Human Interaction Books

Some of the stories in this book would probably be most appreciated by those who've been to grad school, but all of them can be appreciated by those who've ever pondered the imprecise nature of love. Iagnemma has a great dry wit and an interesting range. He uses a variety of different time periods and story telling techniques. I found it to be a great plane read.

This short story collection piqued my interest immediately - it's not every day you hear of a research scientist who writes fiction on the side. I'm an engineering student and voracious reader, so I finally bought it for myself and recieved it yesterday. I hadn't meant to read the entire collection at once, but I kept opening it up again and again.

Iagnemma reminds me of one of my favorite musicians, Sufjan Stevens. He has the same power to evoke feelings of deep-seated loneliness ("The Indian Agent"), and the same power to disturb ("Children of Hunger"). I strongly recommend reading this while playing Sufjan Stevens' album "Michigan." Many of these stories are set in that state, and the songs and stories are full of similar imagery - misunderstood men, lonely women, and desolate, snow-shrouded winters.

The only quibble I have with the collection is that his female characters are rather one-dimensional. They are almost uniformly portrayed as being incapable of sympathizing with their lovers' relentless pursuit of knowledge. They stand outside of the world of science, not in it. I didn't care for the way the tough female professor of "Kingdom, Order, Species" fell into fangirl mode when she met the academic she idolized for years. I sympathized more with the professor's daughter in the title story, who refuses to fall into the same trap her mother did, and took great satisfaction in the unexpected revenge of the neglected wife in "Children of Hunger."

I don't think any fiction writer has ever plumbed the dark depths of science the way Iagnemma has. I'm looking forward to seeing another short story collection from this fantastic writer.

I was really looking forward to reading this book. I opened it and, there on the 1st page, is a four letter word. Skimming through revealed more explicit language and other stuff I don't want in my reading material. The stories may be good but the other stuff is not. I'm returning it unread.

I've been rereading Iagnemma's magical collection of short stories --I loved it the first time I read it. The stories are about scientists, mostly academics, and one pseudo-scientist, a nineteenth-century phrenologist ("The Phrenologist's Dream"). They try to come to grips with love, but their passion proves resistant to categorization or manipulation by numbers. The title story of this fine collection is simply stunning: a failed doctoral student at a technical institute in the cold northern reaches seeks to pin down the love of his free-thinking lover and to write down a universal formula for the complex, unpredictable maneuverings of erotic love. Iagnemma's prose is lucid and at once coldly logical and fierily passionate. His empathic love for his doomed creatures is apparent; it redeems the book from any touch of coldness. Who would have imagined a scientist, a researcher on robots, would write such human, living stories?

As I am fortunate to work at a university with a great fiction collection, I *buy* almost no books, since I can check out or have the library purchase most any title I want. This book was an exception; I checked it out from the library and loved it so much that I bought a copy so that I could re-read it any time I wanted to. After I finished reading the last story, I opened the book again, hoping that I'd missed a story, that there was one last one to read, or that, somehow, a new one would magically appear when I re-opened the book. I've not had that experience with any other book I've read -- and as a librarian & an English major, I've read a LOT of books. The little nuances of thought and behavior that the author reveals in his characters is at once both powerfully and delicately done -- a very difficult thing to do well. His new book, a novel, is coming out this year

I've had numerous oportunities to see Mr. Thieme speak, each being utter pleasure. Richard's command of the english language knows virtually no bounds. My professional life draws me to many hacker and security conferences throughout the year and I make it a priority to see Richard's talks when available.

Islands in the Clickstream is a bound compilation of Richard's ongoing articles and essays that he publishes on his web site. Each an exercise in viewing the world from a new angle, and accepting that things are not only not what they seem, but the exact opposite.

Instead of reading countless reviews on the contents of the books, see for your self by visiting Richard's web site and read a few articles and decide if this is something for you. Google should be able to point you in the right direction.

Although this book is a rehash of Richard's digital library on his web site, I still give it 5 stars for the quality of the content and the portability of the information in book format. It's one of my favorite travel companions.

