For the Bookshelf: Prototyping

Prototyping, by Todd Zaki Warfel
Five out of five stars on Amazon.com. "With this book, Warfel shows how prototypes are more than just a design tool by demonstrating how they can help you market a product, gain internal buy-in, and test feasibility with your development team."

For the Bookshelf: User Research

Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research, by Mike Kuniavsky

Four and one-half stars out of five on Amazon.com. "You'll like Mike Kuniavsky's broad selection of practical user research methods—presented clearly and usably. And you'll like his timing too: while recent books focus on the whys of user experience, many are now ready for the hows. Observing the User Experience does just that: It demonstrates how to discover what is in users' heads, and suggests how we might balance those considerations with business objectives."

The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design, by John Pruitt

Four and one-half stars out of five on Amazon.com. "Personas are powerful design tools, which are that much more dangerous if they are grounded in weak methodology. Pruitt and Adlin show you how to do personas right and how to base them on real user data. Follow their advice or risk disaster."

Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior, by Indi Young

Four stars out of five on Amazon.com. "There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product—buy you can increase your odds. One of the best ways is to understand users' reasons for doing things. Mental Models gives you the tools to help you grasp, and design for, those reasons. Adaptive Path co-founder Indi Young has written a roll-up-your-sleeves book for designers, managers, and anyone else interested in making design strategic, and successful."

So Far, My Hero

In Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson puts into writing many of my own long-held beliefs and methods. Here's another passage that makes her a girl after my own heart:

"Information architecture and content strategy are really two sides of the same coin. To design successful content-driven user experiences, one role simply cannot succeed without the other.

"Responsibilities do overlap. In fact, on small Web projects, one person can play both roles. However, regardless of project size, it's usually most effective if a separate IA and content strategist work side-by-side.

"Web professionals love to argue about which role owns what, where and when different roles should have decision-making authority, and so on. This kind of discussion makes me crazy. Arguing over who owns what is a waste of time. Decide what's necessary, agree who will drive the effort, and get the work done.

"No matter what, just make sure someone owns the content. While structure, taxonomy (content categorization), and nomenclature (menu labels) are critical to designing a successful website, without clear direction around the 'meat' of the site—the content that will exist in every nook and cranny—these solutions will fall short, every time."

Where Were You When I Needed You?

I started reading Kristina Halvorson's Content Strategy for the Web. It's new this year, copyright 2010.

Professionally, I spent my youth in the world of print publishing. I recognized right away that the Web was another way of publishing. I learned how to create websites so I could self-publish. I assumed, wrongly, that the publishing process for the Web would be pretty much the way it was for print.

Halvorson's cry that Web content should be treated like print content—with a respected process and an editor-in-chief—is the one voice I've ever heard that supports my own instincts—instincts that kicked in as soon as I saw Web pages with words on them all those years ago.

A few years back, I was a content developer building a practice within a user-centered design team. The team served as an in-house consulting and creative group for the ecommerce portion of a very large business. I've witnessed the disrespect content has suffered in Web era. And, for the first time, someone feels the same pain.

I read the second chapter, "Problem: Why Does Web Content Mostly Suck?," thinking, "Where was this book when I really needed it?" Everything from poor understanding about content on the part of user experience coworkers to having to rewrite four-dollar Web content that managers thought would save time and money. It's all there in Halvorson's second chapter.

For the Bookshelf: Web Analytics

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity, by Avinash Kaushik
Five out of five stars on Amazon.com. "Adeptly address today’s business challenges with this powerful new book from web analytics thought leader Avinash Kaushik. Web Analytics 2.0 presents a new framework that will permanently change how you think about analytics. It provides specific recommendations for creating an actionable strategy, applying analytical techniques correctly, solving challenges such as measuring social media and multichannel campaigns, achieving optimal success by leveraging experimentation, and employing tactics for truly listening to your customers. The book will help your organization become more data driven while you become a super analysis ninja!"

Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business, by Eric Peterson
Four and one-half stars out of five on Amazon.com. "What I especially like is the way each approach to analytics is thoroughly examined, and the strengths and weaknesses objectively discussed. Some books are dogmatic in their approach, locking the reader into the author's view of analytics. This one differs by giving readers enough information with examples, clearly articulated factors, and other identified best practices to accept compromise solutions based on budget, level of in-house expertise and other considerations." 

For the Bookshelf: Design Patterns

Web Application Design Patterns, by Pawan Vora

Four and one-half stars out of five on Amazon.com.

"Web Application Design Patterns covers design patterns as they are used in forms, user authentication, main page, navigation, searching and filtering, and lists. The rest of the book covers Rich Internet Applications, social applications, internationalization, accessibility, visual design, and how to create pattern libraries with just the right amount of detail and examples.

Each of the one hundred and twenty-two design patterns covered in this book are presented by name, the design problem(s) the pattern solves, the solution to the problem, the rationale for the design solution's effectiveness, a list of best practices describing the application of the solution and possible variations, and related design patterns."

For the Bookshelf: Enterprise IA

The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture: A Systems-Based Approach for Unlocking Business Insight, by Mario Godinez, Eberhard Hechler, Klaus Koenig, Steve Lockwood, Martin Oberhofer, Michael Schroeck

New, not rated yet. "Drawing on their extensive experience working with enterprise clients, the authors present a new, information-centric approach to architecture and powerful new models that will benefit any organization. Using these strategies and models, companies can systematically unlock the business value of information by delivering actionable, real-time information in context to enable better decision-making throughout the enterprise—from the 'shop floor' to the 'top floor.'"

For the Bookshelf: Mobile Apps

Designing the Mobile User Experience, by Barbara Ballard

Four out of five stars on Amazon.com. "Gain the knowledge and tools to deliver compelling mobile phone applications."

Mobile Design and Development: Practical Concepts and Techniques for Creating Mobile Sites and Web Apps, by Brian Fling

Four and one-half stars out of five on Amazon.com. "If you're a web designer, web developer, information architect, product manager, usability professional, content publisher, or an entrepreneur new to the mobile web, Mobile Design and Development provides you with the knowledge you need to work with this rapidly developing technology. "

Apple iPad Hits the Market

Lines stretched around blocks in major cities across the United States this morning as Apple devotees congregated to pick up the first iPads.

"Many of the people waiting for the iPad had a vague sense that they were involved in yet another big Apple moment, although they could not precisely say how they would use the tablet computer, which shares features of both laptops and mobile phones."

The introduction "says more about the role Apple is playing in our culture and little about the ultimate success of the iPad."

"By all accounts, the lines were shorter and more subdued than those three years ago for the iPhone."

From the New York Times, April 4, 2010

The Rule of Goals

"All Web interactions begin with goals. Each user visits a site in order to do something—even 'just browsing' has user goals behind it."

From The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web, by Steve Mulder with Ziv Yaar

Marketing vs. Usability

"When marketing groups segment users, they do so in order to sell to people, and so traditional demographics (age, income, gender, and so on) make sense, because these attributes often correlate to market acceptance or likelihood of purchase.

"But in creating a website, we're not just selling something to people—we're building something that they will actually use. Thus, we want to focus on attributes that reveal how people will actually use the site: goals (what users want to do), behaviors (how they do it), and attitudes (how they perceive the experience or themselves)."

From The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web, by Steve Mulder with Ziv Yaar