Writing for Interaction


Book Description

Writing for Interaction focuses on the art of creating the information experience as it appears within software and web applications, specifically in the form of user interface text. It also provides strategies for ensuring a consistent, positive information experience across a variety of delivery mechanisms, such as online help and social media. Throughout this book, you'll learn simple techniques for writing consistent text with the right tone, how to select content delivery mechanisms, and how straightforward, clear layouts help your customer interact with your application. Divided into five sections, the book completely covers the information experience design process from beginning to end. You'll cover everything from understanding your users and their needs, to creating personas, designing the IX strategy, creating your information, and evaluating the resulting information experience. This is your one-stop reference for information experience! - Illuminates writing principles and practices for use in interactive design - Includes examples, checklists, and sample processes, highlighting practical approaches to designing the information experience - Provides the complete picture: understanding customer needs, creating personas, and writing the text appearing within the user interface




Information Experience in Theory and Design


Book Description

SI 14 provides a rigorous theoretical foundation for the study of information experience, an emerging field within Information Science. With particular focus on information behavior and literacy, it explores the importance and implications of individual user experience through the themes of understanding, meaning, and self.




UI is Communication


Book Description

User interface design is a challenging, multi-disciplinary activity that requires understanding a wide range of concepts and techniques that are often subjective and even conflicting. Imagine how much it would help if there were a single perspective that you could use to simplify these complex issues down to a small set of objective principles. In UI is Communication, Everett McKay explains how to design intuitive user interfaces by focusing on effective human communication. A user interface is ultimately a conversation between users and technology. Well-designed user interfaces use the language of UI to communicate to users efficiently and naturally. They also recognize that there is an emotional human being at the other end of the interaction, so good user interfaces strive to make an emotional connection. Applying what you learn from UI is Communication will remove much of the mystic, subjectiveness, and complexity from user interface design, and help you make better design decisions with confidence. It's the perfect introduction to user interface design. - Approachable, practical communication-based guide to interaction and visual design that you can immediately apply to projects to make solid design decisions quickly and confidently - Includes design makeovers so you can see the concepts in practice with real examples - Communication-based design process ties everything from interaction to visual design together




Writing for interaction : crafting the information experience for web and software apps


Book Description

Writing for Interaction focuses on the art of creating the information experience as it appears within software and web applications, specifically in the form of user interface text. It also provides strategies for ensuring a consistent, positive information experience across a variety of delivery mechanisms, such as online help and social media. Throughout this book, you'll learn simple techniques for writing consistent text with the right tone, how to select content delivery mechanisms, and how straightforward, clear layouts contribute to your customers ability to interact with your application. Broken down into five sections, the book completely covers the information experience design process from beginning to end starting with understanding the user to evaluating the work. You'll cover everything from understanding your users and their needs, to creating personas, designing the IX strategy, creating your information, and evaluating the resulting information experience. This is your one-stop reference to information experience! Illuminates writing principles and practices for use in interactive design. Includes examples, checklists, and sample processes throughout to highlight a practical approach to designing the information experience. Provides the complete picture starting with how to understand customer needs, creating personas, and writing the text appearing within the user interface.




Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design


Book Description

In a complex world, products that are easy to use win favor with consumers. This is the first book on the topic of simplicity aimed specifically at interaction designers. It shows how to drill down and simplify user experiences when designing digital tools and applications. It begins by explaining why simplicity is attractive, explores the laws of simplicity, and presents proven strategies for achieving simplicity. Remove, hide, organize and displace become guidelines for designers, who learn simplicity by seeing before and after examples and case studies where the results speak for themselves.