If I were to craft a title for Richard Thieme, it would be "Master of Perception".

I was pleased as I turned the last page. I read an article each day and I had almost 4 months of thought provoking entertainment. Beyond on that, I got a lot of new ideas to think about and many memorable quotes.

I had an opportunity to obtain and read "Islands in the Clickstream" while at BlackHat 2005. I devoured the book in the airport and on the plane ride back to my home.

The thoughts and ideas that are conveyed in this book dissolved me to tears several times, both in the airport and on the plane, because those words mirrored exactly thoughts that have been bumping around in my own head for years and have sadly and strangely made me feel disconnected from my community. I now discover, through "Islands" I am not alone in these thoughts.

Richard's ability to create such strong imagery regarding technology and how it impacts the human tribe is remarkable. I admire him for his bravery in codifying his thoughts and sharing
them. "Islands in the Clickstream" will sit happily on the shelf next to those of two other amazing technical philosophists' - Buckminster Fuller and Doug Hoftstadter - and just like them, be taken down again and again to refresh, renew and rechallenge my thought processes.

This book could very well prove to be life-changing for the reader; it changed mine.

This is a collection of short articles that blend technology and philosophy. The writing is excellent and the insights are profound. There is little technical detail in the work. But that's not the point. This book is all about having a larger view of technology and it's place in our culture and how it is changing us.

If technology is a lifelong passion for you, then you will want to have a look at this. If the computer business is just a day job then you probably won't get anything out of this.

It took me a long time to digest this book, which is jam-packed with quoteable insights, new perspectives on familiar ideas, and inspiring thoughts. Reading this collection of essays, which were written as periodic email columns over a span of seven years, felt like trying to eat a rich, dense dessert in one sitting. This is a book that should be savored slowly--by everyone who has any connection to technology. It's an amazing work.

I can't think of any book that's quite like Islands in the Clickstream--it doesn't fit into any established categories. Syngress Press, the publishers, describe themselves as providing "Career Advancement Through Skill Enhancement," and say it should be shelved in "Computers/General." But what this book actually contains is a collection of secular sermons. They fill the niche of an idealized homily--a short talk that reconnects its listeners to a larger context for their daily lives, inspires them to be better people, and makes them think about deeper issues than the everyday grind--but without any religious context, and addressing technology specifically. Thieme says "...these are sermons...in the sense that sermons form and inform a community that chooses to gather to hear them." It's not too surprising, then, that Thieme tells us he was an Episcopalian priest for sixteen years.

These essays do have a few flaws I associate with a genre like sermons, ie basically ephemeral and not designed to be read en masse--sometimes there's a palpable stretch for the inevitable clever final sentence, and we get some repetition of favorite concepts and quotes like "sanity is contextual." There's also a hint of bombast, not exactly pretentiousness, but a weakness for over-stated metaphors and over-heated symbolism. Thieme's got a liberal hand with buzzwords: nexus, fractal, cyborg, panoptic, granular, convergence, paradigm, morphing, etc. I also think he's barking up the wrong tree in one or two essays where he talks about UFOs and remote sensing, but he's not credulous by any means.

These are minor quibbles. To give an idea of how much this book impressed me: I typically collect a quote or two from a book I read. A great book will yield four to six. I copied down about FIFTY quotes from Islands in the Clickstream--new ideas, brilliant encapsulations of thoughts that have vaguely crossed my mind, inspirational statements. Here's just a small sampling:

"The edge is the new center. The center of a web is wherever we are."

"When things are going well, accountability diminishes. Then when things don't go well, there's chaos." (written in 1997, with a prescient reference to the financial tech bubble)

"'Out of the box' thinking is just a name for climbing out of one box into a little bit bigger box."

"Good tools work regardless of why we say they work. Technical tools and spiritual tools alike."

"That's the problem with oracular truth: the opposite is nearly always just as true. Oracular truth is more like a mobius strip than a yes/no binary system."

