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Books & People

Updated: February 23, 2010

The Books & People corner of the Community section offers lists of books on user interface and graphic design, well-known UI people, as well as a growing selection of book reviews. On this page we also present books and UI and graphic design experts.

 

Recent Book Reviews

Garr Reynolds: Presentation Zen (Feb 23, 2010)

Cover of Presentation Zen

Have you ever sat through a presentation that was much too full of information and much too long? You could hardly look at the slides, and there was clipart that was out of context? Looking back, you can hardly remember what the presentation was about, but you know that you had the feeling someone was stealing your time. Now, imagine having a completely different experience – or even being the one to offer people that different experience! Our author came across Garr Reynolds’ book, Presentation Zen, when when she had the pleasure of listening to a couple of presentations given by a colleague that were utterly and truly different from anything she had ever seen before. Read why she likes this book.

Read the review


Brenda Laurel: Design Research (Feb 2, 2010)

Cover of Design Research

Brenda Laurel's book Design Research, Methods and Perspectives is on the market since 2003 and still finds new readers. Our review author read the book just recently and was impressed by it. She felt like providing a detailed review of the book, because she found it extremely important for anyone in the user experience field to read. So, have a look at the review to find out why!

Read the review


Riccardo Mazza: Introduction to Information Visualization (Dec 17, 2009)

Cover of Introduction to Information Visualization

When our author met Robert Spence briefly at the INTERACT 2009 conference in Uppsala, Sweden, Spence mentioned that there was a good book about visualization for display at the Springer book stand. Our author had already seen that there was "something" available about this topic – but actually it was two books: a new introductory book by Riccardo Mazza and a second, much more advanced one by Chaomei Chen. The big question for him was: Which book had Robert Spence been referring to? He decided to buy both, and because Mazza's book is new and an introductory textbook that "focuses on the human aspects of the process of visualization rather than the algorithmic or graphic design aspects," he realized that this was the book he should have read first when initially diving into the topic of visualization. Unfortunately, the book did not appear until this year.

Read the review


Book Reviews In Preparation

  • Garr Reynolds (2009). Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations. New Riders Press • ISBN: 0321668790 • Preliminary review page

 

New and Recommended Books

Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza, & Carla Faria Leitão: Presentation Zen Design – Semiotic Engineering Methods for Scientific Research in HCI (Feb 23, 2010)

Cover of Semiotic Engineering Methods for Scientific Research in HCI

Semiotic engineering was originally proposed as a semiotic approach to designing user interface languages. Over the years, it evolved into a semiotic theory of human-computer interaction (HCI). It views HCI as computer-mediated communication between designers and users at interaction time. The system speaks for its designers in various types of conversations specified at design time. These conversations communicate the designers' understanding of who the users are, what they know the users want or need to do, in which preferred ways, and why. The designers' message to users includes even the interactive language in which users will have to communicate back with the system in order to achieve their specific goals. Hence, the process is, in fact, one of communication about communication, or metacommunication. Semiotic engineering has two methods to evaluate the quality of metacommunication in HCI: the semiotic inspection method (SIM) and the communicability evaluation method (CEM). Up to now, they have been mainly used and discussed in technical contexts. In this book, the authors discuss how SIM and CEM, which are both qualitative methods, can also be used in scientific contexts to generate new knowledge about HCI. To illustrate their points, they present an extensive case study with the free open-source digital audio editor Audacity. They show how the results obtained with a triangulation of SIM and CEM point at new research avenues not only for semiotic engineering and HCI but also for other areas of computer science such as software engineering and programming.
(From book abstract, adapted)

Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza, & Carla Faria Leitão (2009). Semiotic Engineering Methods for Scientific Research in HCI. Morgan & Claypool Publishers • ISBN: 9781598299441 (Paperback), ISBN: 9781598299458 (Online version)

See the book in the book list... Overview of all featured books

Garr Reynolds: Presentation Zen Design – Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations (Feb 23, 2010)

Cover of Presentation Zen Design

In his book Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, Garr Reynolds gave readers the framework for planning, putting together, and delivering successful presentations. Now, he takes us further into the design realm and shows how we can apply time-honored design principles to presentation layouts. Throughout Presentation Zen Design, Garr shares his lessons on designing effective presentations that contain text, graphs, color, images, and video. After establishing guidelines for each of the various elements, he explains how to achieve an overall harmony and balance using the tenets of Zen simplicity. Not only will you discover how to design your slides for more professional-looking presentations, you'll learn to communicate more clearly and will accomplish the goal of making a stronger, more lasting connection with your audience.
(From product description, adapted)

