Recommended reading covers books and articles that have significantly influenced our thinking. Readings include the areas of user experience, the user-centered design process, the value of user experience. Feel free to add your feedback.

User Experience and
User-Centered Design

Contextual Design Hugh Beyer, Karen Holtzblatt (1997). 1st edition paperback. A good primer on how to conduct field research data to understand whole systems and evironments. Topics include interdependencies between people, computer systems, environments, and objects (artifacts) people use to accomplish tasks. The book contains some useful chapters including one on how to understand and design work models.

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity Alan Cooper (1999). 1st edition hardcover. The inmates explains succinctly why a lot of software is not user friendly. Cooper describes traditional problems with software development, and how to develop solutions with the user in mind. Favorite discussions include goals versus tasks, user personas, and how developers are different from users. This favorite gets 5 stars.

	The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web Jesse James Garrett (2002). 3rd edition paperback. Azinno has been a fan of Jesse’s “Elements of User Experience” diagram (available here in .pdf) for years. This book lives up to expectations and accurately make distinctions between the UX process for web browsing and web applications.

	IDEO Method Cards: 51 Ways to Inspire Design IDEO (2003). Cards in a box. Method cards are a collection of easy to digest user experience and design methods (one method per card). IDEO presents the methods in a descriptive, non-technical language. For example, the card “Activity Analysis” is a good summary of a “High-Level Task Analysis”.

	GUI Bloopers 2.0. Common User Interface Design Don’ts and Dos Jeff Johnson (2008). Revised paperback. GUI Bloopers is highly recommended because it accurately conveys best practices in designing user interfaces, and is very entertaining. It covers both web and application errors.

The Art of Innovation Tom Kelley (2001). 1st edition hardcover. This book tops our 5 star recommendation list because we share it with every client and colleague. Everyone talks about innovation, but this book shows how to do with with examples, insights and stories. Chapters to live by include: Innovation Begins With An Eye, The Perfect Brainstorm, Prototyping Is The Shorthand Of Innovation, and Creating Experiences For Fun And Profit.

	Don’t Make Me Think Steve Krug (2006). 2nd edition paperback. A reference and how to guide for people that want to design usable web sites. This book does a great job of summarizing user experience data. For example the chapter Usability testing on 10 Cents a Day, is a useful overview for usability testing.

	Mobile Usability, How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone Christian Lindholm, Turkka Keinonen (2003). Paperback. A must read for anyone involved in designing for mobile solutions or products that combine hardware and software. The book contains a balance of insights on research, case studies, cultures, design, and usability testing.

Designing Interactions Bill Moggridge (2007). 1st edition hardcover. Interactions is an awesome collection of stories and history of User Interface (UI) design. This book is a UI bible… In the beginning there was the mouse created by Doug Engelbart, then Bill Atkinson came along and designed the Apple Lisa with proportional fonts! Topics include the personal computer, play, the internet, multimedia, and leaders in the field.

	Usability Engineering Jakob Nielsen (1993). 1st edition book. The authoritative source for usability engineering, written by Jakob Nielsen who is probably the most quoted usability expert. This paperback includes excellent sections on usability heuristics and usability testing.

The Design Of Everyday Things Donald Norman (1990). Doubleday/Currency paperback reprint edition. The Design of Everyday Things shaped our careers as user expereince designers. This work has been published in several different forms for more than a decade, but it remains incredibly insightful and relevant. A key concept is the discussion of mental models and the relationship between the designers model, the users model, and the system image/technology.

	The Invisible Computer Donald Norman (1999). MIT paperback. This book clearly illustrates the case of how companies can (and should) move from making “technology-centered” to “human-centered” products and services.

Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers Colin Robson (2002). 2nd edition paperback. A manual on conducting “real world” research. It discusses strategies for designing any type of field research, how to collect the data, and how to analyze the data. Azinno especially likes the chapters covering case studies, ethnographic methods, and analysis of qualitative data.

Designing the User Interface, Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen, Steven Jacobs (2006). 5th edition hardcover. This historic resource covers everything designers need to know about user interface design. It is an Azinno favorite because it begins with theory and principles. It give practical advice on the design process, user requirements collection, UI design, components, strategies, and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

	Envisioning Information Edward R. Tufte (1990). Hardcover. The authoritative word on information design. Tufte presents examples and explains information theory. The content is simultaneously visual and conceptually complete.

	Measuring The User Experience Tom Tullis and Bill Albert (2003). Softcover. Tullis and Albert provide insightful details on how to collect, analyze, and present usability metrics. The book is a must-read for usability practitioners, and has a useful chapter on selling the value of usability.

	An Introduction to Human Factors Engineering Christopher D. Wickens, John D. Lee , Yili Liu , Sallie Gordon-Becker (2003). 2nd edition hardcover. Everything you’ll need to know about human factors is in this book including: methods, human perception and cognition, displays and controls, biomechanics, physiology, safety, and specialized discussions about industries including transportation.