If you're someone who's been involved with computers long enough that "hacker" doesn't sound like a dirty word, you'll feel like Thieme is speaking directly to you. If you ever wonder about the effect of technology on how we think and communicate, you'll find a lot of food for thought here. If you're professionally involved with the Internet in any way (as a techie or in business), you ought to read this book. If you're looking for inspiration to be a better person, without being expected to believe in a personal god, check this out.

I would love to hear Thieme speak. He seems like a truly amazing person. (...)

Review cross-posted from Blogcritics and my book blog.

This book is full of handy processes. I have to say, you MUST be dedicated to building personas...and so does your organization. If you're just venturing into the space, you certainly find out what's possible.

If this concept is new to your organization, I would recommend finding a way to slowly introduce this process. I am certainly a believer in personas, but don't think you need the whole process to reap 80% of the benefit of personas.

If your org already believes in personas and you have executive sponsorship, the content could really benefit you to launch an entire persona process.

Finally, someone has produced a 'definitive guide' to personas.

I really liked Cooper's idea of personas when I first came across it. In human factors, we use varying techniques of modelling users but this one seemed to stand above the rest due to its exploitation of our affinity with stories.

Unfortunately, over the years I've noticed personas being used in a haphazard fashion in industry - and for good reason. Practitioners had very little in the way of good references, how-tos or theory behind how to properly implement personas. Well, this book neatly solves all those problems in one shot. Pruitt and Adlin have put together an impressive tome that can be used either as a spot reference, or a definitive guide to implementing personas effectively. I highly recommend it.

Lately I've been disappointed in many of the so called practitioners books that have crossed my desk, they have been very light on detail, aimed at the novice and do not have enough detail for the experienced professional. This book was different.

Written in a way that makes it accessible to the novice, it is a book that begs to be read from cover to cover. Skimming it just makes you realise that there is so much information in it that you will have to allocate serious time to it. It is full of helpful suggestions, ideas and quotes from people using personas in the field. Importantly it also provides anecdotes of what didn't work for people. It provides plenty of concrete suggestions to implementing personas, and guides you through the lifecycle of them rather than just saying here they are, just use them.

All in all this is a very practical book, written by people experienced in the field, with some great chapters by other experts eg Whitney Queesenberry. I thoroughly recommend it.

Colleen

I should admit my bias up front. There are those who like little short books that make one point and make it over and over. There are many popular books in our field that are like that, filled with stories that all basically make the same point and are just a couple of hundred pages long. They are heavy on fun reading and pithy quotes, and light on meat. If my company doesn't buy them for me, I usually like to borrow these, read the first chapter and last chapter and skim the rest.

The Persona Lifecycle is the other kind of book. It is a book that is large because it is packed with information and ideas. It is big, because the topic is big. It is organized in a way that lets you take it down from the shelf and just read the bits that are relevant to the problem you have at the time. Are you trying to figure out how to get started? Are you trying to figure out how to engage your organization in the effort, and in user-centered design through the use of personas? Are you trying to figure out how to make your personas more effective? Are you trying to figure out how to drive more business value out of them? There is something for every situation.

There isn't just one way to get value from personas, and so a checklist or cookbook isn't appropriate. What are appropriate are principles that can be used to figure out an approach for a particular context, and lots of examples.

Furthermore, it is a book that doesn't just live in the world of theory, or pontificating about a point of view in order to justify a consulting business. It is a book that is filled with practical advice and the experiences of those who are using personas in their jobs.

This is a must-have resource for the HCI professional's shelf.

(I've been doing personas since 2000, right after reading Cooper's Inmates are Running the Asylum).

I had great expectations for this book, but was sadly disappointed. There are a few good "models" in this book, like the fact that it uses a single case study carried through the book to continually try and tie things together. However, the book is a very difficult 700pp read. They've thrown in everything including the kitchen sink in this book, which is not a good thing.

They have stories from the field, handy details, bright ideas, the G4K case study - all woven throughout the writing of the book. It breaks to book up too much and makes it less useful.

There's an entire chapter on reality maps. They don't have anything to do with personas, really. They're a great tool, kind of like the Task Analysis grid [...], but I wouldn't put that in a personas book.