Garr Reynolds (2009). Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations. New Riders Press • ISBN: 0321668790

See the book in the book list... Overview of all featured books


Hartmut Esslinger: A Fine Line – How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business (Jan 14, 2010)

Cover of A Fine Line

For the first time, Hartmut Esslinger, internationally acclaimed designer and founder of frog design, inc., reveals the secrets to better business through better design. Having spent forty years helping build the world's most recognizable brands, Esslinger shows how business leaders and designers can join forces to build creative strategies that will ensure a more profitable and sustainable future.

A Fine Line shares the amazing story of Esslinger's transformation from industrial design wunderkind to a global innovation powerhouse, while detailing the very real challenges facing businesses in the new global economy. Offering companies far more than a temporary innovation booster, Esslinger shows how he and frog build creative design into the framework of an organization's competitive strategy, the same approach that has worked so well for leading edge companies such as Sony, Louis Vuitton, Lufthansa, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Microsoft, and Apple. SAP employees will find two pages in the book telling the enjoy story and a few familiar names...
(From product description, adapted)

Hartmut Esslinger (2009). A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business. Jossey-Bass • ISBN: 978-0470451021 (German version: Schwungrat: Wie Design-Strategien die Zukunft der Wirtschaft gestalten. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH • ISBN :978-3527504923)

See the book in the book list... Overview of all featured books

 

Featured UI & Design People

Hartmut Esslinger (Jan 14, 2010)

Photo of Hartmut Esslinger

Hartmut Esslinger is the founder and longtime co-CEO of frog design, and now serves as strategic and creative advisor to the company under the title of frog fellow. His vision has defined frog and his work has helped to develop the modern consumer aesthetic, through products like the Sony Trinitron and Apple Macintosh computer. When Esslinger founded frog design in his native Germany in 1969, his unique cultural style sparked a design revolution, pushing industry leaders to address users' functional and emotional needs simultaneously, and approach that formed the cornerstone of frog design. In 1996, Esslinger led frog design through the development of a digital media group, extending the company's product design concepts into the virtual world, and on into higher-level business strategy. frog design's client list is long and includes SAP, where the company was involved in the enjoy initiative (see philosophy edition) that revolutionized SAP's user interface.

Esslinger is Founding Professor of the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany, and Professor for Convergent Design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. His designs are in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institute, and Neue Sammlung, Munich. He was featured in the German pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany. Esslinger wrote several books, the newest one from 2009 is titled A Fine Line – How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business.
(From frog design Website, adapted)

Bio: http://www.frogdesign.com/about/management-team#hartmut-esslinger
See the data in the people list...Overview of all featured people


Kristina Höök (Nov 24, 2009)

Photo of Kristina Höök

Kristina Höök is the lab manager of the interaction lab at SICS. She also upholds a position as Professor in Human-Machine Interaction at Department of Computer and Systems Sciences that belongs both to Stockholm University and Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). Since 1994 Höök took part in establishing the HUMLE laboratory, first through leading one group within the lab, and then 2000-2003 as the laboratory manager. When she was appointed professor in 2003, she formed a new group at the university, but kept a part-time employment at SICS. At SICS, in October 2004, she formed a new laboratory named the Interaction Laboratory, and now spends about half-time at SICS and half-time at the university. Among her research topics are social navigation and the field of affective interaction. Höök has published over 50 scientific papers in journals and is a frequent speaker at conferences.
(From the biography and c.v. on her homepage at SICS; adapted)

Bio: www.sics.se/~kia C.V.: www.sics.se/~kia/cv.html
See the data in the people list...Overview of all featured people


Richard Anderson (Nov 24, 2009)

Photo of Richard Anderson

Richard I. Anderson, also called Riander, is a user experience practice, management, and organizational strategy consultant with more than 20 years of experience. His work has spanned multiple roles, including managing director, consultant, advisor, facilitator, practitioner, and teacher. He offers services in the following areas: leadership/management, mentoring/support, or guided exploration and learning. Anderson is a frequent speaker at conferences and maintains a blog. In 2007, Anderson has been named Incoming Co-Editor-in-Chief of the interactions magazine (with Jon Kolko)."
(From Website, adapted)

About: www.well.com/~riander/about.html
See the data in the people list...Overview of all featured people

 

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