That aside, I see this book as being useful for someone who wants or needs change (“someone” can equal “an organization”). The book forces you to question which pursuits you should continue.

Godin also forces you to think about the ugly inverse of continuing—quitting. If you’re not on your way to being #1 for your pursuit, is it even worth continuing?

I’m actually glad that I’ve been forced to ask those questions of myself. It helps bring things into perspective.

I ultimately recommend this book. Bonus that it’s a short one!

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usability, book review, technology, marketing

• The use of personal computers is just now breaking into the mainstream market.
• Current computer users are early adopters of computing technology.
• Current technology is way too complex, and it wastes our time and energy.
• The personal computer is way too generally-purposed, and, as a result, it is not optimized for any given task.
• The survivors in the tech market will need to balance technology, marketing, and usability in the product development process. Those that poorly executed their marketing early on lost market share.
• The current standard development process is backwards; we should focus on human factors before actually “building” the physical product, not the other way around. To do this, a complete reorg of your company is required.
• People are not machines, so our tech products must stop treating them as such.
• Relatively simple information appliances are the solution.

The story Norman uses to set up his conclusion is wonderful. My list of bullet points does it no justice. Read it for a great insight into how we’ve gotten where we are in the world of technology and where we need to go next. Highly recommended.

I’ve finally finshed reading another staple piece of literature in our field of web design. Although slightly outdated, Jakob Nielsen’s Designing Web Usability is a must read. Seriously, go get it. It’s your responsibility as a web designer to know this information.

This book begins your journey down the path of designing web sites and web applications with usability in mind. Nielsen addresses issues like writing web content, page design, and useful tips on designing for Intranets, accessibility, and internationalization. The book doesn’t cover how to conduct usability studies, but it instead lists the “universal truths” of usable design that Nielsen’s user studies have uncovered over the years.

The introduction to this book takes me back to my early days in high school when I started toying around with web pages. Nielsen recommends reading this book before learning anything about HTML, and I wish I would have. It’s easy to learn how to code a scrolling marquee in HTML, but learning the HTML doesn’t teach you that scrolling marquees rarely have good uses on the Web.

Even though the sample interfaces in the book are really outdated, they still get the point across. I still see web sites that break the sames rules that Nielsen presented when he wrote this book back in 2000.

I look forward to re-reading the chapters on accessibility and Intranets so I can apply some of this knowledge.

Because you have taken that role, you may as well read the definitive beginner’s guide. Authors Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville do an excellent job describing what Information Architecture (IA) is, how it overlaps with other disciplines, and begin describing how to produce controlled vocabularies, wireframes, and labels. As Rosenfeld and Morville point out, IA is so new that there are no absolutely concrete ways of doing anything, but they’ve been consulting on it long enough to know what works so far. The case studies on the information architectures of evolt.org and Microsoft’s MSWEB Intranet provide invaluable insight as to how IA can be applied for value in the real world.

So far, the book has given me some great ideas on interface design and how search should work. I’ve even gotten to bust out a software vendor on their lackluster search during a meeting, while actually having a clue as to what I was talking about (more about that in a future blog post).

Not the most fun read in the world, especially in the beginning parts of the book, but I definitely recommend it to anyone who has a hand in developing software.

It seems that every modern non-fiction book I read anymore claims to describe a paradigm shift of some sort. This book focuses on the paradigm shift from factories generating profits to ideas generating profits. With this shift in mind, Godin explains what makes a good idea good and what makes it easier for you to spread it from member to member in a targeted group. (I’ll point out the relation of viruses to this idea as a metaphor just this once; if you want to hear plenty more metaphors, pick up a copy of the book.)

If you want a great brainstorming session on how to improve your ideas and get them communicated to the outside for whatever reason (to make money, to be successful, to persuade others, etc.), give Unleashing the Ideavirus a read. At five years old, it is a tad bit outdated, but not so much that it intrudes with Godin’s message. Plus you can download the whole book for free.

That’s right, you can get the book in PDF format for free. And once you read the book, you’ll understand that the book is a fine example of an ideavirus in itself. It’s easy to attain (free), it’s remarkable, it gives Seth Godin cheap exposure, which leads to more sales of his other books, and it gets bloggers like me to talk about it in our attempt to become powerful influencers. If anything, skim through it to get a good sample of Seth Godin’s general message and style. You will more than likely be drawn in like I was.

Then sit back and watch (or participate in) the world of marketing from a whole new perspective.