They should have created some personas for the book to guide their design and limit the amount of writing they did. The writing style isn't engaging. The interior design of the book is confusing. They have a number of different elements threaded through the book, which dissects the pages up too much, making it more difficult to read.

Personally, they could have just stuck with the chapters from their contributing authors and had a better book.

This was very disheartening for me, as I was really looking forward to this book. However, of the 300+ books on my shelf, this is one that I simply could not recommend.

[...]. The authors really missed the boat here. This is not a how-to book. It is very thorough, too thorough. They seemed to take everything related to personas and try and pack it into one book. The execution simply missed the mark.

Good book for learning the basics of computer such as hardware, software, and input/output devices, etc.

Great book that summarizes ICT related information for High School computer courses.
Useful as a written resource for both students and teachers, and for teachers trying to help students look for resources beyond Wikipedia...
Basic information only, but covers a lot of ground. The best 'beginners' textbook that I have come across and used.

This is an interesting book to start your knowledge on the Technology field. However, in comparison with other sources
(i.e. The Hardware Bible) it does not have the broadness on
certain subjects.Overall this title is excellent when you want to start in the technology of communications.

I used this book when I was teaching junior high computer literacy; that was five years ago and even then it got rave reviews from the students AND parents. While some of the verbiage was a bit complicated for junior high age, I just directed them to skip certain sections. The pictures and explanations continue to be excellent--certainly, the best book I reviewed on the subject.

i received a b.s. in mgt/mis in the 80s and recently took a self-paced community college course that used this as a textbook as part of a 2nd degree program i am pursuing. i wanted to refresh/update my knowledge in the field.

this is a comprehensive overview of computers presented in a clear way with wonderful study aids. i particularly enjoyed the programming, enterprise systems, and networking chapters. it also covers career fields within IT. what really makes this book outstanding is the website that comes with it. at the end of each chapter are tests and tutorials which you can do online. the labs are excellent and i loved the one on chapter 4 which explained the guts of the computer and then had you build one! it had you draw a network diagram and assign ip addresses. these types of tutorials really help "lock in" the subject matter. students today have the best tools to learn. i wish i had this 20 years ago!!

i recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about/brushing up on computer skills. for folks out of school, this is a great way to get the lingo.

to check out the online version go to [...]. each chapter is summarized on this site with a wealth of information to learn and explore.

This is one of those books that only gets a new edition when the author has something genuinely new to say, and this third edition of Sayood's excellent introduction to data compression is no exception. This particular edition is different from the second mainly in that there is a new chapter on audio compression that includes a description of the mp3 algorithm. Also there is additional information on the new video coding standards as well as the new facsimile standards.

As to the target audience for this book, if you are tasked with designing hardware or software implementations of data compression algorithms and you have some background in either electrical engineering or computer science, then this is a good book from which to learn and then to practice what you learn via some very good exercises. Some prior knowledge of information theory and random processes wouldn't hurt either. There is also an abundance of examples that are sprinkled throughout the book to illustrate concepts as they are presented. The author's approach in each chapter is to explain each concept in as an accessible manor as possible, present relevant equations, and then work an example using what has just been presented.

The book presents the mathematical preliminaries in chapter 2, and chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to coding algorithms which include Huffman coding, arithmetic coding, Golumb-Rice codes, and Tunstall codes. Chapters 5 and 6 describe many of the popular lossless compression methods and their applications. These methods include LZW, BWT, and DMC. Chapter 7 describes various lossless image compression algorithms such as JBIG as well as their applications. Chapter 8 discusses the mathematical background of lossy compression standards. Chapters 9 and 10 concentrate on quantization since it is the basis of most lossy compression schemes. Chapter 11 discusses differential encoding techniques such as DPCM and delta modulation. Included is a discussion of the CCITT G.726 standard.

