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Defensive Design for the Web: How to Improve Error Messages, Help, Forms, and Other Crisis Points 1st Edition

by Matthew Linderman (Author), Jason Fried (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 48 ratings
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Let's admit it: Things will go wrong online. No matter how carefully you design a site, no matter how much testing you do, customers still encounter problems. So how do you handle these inevitable breakdowns? With defensive design. In this book, the experts at 37signals (whose clients include Microsoft, Qwest, Monster.com, and Clear Channel) will show you how.

Defensive design is like defensive driving brought to the Web. The same way drivers must always be on the lookout for slick roads, reckless drivers, and other dangerous scenarios, site builders must constantly search for trouble spots that cause visitors confusion and frustration. Good site defense can make or break the customer experience.

In these pages, you'll see hundreds of real-world examples from companies like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo that show the right (and wrong) ways to get defensive. You'll learn 40 guidelines to prevent errors and rescue customers if a breakdown occurs. You'll also explore how to evaluate your own site's defensive design and improve it over the long term.

This book is a must read for designers, programmers, copywriters, and any other site decision-makers who want to increase usability and customer satisfaction.

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  1. ISBN-10
    073571410X
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0735714106
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    New Riders Pub
  5. Publication date
    January 1, 2004
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6.75 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
  8. Print length
    256 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chicago-based 37signals (www.37signals.com) is a team of web design and usability specialists dedicated to simple, and usable, customer-focused design. 37signals popularized the concept of contingency/defensive design in various articles and white papers and via the web site DesignNotFound.com. The team also has conducted workshops and presentations on the topic for a variety of conferences and companies.

37signals clients include Microsoft, Qwest, Monster.com, Clear Channel, Panera Bread, Meetup, Performance Bike, and Transportation.com. Work has been featured in the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Washington Post, on CNN, and in numerous other publications. Team members have appeared as featured speakers at AIGA Risk/Reward, Activ8, South By Southwest, HOW Design Conference, ForUse, and other conferences. Additional information can be found at www.37signals.com.

This book is authored by Matthew Linderman with Jason Fried. Other members of the 37signals team include Ryan Singer and Scott Upton.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Riders Pub; 1st edition (January 1, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 073571410X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735714106
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 48 ratings

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Matthew Linderman

Matthew Linderman

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
48 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Mark Harmon
5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Makes You Aware of Not-So-Obvious Issues Your Site Must Defend Against
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2012
Verified Purchase
As a former marketing consultant and current Internet marketing manager who does a lot of web site work, I can definitely say that this is a book that every web designer should read. It is very easy to overlook many of the points listed in this book while building or administering your site, unless you have read this book. You'll find yourself noticing a lot of flaws in other sites after reading this book. This insightful book will also point out to you (or at least it did to me) a number of web site errors that I never noticed, but now really bug me. This is an easy but very informative read that I recommend to every webmaster and web designer.
2 people found this helpful
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O Daisy
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for enhancing the user exprience
Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2004
Verified Purchase
I've made this book compulsory reading for everyone involved in web or internal system projects. It does not answer the questions or give a perfect example for every situation that comes along, but it does get you thinking about what would the appropriate message be for my situation based on some solid principles.

I agree with some of the reviewers that it is very basic - but most people don't get the basics right! It's entertaining and enlightening and will quickly get you on the right path to providing a better user experience.
11 people found this helpful
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Jason S.
4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, worth the money
Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2004
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Overall, the book is well-written, somewhat entertaining and contains practical information for anyone involved in planning or developing a website.
The authors provide adequate examples of the right and not-quite-right ways websites handle the specific issues they discuss.
A helpful supplement to this book would be a "Hands On" practical guide with code examples and resources for implementing methods they discuss. For example, the authors suggest highlighting fields on a web form when the user inputs incorrect data. While there are numerous ways to implement this and many on-line resources, it would be helpful to know how the authors (a.k.a., the experts) prefer to implement these techniques.
If you're a novice or intermediate website developer, you'll find this book enlightening. If you're an experienced developer with some familiarity and practice with web usability principles, you may not learn anything new from the book, but nonetheless it will provide a good "refresher course." If you're involved in marketing/selling website development services, you should read this book because it will help you to build a case for improving existing websites.
6 people found this helpful
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dogoferis
5.0 out of 5 stars Simple but effective; amazing and essential reading
Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2011
Verified Purchase
You won't learn any in-depth technical knowledge from this book. Instead you will be exposed to everyday common sense - something that is rarer than gold and so obvious that it is overlooked multiple times a day. I consider this essential reading for any web designer or programmer that wants to create pages usable by human beings. 5 stars.
One person found this helpful
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laug
5.0 out of 5 stars Still relevant
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2013
Verified Purchase
Defensive Design for the Web was written in 2004, but design issues described in this book are still relevant. I find it quite useful and well-structured, and use it as a checklist from time to time.
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Alan B. Humphrey
2.0 out of 5 stars Too much emphasis on error reporting/recovery
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2005
Verified Purchase
The sub title of this book should stop at "How to Improve Error Messages". The focus of the book is on recovering from problems, either from user input or from the system. That's all well and good and their ideas are fine. However I was hoping they'd spend some time talking about how to lay out your forms so they are mor effective and less likely to cause problems for the user in the first place.

