Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services (Paperback)

~ (Author), Alan Cooper (Foreword) "To a greater extent than any other creature, we humans shape the world around us to suit ourselves..." (more)
Key Phrases: defining requirements, full design team, design language studies, Making Sense of Your Data, Example Interview Interview, Framework Definitions (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Kim’s book is nothing less than a complete handbook for an entire profession. Kim’s unique background in the practice, pedagogy, and epistemology of the design business has given her the experience needed to write the ultimate ‘how-to’ book. Every step in this fascinating and multi-faceted discipline is described in detail in simple, readable prose, richly illustrated with examples taken from real products, real clients, and real design problems. This book is comprehensive in its scope, exhaustive in its depth, authoritative in its practice, and priceless in its wisdom. I’ve no doubt that this will become the most dog-eared, annotated and worn-from-many-readings volume in your library." —Alan Cooper, bestselling author of The Inmates Are Running the Asylum and About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design

"Kim is one of the brightest minds in the world of user experience design. Her work on Goal-Directed Design and persona development has set a standard." —Jared Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering

Product Description

Whether you’re designing consumer electronics, medical devices, enterprise Web apps, or new ways to check out at the supermarket, today’s digitally-enabled products and services provide both great opportunities to deliver compelling user experiences and great risks of driving your customers crazy with complicated, confusing technology.

Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 768 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; annotated edition edition (February 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470229101
• ISBN-13: 978-0470229101
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #46,623 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Goodwin explains it all...., February 18, 2009

By	John McSwain "Compound J" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services serves as an excellent guide and reference for new and experienced human centered design practitioners. Kim Goodwin (VP of Cooper) does a great job translating her goal-oriented design processes into clear and understandable terms. Human/user centered design books can easily be littered with heavy jargon or unintelligible references that make it difficult or impossible to understand or practice. Goodwin makes a conscious effort to explain and visualize many of the concepts introduced in each chapter and keeps the research lingo within reason. For example, in Chapter 12: Defining Requirements, Goodwin dispels what requirements aren't (i.e. features or specifications) and promptly outlines what is needed to generate effective requirements (i.e. data needs, functional needs, product / service qualities, constraints). In addition, Goodwin's writing style guarantees a cognitive learning experience with most readers by providing multiple exercises and scenarios that engage and evoke a desire for comprehension. The photography, diagrams, and charting are plentiful and supplement the subject matter effectively also.

I believe that this book is easily a pylon supporting the ever-swelling weight of UCD with its hoard of overlapping design disciplines. I recommend it to anyone interested in design or the design process...

Table of Contents:

Getting Started
Chapter 1: Goal-Directed Product and Service Design
Chapter 2: Assembling the Team
Chapter 3: Project Planning
Research
Chapter 4: Research Fundamentals
Chapter 5: Understanding the Business
Chapter 6: Planning User Research
Chapter 7: Understanding Potential Users and Customers
Chapter 8: Example Interview
Chapter 9: Other Sources of Information and Inspiration
Modeling
Chapter 10: Making Sense of Your Data: Modeling
Chapter 11: Personas
Requirements
Chapter 12: Defining Requirements
Chapter 13: Putting It All Together: The User and Domain Analysis
Framework
Chapter 14: Framework Definition: Visualizing Solutions
Chapter 15: Principles and Patterns for Framework Design
Chapter 16: Designing the Form Factor and Interaction Framework
Chapter 17: Principles and Patterns in Design Language
Chapter 18: Developing the Design Language
Chapter 19: Communicating the Framework and Design Language
Detailed Design
Chapter 20: Detailed Design: Making Your Ideas Real
Chapter 21: Detailed Design Principles and Patterns
Chapter 22: Detailed Design Process and Practices
Chapter 23: Evaluating Your Design
Chapter 24: Communicating Detailed Design
Ensuring Success
Chapter 25: Supporting Implementation and Launch
Chapter 26: Improving Design Capabilities in Individuals and Organizations

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Structured Approach To Interaction & Experience Design, February 25, 2009

By	Ira Laefsky "Ira Laefsky" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Kim's magnificent new volume represents several firsts in describing a new well managed engineer-like approach to the fields of Interaction and Experience Design. It is the only book to date which has seriously addressed the crossover (and necessary collaboration) between Software Interaction Design (GUI's) and Physical Product form factors, controls and displays which must be designed in a coordinated manner to address the total user experience. This volume also introduces a carefully project managed software-engineering-like life cycle for doing Interaction and Experience/Industrial Design which documents the iterative research, specification, prototyping and development process which must underly successful design. Too often in the past we've been told that Design is an artistic process which "just happens" when successful and to which no manageable process can be imposed--but successful Interaction and Product/Environment Design must be an organized process whose outcomes can be predicted by those managing and paying for the results. Finally, and significantly this book introduces a function-oriented and object-based design process which follows the tradition of Nigel Cross's Engineering Design Method's and Software Object Oriented Design based in recognizing the functional elements and interaction flows of physical and software objects, and which uses these as a basis for structuring and specifying an Interaction/Experience Design. This volume is excellently and beautifully illustrated and would be worth the cover-price as a lovely coffee-table volume--if it weren't so darn useful. It is a most necessary addition to the library of any Interaction, Experience, Product or Environmental Designer and everyone who even occasionally interacts with these professions will want to own this magnificent book.

--Ira Laefsky

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Have sticky notes ready!, April 28, 2009

By	Jane Childs (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Kim Goodwin has written a book that is destined to become a classic for Interaction Design practitioners. Whether you're new to the field of Interaction Design or an experienced practitioner, this book really does have something for everyone. My copy is already liberally tagged with sticky notes.

At 728 pages the book is detailed and thorough and designed as a walk through the end-to-end process of creating a product or service. Don't be put off by its weight, the color-coded sections allow you to easily dive into specific areas: Research, Modeling, Requirements, Framework, Detailed Design, Ensuring Success. The chapters within each section provide detail, examples, and case studies. For example, if interviewing is not your strength, the research section provides guidance from planning your research through to conducting interviews with targeted people. The annotated interviews are a terrific way of illustrating the points made earlier in the chapter and pulling all the information together.

Thoughtfully illustrated and beautifully designed, this will become one of those books found on Interaction Designers bookshelves that shows signs of regular use. Product Managers and Development Teams seeking to understand how to build a truly differentiated product or service will also gain much from this wonderfully comprehensive book.