Chapter 12 is the third and final chapter dedicated to mathematical foundations. It is meant to prepare the reader for the chapters on transform, subband, and wavelet based methods that encompass the following three chapters. The JPEG standard is covered in chapter 13, the CCITT G.722 standard in chapter 14, and the EZW, SPIHT, and JPEG2000 standards are covered in chapter 15. Chapter 16 focuses on audio compression and includes descriptions of the various MPEG audio compression schemes including mp3. Chapter 17 switches gears somewhat and covers techniques in which the data to be compressed is analyzed and a model is produced. This model is then used to synthesize the data and is quite useful in speech compression. Chapter 18 deals with video compression and diverges from the book's central theme of dealing with techniques rather than applications. The chapter discusses the H.261 standard as well as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 standards.

The website for the book, found at the publisher's site, contains a large number of C programs dealing with compression. I haven't tried to use any of these yet, so I can't speak to their validity.

This book has all the ingredients for a great textbook. It provides good theoratical background without going into unnecessary details, gives lot of discussion about applications, provides great exercise problems, and above all it has outstanding examples that makes some of the difficult concepts easy to understand.

Data compression needs a lot of background in information theory and other areas specific to speech, image processing etc. It is impossible to give a rigourous theoratical treatment of all of those in one volume. A strong point of this book is that it gives you just enough background on a variety of topics - without making the whole book obscure. In that respect, it is very application and implementation oriented. It is in fact what it says it is: A very good "INTRODUCTION to Data Compression"

The best thing about this book is the coverage and organization of the material. Sayood covers a wide variety of compression topics without getting into the nitty gritty details of them all. Thats why its an "Introductory" book. This book is a valuable resource for those who want to know the basics of various compression techniques and can be used as a starting point for further details. Some topics like arithmetic coding are covered in more detail than others. The book is also organized nicely with mathematical foundations provided as and when necessary.

The book is one of the clearest I have read as a text book. Why cant everybody write like this?? There is very good flow throughout the text.

Only complaint is the software. It looks the software has not kept pace with the book itself. Some additional software has to be added (for Transform coding, for instance), and some references in the text book to the software are incorrect. If the accompanying software is upgraded, as it should be, I will rate this book a clear 5-star.

Amazon claims that this is "the definitive guide". I have to agree with them because this book is the only broad grey pages introduction to data compression that I have been able to find, and it is very well written.

If you are only casually interested in data compression this book is not for you.

If you are interested in adding compression to your application and your data falls into a common category, sound, video, text ect this book is probably not for you. You should look to the open source community or buy an off the shelf product.

But if your data is odd or unique like say telemtry data (I'm sure there are other examples I just can't think of any) and you need to design a compression scheme for your data this book is "the only" book for you.

If you want to begin research into data compression and you are a newbie this book is a must have.

This book is readable, nice to look at, and does a good job of pulling a lot of information into one place. Finding information about the different GIS packages in the web is a challenge. If you don't know GIS already, like me, you're lost. This book helped me find my bearings, and in no time I was able to take shapefiles, do processing on them, and display the results in a web page dynamically.
The problem with this book is that it's fairly shallow. It will give you a couple of basic examples of how to use some pieces of software, but for anything more complicated, you have to look elsewhere. There is frustratingly little information on mapscript, but, overall, I'd say the book fulfills its role.

Author doesn't assume you know anything. Examples are UNIX, but he explains very well. He doesn't talk down to Windows users (apparently Mapserver installs easily on Windows). Very exciting. Explains map projections well. Good reading on the airplane. If you're an open source geek and/or a GIS person and a UNIX enthusiast, you'll be very happy.

This is an interesting, well written intro book for open source web mapping enthusiasts. I found some helpful tips and also appreciated the traps to avoid sections. The material gave me a greater knowledge and appreciation of MapServer in particular allowing me to move onto more in depth books quickly.

To be short and to the point... the title basically covers the primary issue I had with the book... I felt most of the book could be summed up in about 20 pages but yet it was still a full book of how to go get a free piece of software, connect a GPS, and chart where you were going...

Note: I was most likely disappointed because I was truly looking for a much more technical discussion on how GPS databases work and how to decode GIS information. In the past when I have prucased books form the publisher they were much more in depth on technical aspects of the systems, data, and so forth. In this case it was a discussion of how to sue free software and a GPS... no truly what I had in mind.