Especially useful would have been web oriented techniques for forms that span multiple pages.

Anyway they didn't put it in the book and that's their choice. What they put in is servicable if all you're interested in is recovery.
20 people found this helpful
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Rachel Tozier
5.0 out of 5 stars Surprises in perception
Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2004
While reading this book many experienced web designers will dismiss it as a collection of obvious techniques. Don't be fooled by that perception. I gave this book to my team with a mandate that it serve as a framework for usability for all corporate intranet projects. I was immediately deluged with protests from a few team members claiming "we already do this".
Skeptical, I sat with those who made the claims, and we compared our techniques against those this excellent book proposes using live web pages on our intranet. Surprise. We did not measure up, and were certainly not "already doing this".
Phase two, I had one member of my team reengineer one of the smaller internal web sites on our intranet using the techniques given in this book. Business users gave the results high marks, and my team began accepting the book as the official usability guide.
Result: this book has made a measurable difference in the quality of internal web sites we are designing and deploying for various lines of business within our corporation. It is now embraced by my team, and is used as a standard of good practice in web usability. The advice provided in the book has also resulted in less support calls to our team, freeing them to work on design and deployment instead of answering end user questions.
Moral: do not let the surface simplicity of this book fool you. While its contents and advice may seem obvious, chances are that your team is not following those obvious design rules.
108 people found this helpful
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Brian
4.0 out of 5 stars Grade-A Advice in a Grade-C Package
Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2005
Verified Purchase
As the makers of the highly-regarded Basecamp, Backpack and Ta-da List, the crew at 37Signals certainly have the credibility to write a book on web usability design. While you won't find any earth-shattering new concepts here, you'll get a lot of common-sense guidelines that a surprising number of sites don't follow.

It's too bad that this book (on design, of all things) had to be presented in such a cheap-looking book. The heavy black sections of the chapter headings are washed out, and the text inside the graphics (e.g., dialog boxes, pull-down menus) is hard to read. The book text itself is easy enough to read. In all, the whole thing was obviously produced on a printer that uses some sort of toner (and not enough of it!), rather than good old traditional offset printing.

In all, the book is still worth reading, and I'd still recommend it. It's just a little disappointing that one of my favorite reasons for buying dead-tree versions of books--the look and feel of the book itself--is a little lacking with this one.
19 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Sandip Kar
5.0 out of 5 stars Very Useful Book for all the designers and developers
Reviewed in India on November 25, 2018
Verified Purchase
Very Useful Book for all the designers and developers
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Marc Beaudry
5.0 out of 5 stars A must if you designing web apps
Reviewed in Canada on September 26, 2013
Verified Purchase
This is an easy to read, easy to understand and logical book. If you are a web developer and have to make any decision related to user interface elements, this is a must in your reference library.
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stuckinamoment
5.0 out of 5 stars ユーザビリティの入門に
Reviewed in Japan on May 21, 2008
Verified Purchase
本書では、筆者が、さまざまなサイトのよい例と悪い例と挙げて、トピック毎に説明しています。エラーメッセージや、フォームの配置、文言、レイアウト、画面遷移、サポートシステムのメールなどさまざまなことに言及しています。

筆者は37signalsというRuby on Railsでも有名な会社に勤めています。ユーザビリティという分野になかなか時間をさくことができない人でも、この本を眺めることによって、意識が高まると思います。
One person found this helpful
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