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Title: The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web by Jesse James Garrett ISBN: 0-7357-1202-6 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 11 October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.05 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A User Experience Designer's Delight
Comment: There is a fundamental question that must be asked about Jesse James Garrett's book: why did he need to write it? Mr. Garrett's well known "User Experience" stacking diagram is already a very clear rendition of the complicated process of designing for a web user's experience, so why did he have to write a book to explain it?
The answer is that vast numbers of people who should know about these processes don't. While JJG's stacking diagram may be familiar to Information Architects and other user experience designers, it is virtually unknown to the other 95% of the organization that is responsible for selling, marketing, building, and/or maintaining web sites.
True to his words, Jesse James Garrett delivers a book that neither explains how to do anything, nor provides answers to technology questions about web sites. In fewer than 200 pages, Mr. Garrett does provide a whirlwind survey of the intricacies of interactive design for the web.
Mr. Garrett begins by promising that the book will take only a few hours to read, and he's pretty close to the mark. As I would have expected, the book's design helps keep his promise. The pages are well laid out with plenty of whitespace and supporting diagrams nicely illustrating his points; his language is clear, concise and direct; his presentation not only supports (and is guided by) the stacking diagram, each point logically follows from the last.
Within a few pages, it is very clear that Mr. Garrett did not write the book for practitioners already familiar with his three dimensional diagram. He is focused instead on those people who are not in the daily struggle of designing appropriate experiences for web site visitors. But that doesn't mean the book can't be used by well-heeled user experience designers. Practitioners will find the book an invaluable aid in their on-going evangelical efforts within their own organizations, or as part of their consultancies, as they explain the processes, methods and vocabulary of user experience design to those unfamiliar with this emerging discipline.
For those individuals, the book provides a clear and straightforward introduction to the very complicated and intertwined issues of designing engaging experiences for the web, whether they are "content" or "application" driven.
I, for one, will be recommending Mr. Garrett's book as a "must read" for everyone in my company.
Rating: 4
Summary: Small book, big subject.
Comment: Information architecture is a phrase beginning to be bandied about in web design and development circles, but its speakers are often unfamiliar with the meaning of the term. In one case I witnessed it was greeted with giggles and guffaws of incomprehension.
Yet an industry-wide understanding of information architecture is crucial, especially now that the days of corporate web sites as little more than online brochures, or marketing eye candy, are well and truly over. Web sites, if they are to provide real value to their readers and publishers, must fulfil real business functionality. Above all their functions, look and feel must be aimed squarely at satisfying the reader and her needs, at providing the optimum user experience. According to Garrett, planning is the key.
Five Part Plan.
Garrett divides a web site's planning into five parts, from top to bottom - Surface, Skeleton, Structure, Scope and Strategy. Bottom comes first, then you work your way to the top, the design and programming of the site itself. Garrett recommends that all sites are planned using this conceptual framework.
But, how many times have you seen a web site built in reverse - look and feel coming first, perhaps with some concession made to planning the structure and the content to go into it? Practices still vary widely across the industry - Garrett makes an excellent case for adopting a more structured method, supporting it with sound arguments and good examples throughout the book.
An Odd Omission.
I have rated The Elements of User Experience at four stars, not five, due to a surprising omission. It would have made so much sense to have published the diagrams and notes about information architecture located on Jesse James Garrett's [website] as appendices.
Books are made to be read in places you might not want to take computers - the bathroom, the bus, the train, in bed. I found myself wanting to relate Garrett's revelations in the book to the more technical stuff on his website, especially his Visual Vocabulary. I could not do that, unless I also happened to be carrying my stack of dog-eared single-sided web page print-outs - not a pretty sight.
That small complaint aside, The Elements of User Experience should be bought and read by everyone involved in a web site's conception through to birth - client, creative lead and chief programmer at the very least. It shows why someone must take responsibility for the project's architecture, even if that person does not go under the title of Information Architect. The time when the title is in common use, no longer laughed at, is when the Web will really begin fulfilling its potential.
From small beginnings good things grow.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Book; Misleading Title
Comment: Like many negative Amazon reviews, some detractors of this book seem to object to the fact that it is this book and not something else. In this case they may not be entirely unfair. If you are looking for advanced techniques in web design you won't find them in Garrett's book. If, however, you are looking for a good framework for thinking about design strategy--for your own thinking, for explaining things to clients, or for students--you will find this book indispensable. It is short, sweet, and straightforward. Whether that's good news of bad is something each reader will need to decide.
Some complain that The Elements of User Experience does not go deeply enough into a range of user experience issues. This may partially be the fault of the author and the publisher. The value of this book goes well beyond web projects and the "user experience" world. Much of it applies to a variety of design projects. If I were to make a major objection to the book it is not that it is too shallow but that it is conceived of as too narrow.
Much of the audience that would find this book to be an important breakthrough would never pick up a book that crams the word "User" into the title twice then gets in two buzz words and says "Web." I don't think this is one of the most important books about user experience or user-centered design. It is, however, a great basic book on design strategy. I hope disappointed people rating it poorly for not being the book they hoped for will not detract from this book finding the wider audience it richly deserves.
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Title: Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web by Christina Wodtke ISBN: 0735712506 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 16 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug ISBN: 0789723107 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 13 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience by Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, Jason I. Hong ISBN: 020172149X Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 22 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $54.99 |
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Title: Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces by Carolyn Snyder ISBN: 1558608702 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Pub. Date: 02 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville ISBN: 0596000359 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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