Oh, well... other I'm sure will enjoy it... just didn't fill the bill for me...

With revolutionary technology, Google Earth now lets computer users zoom through space to specific sites all over the world. Mapping is also making great strides in the law enforcement world, where geographic information systems (GIS) have been replacing pin maps. Systems such as New York City's COMPSTAT have been highly successful in mapping and depicting virtually any combination of crime/arrest locations, crime hot spots, and other information in real time.

While not specifically written for law enforcement, Web Mapping Illustrated is a valuable guide for those who are interested in using maps and other GIS tools. The Internet hosts many open-source mapping tools, making the creation and publishing of online maps much easier and more effective.

Web Mapping Illustrated is written for those wishing to avoid expensive commercial software mapping systems and instead use open-source and other free tools. The book details the use of free mapping software and tools such as MapServer, GDAL, OpenEV, and PostGIS. It also explains how to find, collect, understand, use, and share various mapping data sources.

All 14 chapters are well written and organized, progressing from the basics to the publication of sophisticated interactive Web maps. Fittingly, the book makes effective use of numerous full-color maps and software screenshots

I bought both your book as well as Mental Models AS PER YOUR RECOMMENDATION AND REGRETTED THAT MORE.

Yours is information vaguely spread along 560 pages and Indi's book is totally abstract, which I am still trying to understand. I would have appreciated if you could have cut all the fluff in 60 pages instead.

GOD KNOWS how do you guys get all the five stars FROM

I can recommend this book. It is well-written and readable, with practical advice and examples. I am referencing it as part of my daily work as a Usability Analyst in a large government department.

This book rocks! Of all the reference resources I have in my cube, this is the one I lend out to people who ask, "jb, what is user research and how do you do it?" Mike's book has the techniques down - soup to nuts -- useful for the novice and seasoned practitioner.

If only all my college textbooks were this well written and practical, I would have saved tons of money on coffee! The style of the book is conversational, the organization is clear, and the user research tips are great! This book has been a valuable resource to frame my graduate course in human computer interaction. Each week we cover a chapter and post our reactions to our Shiny Happy People user experience blog. The book has many layers, so that the usability novice to expert can glean plenty of tips and techniques.

I'm always recommending this book to my colleagues. This is not a book that is meant to be read cover to cover. It's more of a desk top reference for all kinds of user research techniques. I've found it to be very comprehensive. Buy it, you won't regret it!

The word 'design' in English covers such a wide range of activities that it has become unusfully vague, applying as well to designing a business model as to designing a frock. Bill Buxton describes the activities of designers who have usually been to design school rather than engineering or business school. Not many people know what they do, beyond a vague impression that they make things look good. Bill Buxton's book describes, with excellent examples, the range of designers' activities--both functional and aesthetic--and the value to a company of their particular skill: imagining and visualizing ideas for products or services so they can be developed and assessed before time and money is committed to building them. This book is a great demonstration of the value of design to the bottom line and how it can be incorporated in the product development process in the digital realm.

I bought this thinking it would be about interactive design (e.g. web, flash, etc.) It's a meandering book that hardly addresses those concerns at all. I kept waiting for it to get to some real meat, but it just walks through examples of industrial design and abstract concepts. A waste of money for me.

This is a compelling book. It manages to blend business, organizational and design thinking on the user experience. In doing this, Bill Buxton makes the case for (i) the centrality of design in driving business value and (ii) the importance of investing in the design process. The importance of exploration and play in design is called out, and the role of making multiple light, inexpensive sketches of alternatives as an important part of the design process. Buxton also brings together the separate histories of the industrial design (the people who make things) and the software design worlds, sprinkling in some lessons from film making for good measure. And he reinforces the importance of knowing the traditions and their high points if you want to innovate. All of these lessons are vital to our collective future.

I liked this book enough to buy copies for people on my design and business teams, and I will probably give my copy to my boss. I may get a copy for my son as well, who is involved in furniture design in Vancouver.

