the video on Youtube and watched what I had just been reading about, and thought to myself: ‘How cool is that? The digital lifestyle he talked about has come to life’.

Conclusion

This book is a quick and compelling read, full of interesting facts and anecdotes. Its not only about Apple, but about Jobs’ other successful company, Pixar, too. Each chapter is followed by a bulleted list with ‘Lessons from Steve’, so if you don’t like reading a lot, you can quickly distill the essence from the book from those pages.

But this book is not just a bunch of business lessons. It’s an inspirational book that hit me in my designer heart. When I read it, I  really got a ‘I wanna be like Steve’ feeling: I admire his pursuit of excellence, not willing to compromise for quality. That’s something we designers are too often forced to do, with time and budget constraints, or clients who see it completely differently. The book inspired me to really want to put the user experience in the first place at all times and let everything else come second. Sometimes it feels like the praise for Steve Jobs is a bit too much, though. Leander portrays him almost as a god-like person. I think you need to put that into perspective and realize that Apple’s strategy is not the only way to successful products.

Whether you’re an Apple lover or hater, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in user experience.

Book Details
Inside Steve’s Brain
author: Leander Kahney
publisher: Portfolio, 2008
details: 294 pages, hardcover

UX, experience designer, experience strategy … as far as words go, right now everything around UX design is still up for grabs. However, by focusing on the process ‘The Project Guide to UX Design: For User Experience Designers in the Field or in the Making’ by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler neatly sidesteps these sticky issues to deliver a fantastic handbook on the topic.

The (digital) experience designer

What initially struck me about this book is that, unlike other books that focus on techniques or the field, it focuses on the process and thus the role of being a UX designer (the UX of UXD, if you like). I haven’t seen a description of a UX designer before, and loved theirs:

Curiosity, passion, and empathy are traits that user experience designers share [along with] a desire to achieve balance … most notably between logic and emotion ….To create truly memorable and satisfying experiences, a UX designer needs to understand how to create a logical and viable structure for the experience and needs to understand the elements that are importance to creating an emotional connection with the product’s users.
- p6

Though UX designers can in theory do anything ranging from software interfaces to installations, the authors focus on “‘the design of digital experiences”. This specifically means websites (which they define as falling into six categories: brand presence, marketing campaign, content source, task-based applications, e-commerce, e-learning, or social networking applications), so expect chapters on SEO rather than interfaces.

A project guide, with all the realities

Ah, the realities of being a designer. Often many of the issues you have to deal with are nothing to do with design, and little things can make or break your project. This book goes a long way towards spelling out this reality. Along with the expected things you might read about (the different hats you have to wear, making up personas and wireframing), it covers less talked about topics such as writing proposals, dealing with team friction and what happens after a site is launched.

I have to admit I was surprised to find several pages dedicated to sloppy mistakes in wireframes. However, this attention to detail could well be justified, given a point made by UX designer Dante Murphy that inexperienced designers often suffer from “below par …. polish and aesthetic quality of their deliverables”. Other than that, I found all the other sections varied but relevant. I was however surprised that they didn’t touch on accessibility.

Read, browse, surf, snorkle, deep dive

‘A Project Guide’ achieves the difficult balance of being both a useful reference and easy read (even in such arcane moments as explaining the nuances of SEO). What’s more, each chapter is full of pointers to more in-depth resources (in case you miss the introductory text , they’re coded as ‘surf’, ‘snorkle’, or ‘deep dive’ depending on the length of the article) – including a paper by fellow Johnnie Steve Baty. Thankfully, they’ve put all the links up online.

The verdict

‘A Project Guide to UX Design’ is a must have for those starting out in the field of experience design as a brief but comprehensive guide to realising a web design project. For experienced practictioners, it’s a useful compendium of techniques and other resources. The only thing I’d add is a mention about accessibility standards.

Book details
A Project Guide to UX Design: For User Experience Designers in the Field or in the Making
author: Russ Unger, Carolyn Chandler
published: New Riders, 2009
details: 288 pages, softcover