Related Topics

A partial list of books on business, leadership, branding, and entrepreneurship.

Good to Great, Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t Jim Collins (2001). 1st edition hardcover. Peter Drucker probably said it best, “This carefully researched and well-written book disproves most of the current managament hype”. Azinno agrees! It included invaluable concepts like finding the right people to be in an organization, then finding the best role for the “right people” and knowing the vision and strategy will fall into place.

	The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything Guy Kawasaki (2004). 1st edition hardcover. A how to guide for entrepreneurs starting up a product, service, or organization. This gem is chalked full of practical advice.

	A Whole New Mind, Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age Daniel Pink (2005). 1st edition hardcover. Pink’s thesis is we are moving from a logical and linear information age to an empathic, inventive conceptual age. Pink presents “six senses” that are needed to make the transition.

	Word of Mouth Marketing, How Smart Companies Get People Talking Andy Sernovitz (2006). 1st edition hardcover. Sernovitz shares a potpourri of ideas on how to market anything using word of mouth techniques. The format is cool because anyone can start with an idea or two, test it, measure it, and then try out more ideas.

To Read

We have not read these books yet, but they have gotten good reviews and are on our “to read” lists.

World Usability Day, Making Life Easier

Each November, the Usability Professionals’ Association sponsors World Usability Day. From the web site:

It’s about making our world work better, making life easier, and user friendly. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy to access as a doorknob.

In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, government, communication, entertainment, work and other areas, we must develop these technologies in a way that serves people first.

Hopefully this day reminds all of us to evolve from technology-centered to more human-centered solutions. The important thing to keep in mind (every day) is to consider how every product development decision impacts the end user.

At Azinno, we design complete user experiences using our toolbox of methods and process. We’ve always believed that user personas and scenario designs help in creating great experiences.

Bruce Temkin of Forrester Research provides some data related to this methodology, “Lessons Learned From 1,001 Web Site Reviews“.

This is a paper we presented at the CHI, the Computer-Human Interaction conference, titled Designing Software for Consumers to Easily Set Up a Secure Home Network. It is a summary on how a good user experience design impacts the bottom line. In this case study, the first pilot resulted a 46% reduction in calls to technical support. The shipping product saves Linksys several $ million annually.

Summary

Home networking continues to expand into a collection of computers and networked devices that are becoming more complex to setup and manage. Research indicated that new techniques were needed to help people set up a secure home network. The techniques should satisfy the expectations of advanced users, without requiring technical knowledge on the part of novice users. A central design theme influenced the software solution: If a networking expert was advising a user on how to set up, configure, and secure a home network, what would this person tell the user to do?

In this case study, insights about creating a new home networking program to solve the challenges are discussed. Results indicated animations, good default settings and a network map increased the user success rate for network setup.

Read Full Paper

Designing Software to Easily Setup A Secure Home Network, in Adobe Acrobat Reader, by Brenton Elmore, Subbarao Ivaturi, and Stuart Hamilton.

Discovering Opportunities To Fulfill Senior Adult Wants And Needs Via The Smart Home

This document is a thesis, published by Brenton Elmore in 2000.

ABSTRACT

There are more than thirty major smart home control systems available. A smart home typically employs a system that automates the control of lighting, heating and cooling, security, surveillance, and entertainment. Market penetration and product acceptance has been surprisingly low. Senior adults could be one of the fastest growing population segments using this technology if it is made easy for them to use. The goals of this study were:

• to understand wants and needs of senior adults
• to interpret how smart home technologies could address those wants and needs, and
• to use the resulting data to guide the development of conceptual products that illustrate opportunities for the smart home industry.

Formal research questions for this case study were:

Q1. Which wants and needs of senior users could be addressed by the smart home?

Q2. Which user wants and needs does the smart home industry consider viable?

Q3. What design considerations may benefit the smart home industry and senior users?

To answer Q1, senior user wants and needs were documented through ethnographic observations and field interviews. Research focused on daily experiences and on difficulties with the use of products, services, and technologies. Persons who provide support services for this case study population were also interviewed. To answer Q2, industry representatives were interviewed and those answers were triangulated with document analysis. Q3 was answered by interpreting results from Q1, Q2, and the literature on universal design and smart home technology.

Results indicate that some senior wants and needs may soon be addressed by future smart home products and solutions. However, three wants and needs are not being considered by the industry: simplification of the interaction with technology, knowing and understanding individual senior capabilities, and providing assistance with medical issues. The optimum solution for seniors in this case study is an integrated, community wide, smart home system that responds to individual capabilities and core values. Insights relating to senior wants and needs are presented, along with seven guiding principles for developers of smart home technologies.

Download the entire document in .pdf format.