The book does have a couple of weaknesses. The most serious is that Bill seems to think that people don't sketch in code. I am pretty sure that this is not what he thinks - he has seen plenty of people sketch in code and most of the code created by university researchers is a form of sketch - branching code that explores, plays and demonstrates possibilities. The book can also be read as advocating a waterfall process rather than something more agile. One reason may be that he is focused on the design of interactive objects and environments where there are high production costs. But this kind of waterfall approach is not all that useful for people (such as myself) who are building businesses around the delivery of software as a service. And taking Bill's own advice, and looking out a few years, it seems likely that most of us will have 3D printers in our homes and that eventually these 3D printers will be able to print 3D programmable objects. With shape memory plastics and other such smart materials, one of the things with behaviours (interactions) may even be the shape itself.

Still an important book, and one that points to more thinking and more learning. The gallery of important user experience sketches is worth deep study.

I was fortunate enough to see Bill Buxton lecture last year. After the lecture, I picked up this book since it extended on the themes he was discussing. I found his thoughts on the fidelity of the designs for different levels of development extremely helpful.

Bill Buxton does an outstanding job exploring the role design should play in an organization which really sticks in your head. He also explains how a sketch can go a long way as a communication tool during the product life cycle. Just brilliant.

This book does not cover design of the interface well at all.
Not worth buying for design. Ok for how to talk to a user

If there is one strong message in this book, it is: Go talk to the people who will use your product. It's an important message. Software designers and writers spend too much time with each other developing clever tricks, while the poor user, often left to self-train with a poorly written manual, gives up in frustration. The authors follow their own advice--in addition to telling you how to conduct a site visit to the end users, there are clear instructions (based on experience) on planning a visit, structuring questions, how to make the site visit useful for both the analyzers and the users, and figuring out what the user said and what it means about the product. There are reminders about release forms and examples of the forms themselves. Case studies help make the points clear and undestandable. A thoroughly readable book in clear and simple language that can be started anywhere for quick help, or read cover to cover for a complete course.

I like it a lot this book, because really can help you how to do a Good Design, The book show a lot techniques an examples than help you to understand and make it easy. This book has usability itself. I enjoyed a lot.

This book was the best out of several others that I have read realted to usability engineering or UCD. It had several practical examples and stories attached to each topic. Its excellent for starter as well as proffesionals who are working at companies and have to justify several things. Several formates for reports and other resources are available for conducting a good Users and Task Analysis. More so its really easy and interesting to read with all the stories and the diagrams.

First of all, I have not read this book cover to cover. I have used it as a manual for task analysis in bits and pieces. Eventually, I will read it cover to cover, as it deserves this attention and I need the information.

I was recommended this book by a colleague and since recommended it at least a dozen times myself to fellow human factors engineers and software/system designers. It had the answers to many of the practical questions I was asking and being asked.

This book gives practical advice on how to analyse a task based on the "things that need to be done" to the "people that need to do them". Based on the recommendations, these are not "pie in the sky" ideas but practical tips from the people that do this work day to day.

If you read through the table of contents that Amazon provides you will find most if not all of your questions on how to go about this type of work answered within the pages of this book.

Briefly the Chapters are broken up into main segments of this type of work:

1. Introducing User and Task Analysis for Interface Design

UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT OF USER AND TASK ANALYSIS

2. Thinking about Users

3. Thinking about Tasks

4. Thinking about the User's environment

5. Making the Business case for site visits

GETTING READY FOR SITE VISITS

6. Selecting techniques

7. Setting up site visits

8. Preparing for site visits

CONDUCTING THE SITE VISIT

9. Conducting the site visit-Honing your observational skills

10.Conducting the site visit-Honing your interview skills

MAKING THE TRANSITION FROM ANALYSIS TO DESIGN

11. Analysing and presenting the data you have collected

12. Working toward the interface design

13. Prototyping the interface design

14. User and task analysis for Documentation and training

Appendix A: Template for a site visit plan

Appendix B: Resources

Appendix C: Guidelines for User-Interface Design

The appendices are a collection of very useful information to jog your memory while doing a site visit as well as some general user interface guidelines. This makes for a nice checklist to check if you forgot anything.

