Customer Reviews

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

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Kim Goodwin has written a book that I've been hoping for for years.

It's the book I turn to when I want thorough yet approachable guidance or reminders for how to do design.

I told a colleague of mine: "Finally! The textbook and handbook for the practice of interaction design!" Much inspiring and useful work has come before, but I haven't found such a comprehensive and useful how-to book for practicing and aspiring interaction designers.

If I could only have three books on my shelf to refer to in my interaction design (or if I were on a desert island where I was going to be designing interactive systems with people), I'd have:
* Kim Goodwin's Designing for the Digital Age for process,
* Jennifer Tidwell's Designing Interfaces for patterns, and
* Alan Cooper et al's About Face (3) for principles.

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

I have been looking for a book like this for over 10 years. Designing for the Digital Age puts forth a comprehensive framework for ux design and development. I have a large library of ux books that go into great detail on the the various phases of the UX process, they are all great, but it is up to the reader to blend a process from all of these disparate subjects. Kim's book is a logical step-by-step guide to creating meaningful solutions for clients and users. What i like most about this book is that it creates a foundation for the profession. Not that it is definitive, but it creates a starting point for ux professions to move forward from.

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.

The unique and valuable thing about this book is that it exposes all the details of executing the design lifecycle. There are many good books out there that give a high-level framework within which to do design (About Face), or give ideas, principles and inspiration (Universal Principles of Design) or go into detail about specific tools and techniques (The User is Always Right, Sketching User Experiences). While all of these are excellent books, only Kim's gives an end-to-end framework along with specific details of all of the tools and techniques to execute at each step. Everything is covered rom framing the project and getting buy-in to supporting the design during implementation and launch. It also covers the topics with surround the design process: project planning, building a team, and getting an organization to embrace design. I have had the privilege of working with and learning from Kim in the past. In addition to being an excellent designer, she is also an excellent teacher and has a knack for making topics simple and straightforward.

INTERACTION DESIGN is NOT USER INTERFACE DESIGN! This is such a common misconception.

This book is an absolute MUST READ for ANYONE building products and services in today's economy. Not only is this the most concrete book on the subject of Interaction Design, I would argue that this should become required reading for every Product Manager and MBA student.

This book is very well organized and designed, further proof that design is about building better products for users--not just aesthetics. It is also very easy to read and packed with loads of useful information.

Reading this will essentially give you a tried and tested step-by-step product design process proven by an established expert working at a well known design firm. After reading, this will become your favorite reference book.

As companies are moving towards this "Design Thinking" process, this book will be my number one recommendation. [...]

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

Leading a design effort is hard work. The process beautifully outlined and illustrated in this volume makes it possible. As the design lead for a social platform, I use this book throughout the product lifecycle as a helpful reference to everything from estimating new work to rationalizing and evangelizing the design process. You already know if you are a user the authors designed for. For those who are, it offers the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of some very tall giants.

This book is quite extensive in process and methodologies. My only complaint is that I would have liked to seen some templates or more examples on documentation - I can't afford the $2500 workshop in SF.

I've been designing UI for years. I bought this book as a quick reference. For each step in the process, I'd like a refresher. For example, when it's time build personas, I need a reminder: What are the goals? What's a good persona?
This book wasn't usable for me -- in that it waxes on and on and on about each topic. Thorough, yes. But it doesn't get to the point fast enough. I have to search for the golden truths. I recommend Cooper's About Face. That book did a nice job helping me get on target fast. I suppose I was looking for the Strunk and White of UX. Instead, I got the Oxford Dictionary.