It’s the little things that turn a good digital product into a great one. With this full color practical book, you’ll learn how to design effective microinteractions: the small details that exist inside and around features. How can users change a setting? How do they turn on mute, or know they have a new email message?Through vivid, real-world examples from today’s devices and applications, author Dan Saffer walks you through a microinteraction’s essential parts, then shows you how...

Explore the new design discipline that is behind such products as the iPod and innovative Web sites like Flickr. While other books on this subject are either aimed at more seasoned practitioners or else are too focused on a particular medium like software, this guide will take a more holistic approach to the discipline, looking at interaction design for the Web, software, and devices. It is the only interaction design book that is coming from a designers point of view rather than that of a...

Building products and services that people interact with is the big challenge of the 21st century. Dan Saffer has done an amazing job synthesizing the chaos into an understandable, ordered reference that is a bookshelf must-have for anyone thinking of creating new designs.”— Jared Spool, CEO of User Interface EngineeringInteraction design is all around us. If you’ve ever wondered why your mobile phone looks pretty but doesn’t work well, you’ve confronted bad interaction desi...

If you want to get ahead in this new era of interaction design, this is the reference you need. Nintendo's Wii and Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch have made gestural interfaces popular, but until now there's been no complete source of information about the technology.Designing Gestural Interfaces provides you with essential information about kinesiology, sensors, ergonomics, physical computing, touchscreen technology, and new interface patterns -- all you need to know to aug...

It's been known for years that usability testing can dramatically improve products. But with a typical price tag of $5,000 to $10,000 for a usability consultant to conduct each round of tests, it rarely happens.In this how-to companion to Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug spells out an approach to usability testing that anyone can easily apply to their own web site, application, or other product. (As he said in Don't Make Me Thin...

UX design isn’t a new field. But sometimes new approaches lead to new perspectives. In this book, you’ll learn how lean UX has made the whole discipline more approachable and attractive to startups, and you’ll see that UX issues aren’t just a quick fix, but should also address big-pic- ture issues. Sometimes, the solution to a problem is just to fix a broken UX. At other times, you need to constantly fine-tune in order to keep up with changing demands. You’ll also explore wireframing tech...

The ground beneath the book publishing industry dramatically shifted in 2007, the year the Kindle and the iPhone debuted. Widespread consumer demand for these and other devices has brought the pace of digital change in book publishing from "it might happen sometime" to "it’s happening right now"—and it is happening faster than anyone predicted.Yet this is only a transitional phase. Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto is your guide to what comes next, when all books are truly digi...

User Experience (UX) can be strongly influenced by behavioral factors such as emotions, beliefs, preferences and even cultural backgrounds. Being aware of this, Web designers keep developing strategies to improve the overall UX with the help of storytelling, tools for problem solving, relationship engineering and costumer service improvement. This Smashing eBook "User Experience Design" (eBook #15) provides you with insights on how to improve your website based on the most impor...

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.

Web 2.0, the second generation of the World Wide Web, allows us to connect, create, collaborate, and share information. When we bring Web 2.0 tools into the classroom, we transform learning. By applying these tools thoughtfully, we see a shift in student engagement, creativity, and higher order learning skills. In this companion book, the authors of the best-selling Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools introduce you to more Web 2.0 tools and expertly lead you through classroom and professional ...

Feeling uninspired? That shouldn’t keep you from creating great design work. Design is not about luck, inspiration, or personal expression. Design is a disciplined pursuit aimed at producing sensible, functional work for clients. In The Design Method, you’ll learn how to create quality design work on a regular basis that consistently pleases your clients using the same method that Creative Director Eric Karjaluoto uses at his creative agency, smashLAB. The Design Method w...

How can you design technology that becomes a part of a user’s life and not a distraction from it? This practical book explores the concept of calm technology, a method for smoothly capturing a user’s attention only when necessary, while calmly remaining in the background most of the time. You’ll learn how to design products that work well, launch well, are easy to support, easy to use, and remain unobtrusive.Author Amber Case presents ideas first introduced by researchers at Xerox ...