Tagged “books”

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A book review of Designing for Emotion by Josh Wayne

<p>Short book on integrating emotion into your design work from the former design lead at MailChimp. Uses a lot of great examples of companies using humor, quirkiness, and thoughtfulness to encourage customers to buy and stick around. Definitely worth a read to get you thinking about how you can take your designs past usable and make them delightful.</p> <p><strong>Update:</strong> Since my review I’ve also read <a href="/books/technically-wrong/" ><em>Technically Wrong</em></a> which talks about how many of the practices in <em>Designing for Emotion</em> are no longer used at many of the companies mentioned and are no longer recommended. There’s still some great things to take away from this book but I highly recommend reading both to understand the dangers.</p>

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A book review of Fake It Make It by Josh Wayne

Quick introduction on creating rapid prototypes in Keynote/PowerPoint by the creator of Keynotopia (a Keynote UI library). The book is directed towards a complete beginner and rushes through a lot of important concepts that should be explained better. I’d only recommend this book for a non designer who wants to turn their idea into a prototype as fast as possible. If you’re a designer, you’re better off skipping this book and learning Sketch and exporting to prototypes in Invision or Marvel.

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A book review of How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Josh Wayne

Despite a lot of experts praising this book, I have a hard time recommending it to anyone wanting to learn information architecture for the first time. The author attempts to cover too much by expanding information architecture to cover any kind of information problem. It’s a great idea, but when an idea is abstracted, it makes it harder to grasp what the author is talking about. Good refresher for experienced designers, but I wouldn’t start here if you’re just starting with IA.

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A book review of Jobs to be Done by Josh Wayne

Huge waste of time. The title of the book is <i>Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice</i> but should be <i>Jobs to be Done: Why You Should Hire Me</i>. It explains how the author and his team developed Jobs to Be Done Theory into a process called ODI (Outcome-Driven Innovation). The book explains the high level steps in the ODI process and shares case studies of how the author’s consultancy helped clients make fistfuls of cash, but never tells you how to implement the process yourself. Instead, it’s one big buildup to a pitch on why you should pay thousands of dollars to hire them or do their ODI Practitioner certificate program.</p><p>There’s parts I found useful, but for the most part the book seems to be part of a trend of consultants writing books as a long form sales tool rather than a teaching tool. If this was a free book, I wouldn’t mind, but I’m annoyed that I paid $9.99 for an elaborate bait and switch. If you want to get any value, read my notes and don’t buy the book. Go read <a href="/books/competing-against-luck/"><em>Competing Against Luck</em></a> instead.

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A book review of Talking to Humans by Josh Wayne

Brief, actionable, and excellent. <i>The Lean Startup</i> tells you to get out of the building and talk to customers, this book tells you exactly how to do that. When I’ve advised startups to talk to customers, the follow up question is always some version of “How?”. This book covers the tactics of conducting successful customer interviews including real scripts you can use. Now that I’ve discovered this book, this is what I’ll send people who need to do customer research.

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A book review of Technically Wrong by Josh Wayne

Great book that brings attention to how the best intentions can make apps sexist, biased, and toxic. It documents dozens of examples of what happens when design teams fail to think beyond the positive effects of their products and the sometimes disastrously negative effects of seemingly cutesy, funny, and happy experiences. If you’ve read [*Designing for Emotion*](/books/designing-for-emotion/) I highly recommend reading this book as well.

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A book review of The Laws of Simplicity by Josh Wayne

Big ideas, covered poorly. The irony of this book is the author forgot one of his own “laws” and didn’t strip out all the rambley, barely connected thoughts to make the content clear. I might recommend this book to someone who just wants an easy reading, designer-y book but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who actually wants to learn design. There’s much better books to spend your time on. Otherwise, it’s a decent book if you’re stuck at the airport with a dead Kindle and this is the only design book you could find in the airport bookstore.