Programming Interactivity


Book Description

Make cool stuff. If you're a designer or artist without a lot of programming experience, this book will teach you to work with 2D and 3D graphics, sound, physical interaction, and electronic circuitry to create all sorts of interesting and compelling experiences -- online and off. Programming Interactivity explains programming and electrical engineering basics, and introduces three freely available tools created specifically for artists and designers: Processing, a Java-based programming language and environment for building projects on the desktop, Web, or mobile phones Arduino, a system that integrates a microcomputer prototyping board, IDE, and programming language for creating your own hardware and controls OpenFrameworks, a coding framework simplified for designers and artists, using the powerful C++ programming language BTW, you don't have to wait until you finish the book to actually make something. You'll get working code samples you can use right away, along with the background and technical information you need to design, program, build, and troubleshoot your own projects. The cutting edge design techniques and discussions with leading artists and designers will give you the tools and inspiration to let your imagination take flight.




Popular Mechanics


Book Description

Popular Mechanics inspires, instructs and influences readers to help them master the modern world. Whether it’s practical DIY home-improvement tips, gadgets and digital technology, information on the newest cars or the latest breakthroughs in science -- PM is the ultimate guide to our high-tech lifestyle.




Essential Mobile Interaction Design


Book Description

Design User-Friendly, Intuitive Smartphone and Tablet Apps for Any Platform Mobile apps should feel natural and intuitive, and users should understand them quickly and easily. This means that effective interaction and interface design is crucial. However, few mobile app developers (or even designers) have had adequate training in these areas. Essential Mobile Interaction Design fills this gap, bringing together proven principles and techniques you can use in your next app–for any platform, target device, or user. This tutorial requires virtually no design or programming knowledge. Even if you’ve never designed a mobile app before, this guide teaches you the key skills that lead to the best results. Cameron Banga and Josh Weinhold help you master the mindset, processes, and vocabulary of mobile interaction design, so you can start making better choices right away. They guide you through the entire design process, demystifying issues that arise at every stage. The authors share hard-won lessons from years of experience developing more than one hundred mobile apps for clients and customers of every type. They cover important issues that platform-specific guides often overlook, including internationalization, accessibility, hybrid apps, sandboxing, and what to do after release. This guide shows you how to Think through your designs, instead of just throwing together UI elements Allow an intuitive design flow to emerge from your app Sketch and wireframe apps more effectively Reflect key differences among smartphones, tablets, and desktops Design for visual appeal without compromising usability Work effectively with programmers Make sure your apps are accessible to everyone Get usable feedback, and understand what it’s telling you Learn valuable lessons from today’s most successful apps Refresh your designs in new apps and future versions Discover new tools for designing more successfully Packed with iOS and AndroidTM examples, Essential Mobile Interaction Design offers dozens of tips and solutions that will be equally useful on today’s platforms and on whatever comes next. Extensive resources are available at cameronbanga.com/EMIDbook.




Designing for the Digital Age


Book Description

Whether you’re designing consumer electronics, medical devices, enterprise Web apps, or new ways to check out at the supermarket, today’s digitally-enabled products and services provide both great opportunities to deliver compelling user experiences and great risks of driving your customers crazy with complicated, confusing technology. Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.




Emotional Design


Book Description

Why attractive things work better and other crucial insights into human-centered design Emotions are inseparable from how we humans think, choose, and act. In Emotional Design, cognitive scientist Don Norman shows how the principles of human psychology apply to the invention and design of new technologies and products. In The Design of Everyday Things, Norman made the definitive case for human-centered design, showing that good design demanded that the user's must take precedence over a designer's aesthetic if anything, from light switches to airplanes, was going to work as the user needed. In this book, he takes his thinking several steps farther, showing that successful design must incorporate not just what users need, but must address our minds by attending to our visceral reactions, to our behavioral choices, and to the stories we want the things in our lives to tell others about ourselves. Good human-centered design isn't just about making effective tools that are straightforward to use; it's about making affective tools that mesh well with our emotions and help us express our identities and support our social lives. From roller coasters to robots, sports cars to smart phones, attractive things work better. Whether designer or consumer, user or inventor, this book is the definitive guide to making Norman's insights work for you.