Although recognized as a key to the design process, prototyping often falls victim to budget cuts, deadlines, or lack of access to sophisticated tools. This can lead to sloppy and ineffective prototypes or the abandonment of them altogether. Rather than lose this important step, people are turning to Microsoft Excel® to create effective, simple, and inexpensive prototypes. Conveniently, the software is available to nearly everyone, and most are proficient in its basic functionality. Effect...

Effective Prototyping for Software Makers is a practical, informative resource that will help anyone—whether or not one has artistic talent, access to special tools, or programming ability—to use good prototyping style, methods, and tools to build prototypes and manage for effective prototyping. This book features a prototyping process with guidelines, templates, and worksheets; overviews and step-by-step guides for nine common prototyping techniques; an introduction with step-by-step guid...

The UX Book, winner of a 2013 Most Promising New Textbook Award from the Text and Academic Authors Association, is a comprehensive textbook on designing interaction to ensure a quality user experience. Combining breadth, depth, and practical applications, this book takes a time-tested process-and-guidelines approach that provides readers with actionable methods and techniques while retaining a firm grounding in human-computer interaction (HCI) concepts and theory.The autho...

Design Research Through Practice: From the Lab, Field, and Showroom focuses on one type of contemporary design research known as constructive design research. It looks at three approaches to constructive design research: Lab, Field, and Showroom. The book shows how theory, research practice, and the social environment create commonalities between these approaches. It illustrates how one can successfully integrate design and research based on work carried out in industrial design and intera...

In this hilarious and highly practical book, author and professional speaker Scott Berkun reveals the techniques behind what great communicators do, and shows how anyone can learn to use them well. For managers and teachers -- and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen -- Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It's a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and tri...

Now in full color, the 10th anniversary edition of this classic book takes you deep into the influences that underlie modern video games, and examines the elements they share with traditional games such as checkers. At the heart of his exploration, veteran game designer Raph Koster takes a close look at the concept of fun and why it’s the most vital element in any game.Why do some games become boring quickly, while others remain fun for years? How do games serve as fundamental and ...

There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product—but 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.

The question of our time: can we reclaim our lives in an age that feels busier and more distracting by the day?We've all found ourselves checking email at the dinner table, holding our breath while waiting for Outlook to load, or sitting hunched in front of a screen for an hour longer than we intended.Mobile devices and the web have invaded our lives, and this is a big idea book that addresses one of the biggest questions of our age: can we stay connected without diminishin...

The Essential Persona Lifecycle: Your Guide to Building and Using Personas offers a practical guide to the creation and use of personas, which can help product designers, their team, and their organization become more user focused. This book is for people who just need to know what to do and what order to do it in. It is completely focused on practical tools and methods, without much explanation on why the particular tool or method is the right one. The book discusses the five phases of pe...

The e-book for the digital preservation geek!Computers are our long-term memory. We trust them to keep our business and personal records, but many things can go wrong. Drives crash, data centers burn, files get corrupted, context gets lost, software to read old files becomes unavailable, overenthusiastic housecleaning puts files into the landfill. If you want files that last, you need to know what you're doing."Digital preservation" is a term known mostly to people in libra...

Global UX: Design and Research in a Connected World discusses how user experience (UX) practice is changing and how practitioners and teams around the world are creating great user experiences for a global context. The book is based on interviews with practitioners from many countries, working on different types of projects. It looks behind the scenes at what it takes to create a user experience that can work across borders, cultures, and languages. The book begins with a quick look at the...

Excel is a common spreadsheet program used in businesses across the country for nearly everything from tracking accounts to tracking the wages of employees. If you are learning business math, chances are you are being asked to learn Excel and become proficient in using the program. If you look into any jobs in business, from running your own business to working as an administrative assistant to simply working the front desk, you will find that Excel is a program you need to be well acquain...