Not only is this book chock full of good tips, advice and an idea of how to structure this type of work, but it was designed well visually. The fonts and typography are pleasant to look at and the examples, graphics and important points are well illustrated. I guess they did a good job of analyzing the task of the reader as well.

Unlike Jakob Nielsen who uses his personal opinion to judge web usability, Tom provides excellent explanation every aspect of usability based on the scientific research. This is the best book to learn and know about web usability. - LT

This book contains a lot of usable usability practices that really works! You can get literally all the details of usability testing practices in this book, as well as how to run them. And good amount of pages are spent for user needs analysis and task analysis as the first steps explaining Web site engineering approach.

When reading this book, my first impression was that many worksheets, checklists and forms were included throughout this book:
- Client Interview/Web Site Information Worksheet
- Goals checklist
- Sample of Web survey
- Focus Group Preparation Worksheet
- Information Architecture Review Checklist
- Mockup Checklist (in Envisioning Design)
- Mockup Style Review Form (in Envisioning Design)
- Writing Guidelines Checklist (in Web page writing)
- Form for Brainstorming Icons
- Form for Testing Whether an Icon Is Recognizable
- Problem Report and Resolution Form (in Pre-Launch)
- Problem Summary Report (in Pre-Launch)
- Postproduction Checklist
- Web Site Final Approval Form
- Minimal Maintenance Checklist
- A Detailed, General-Purpose Checklist (for Inspection)
- User Testing Preparation Worksheet (for Evaluation)
- Typical Testing Script (for User Testing)
- Consent Form (for User Testing)

These materials are really helpful in conducting actual usability testing to get effective results. And many concepts are also categorized, organized, and explained in a lot of tables.

In engaging Web usability testing, the most important thing is to understand your audiences. This book contains very specific way of putting them into action using scenario approach. The most impressive approach of this book is in enumerating user characteristics as seven user navigation models:
1. Omnipotent model: Because people have perfect knowledge, they donft err in any way.
2. Most rational model: People click interesting links only.
3. Minimum effort model: People behave in ways with least mental efforts.
4. Mental map model: First, people build their mental map according to the Web site structure. They donft use navigation in that site which doesnft fit with their mental map.
5. Repeat fixed ways: People like his own way. They repeat their fixed ways irrespective of their inefficiency.
6. Get nearby information: When handy resources are found nearby, people use them and donft go outside.
7. Cost-performance approach: Best strategy will be determined by this cost-performance approach.

One more important practice to develop a Web site that really works is to consider the gInternational Differencesh such as languages, units, symbols, currencies, date & time, and conventions. These points are correctly addressed in this book to make your Web really workable in the international grounds as well.

This book is a really remarkable work from the point of usability practices. Don't miss this book!

This book is great and very informative, however the only thing I would change (perhaps for a second edition) would be to make it spiral bound so it could lay flat while I am using it at work, which would also make it easier to photocopy the different checklists (very helpful!).

This is one of the best books ive ever read from any category. The author's flow from chapter to chapter is excellent. He describes in very good detail the pitfalls that many websites fall into by sacrificing appearance for usability. He makes his convincing case why the central focus of websites should be usability which is indeed rarely emphasized. The book elaborates as to the various stages you should involve users and various members of your design team into your development. Definately a keeper.

When I'm working and need to grab a book to take into the bathroom, it has typically been something light and definitely not work-related. The Stranger, maybe, or a Bathroom Reader. However, ever since I bought "Usability for the Web", it's been my bathroom book. I've already read it cover to cover, but opening it to a random page and reading for 10-15 minutes (or, what the heck, even 45 minutes) always gets me thinking of ways to improve what I'm working on. As other reviews have stated, there is nothing groundbreaking about this book. However, this is the ONLY book you will need on web usability. In fact, this book effectively replaced my books on usability, design, and architecture. All of which I read, and mostly enjoyed, but few of which I will ever pick up again.

The design of the book is also very nice, easy to read and with full color throughout.

Finally, responding to one critique, the authors DO reference outside sources throughout the book. There is also a section at the back which includes additional references.