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

Hello world, my name is Mac Funamizu and I love to design and invent stuff. Every now and then the ideas move away from my Moleskin, towards the computer. Those ideas I will share with you through Johnny Holland. The first concept I’d like to share is an interactive desktop hygrometer and thermometer.

The clock interface
Everybody knows that you know what time it is just by glimpsing at a clock. Although the interface of an analog clock doesn’t perfectly visualize the amount of time in a day, people of (almost) all ages can tell the time pretty easily. And it’s just a representation of time, without using numbers.

Know it by feeling it
Yeah, we know that, but what about other devices with which you have to read numbers to know the result? Such as a temperature, hygrometer, speedometer, the remaining data in a USB memory stick, etc. Don’t we have another way to understand the numbers just as well as with a clock? Why do we always have to take a close look at a thermometer to only know one number? After all, does everyone need to know the EXACT number of the temperature? That may be the reason that data visualization exists.

For me it was the reason to create new products. I want to “feel” something by seeing the visualized numbers:

Left is humidity, right temperature.

Red circles become blue when the temperature becomes negative.