Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter) [Paperback]

Dan M. Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 25, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0321712463 | ISBN-13: 978-0321712462 | Edition: 2

Successful web design teams depend on clear communication between developers and their clients—and among members of the development team. Wireframes, site maps, flow charts, and other design diagrams establish a common language so designers and project teams can capture ideas, track progress, and keep their stakeholders informed.

 

In this all new edition of Communicating Design, author and information architect Dan Brown defines and describes each deliverable, then offers practical advice for creating the documents and using them in the context of teamwork and presentations, independent of methodology. Whatever processes, tools, or approaches you use, this book will help you improve the creation and presentation of your wireframes, site maps, flow charts, and other deliverables.

 

The book now features:

 

• An improved structure comprising two main sections: Design Diagrams and Design Deliverables. The first focuses on the nuts and bolts of design documentation and the second explains how to pull it all together.

•  New deliverable: design briefs, as well as updated advice on wireframes, flow charts, and concept models.

•  More illustrations, to help designers understand the subtle variations and approaches to creating design diagrams.

• Reader exercises, for those lonely nights when all you really want to do is practice creating wireframes, or for use in workshops and classes.

• Contributions from industry leaders: Tamara Adlin, Stephen Anderson, Dana Chisnell, Nathan Curtis, Chris Fahey, James Melzer, Steve Mulder, Donna Spencer, and Russ Unger.

 

“As an educator, I have looked to Communicating Design both as a formal textbook and an informal guide for its design systems that ultimately make our ideas possible and the complex clear.”

—Liz Danzico, from the Foreword

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Dan Brown has been practicing information architecture and user experience design since 1994. Through his consulting work in both public and private sectors, he has improved enterprise communications for both Federal and Fortune 500 clients, currently the Federal Communications Commission. Dan writes and speaks frequently on information architecture, and contributed to the inaugural issue of UX Matters, a new online magazine dedicated to user experience design. Dan is very active in the local Washington, DC information architecture community, and serves on the advisory board for the Information Architecture Institute. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 2 edition (September 25, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321712463
• ISBN-13: 978-0321712462
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 10.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dan Brown has been practicing information architecture and user experience design since 1994. Through his consulting work in both public and private sectors, he has improved enterprise communications for both Federal and Fortune 500 clients, including The Federal Communications Commission, The Postal Service, US Airways, Fannie Mae, First USA, British Telecom, Special Olympics, AOL, and the World Bank. Dan spent two years as a Federal employee, leading the Content Management program for the Transportation Security Administration, a federal agency within the Department of Homeland Security.

Dan has taught classes at Duke, Georgetown, and American Universities and has written articles for the CHI Bulletin and Interactive Television Today (itvt.com). He is a regular contributor to Boxes and Arrows, an online magazine dedicated to information architecture. In 2002, Dan collaborated with information architects around the world to establish the Information Architecture Institute, the first professional organization dedicated to the craft.

At the 2005 IA Summit Dan taught a pre-conference tutorial on using Microsoft Visio and presented two posters, including one on the information architecture of networked music players. For the 2006 IA Summit, Dan participated in the IA Institute's leadership workshop, moderated a panel on enterprise information architecture, and presented some ideas on cognitive linguistics applied to content management.

He is very active in the local Washington, DC information architecture community, organizing regular workshops and bimonthly reading groups. Dan lives in Bethesda, MD in a newly renovated 1922 bungalow with his wife and many, many pets. Dan and his wife are expecting their first child in June 2006, right around the time Communicating Design hits the shelves.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For people who work in large web teams, November 6, 2007

By 

antenna (ex-UK now US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning (Paperback)

If you work in a large team in a big corporation, and use conventional rather than agile approaches to web development, you may find this book very useful. It has advice not just on what tools to employ, when, and why, but also how to interact with clients and specialists in various roles during every stage of website genesis/ontogeny, from strategy to execution (via usability tests, concept mapping, wireframes and much more).

As a one-person band with a very small budget, I found big chunks of it rather idealistic, somehow old-fashioned, and not very relevant to my own circumstances. The usability / market research specialist? The information architect? Those would be me. The programmer? The graphic designer? Oh, those would be me too. And the person making sure that the words and images are suitable for the web as a medium? Me again.

I wanted some advice on best practice for (a) documenting decisions made (and reasons for making them) and (b) highlighting consequences of those decisions (and reasons) for future work. I was quite surprised not to see much discussion about how to document (b), which in my experience is often a huge hole in documentation.

Also, the processes I use are much more agile than those described in the book, which doesn't cover how to document development using agile methods. This is a shame, because I think more and more developers are moving in this direction.

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Buyer beware - companion website does not have promised resources, June 2, 2008

By 

S. Harrison (Clements, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning (Paperback)

Part of the value of this book is the promise that the author will provide templates and examples. This promise is worth zero. If you go to the companion website, there is a note from the author that says, essentially, "Ooops, so sorry. Got too busy." Just a tad unprofessional? I guess different people have different perspectives on such things.

Call me crazy, but one would think that the author would have had a whole stack of examples and templates BEFORE he wrote the book. How else would he know what documents are needed? Just a rhetorical question.....

The book itself is useful, don't get me wrong. I am just very disappointed in the lack of companion material. Other reviews very adequately cover the content.

In terms of practical help, AND downloadable templates, I vastly prefer Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works (2nd Edition) by Kelly Goto.

Kelly Goto's advice saved my tail when I was a newbie in the field (waaaaay back in the dark ages of the 20th century), and still has relevance for me today.

Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works (2nd Edition) (VOICES)

[...]

UPDATE: August 2008: nothing has changed on the companion website, [...] Quite frankly, it looks like it has been abandoned.

UPDATE: February 4, 2010: The author finally has updated the site. However, as of this date, there are still no templates or other downloads as far as I can tell. Looks like the author has turned it into a blog. You might want to check it out and see if any progress has been made. Since Amazon won't allow a web address to appear in a review, you can figure it out from the title of the book.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The meta-web development communication book, December 2, 2006

By 

Manny Hernandez "@askmanny" (Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning (Paperback)

Dan Brown did it. I never imagined someone would pull it off, but he came up with a meta-web development communication book, a book about the process of putting together user needs, strategy and web design documents. In these three categories, he covers the ten web site communication deliverables he considers to be of most value, taking the reader through a structure that will help in the process of conception, construction, presentation to others and context.

I found the concept of Personas he introduced very interesting (and innovative in the web development space) and later picked up a book that specialized on the topic ("The User Is Always Right" by Steve Mulder and Ziv Yaar) to learn more about it. In terms of the rest of the concepts he introduced, if you are a seasoned web producer/development specialist, you may not find most of them to be new, but seeing the whole package in front of you will be useful and refresh items you know to be of importance. If you are becoming acquainted with this area, the book will become a permanent reference you will want to take with you at all times along with "Web Project Management: Delivering Successful Commercial Web Sites" by Ashley Friedlein.