Latest Reviews

Gamestorming
A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers
by: Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: O’Reilly Media; 1st edition July 2010
ISBN-10: 9780596804176

Book reviews (much like movie reviews) end up reflecting the personal biases of the reviewer and in the end you usually either mostly agree with a particular reviewer or mostly think they’re full of something. Over the last several months I have been trying to review books that I’ve read relating to HCI and UX/UI. My goal has generally been to read books of interest to me and pass on my impressions to you in the hope that I might inspire you to read the book and/or agree with me or disagree with me and discuss the reasoning behind your agreement or disagreement. CHIFOO has provided me with a platform for these reviews. In addition to CHIFOO, Portland is also home to a local gathering of the UX Book Club which meets every other month or so with the express purpose of discussing books that relate to user experience.

Gamestorming was the June selection of the UX Book Club of Portland.

As to my recent biases in selecting books - I’ve been looking for titles that fill gaps in my 20+ year association with the design and support of application software. Since I am not currently employed I have not been actively seeking books that contain prescriptive recipes for the design of user experiences - I’ve mostly been looking for background philosophy/ethnography material. I probably wouldn’t have read (or reviewed) Gamestorming had it not been selected for local discussion.

Gamestorming casts time-honored techniques as “games” and describes 88 of these techniques in 2 to 3 page thumbnail recipes. This collection of exercises amounts to some 80% of the book’s volume. All of these exercises are multi-person participatory exercises. None (if any) are solo endeavors. I’m not certain that:

- Affinity mapping
- Card sorting
- Dot voting
- Post-ups
- Story boarding
- Context mapping
- Pre-mortems
- SWOT analysis

count as games. In fact, while the word “gamestorming” provides a new and novel twist of the more familiar “brainstorming” I’m not sure there is anything new or novel here.

Next bias: illustrative artwork. As someone who has always felt that a picture is worth a thousand words and who carefully crafted images for the documents I created, I chafe at books targeted at professionals that contain illustrations that look as if they were created by amateurs. Ironically Gamestorming spends some eight pages attempting to remove the “fear of drawing” from the reader with a set of rudimentary drawing lessons. The message here is clear: unleash your inner artist and don’t worry what the results look like because it’s the doing that matters most.

You may recall that I wasn’t thrilled with the illustrations in Information Flow and Knowledge Sharing either. It’s clearly a bias and it either matters to you or it doesn’t. Oddly enough, having tweeted my displeasure with their drawings to O’Reilly - they offered me a way to obtain a refund (which certainly wasn’t my intent).

Bottom line: if you are currently practicing design and are tired of using the same three or four techniques for the extraction, organization and presentation of material pertaining to your projects this book is worth having on your shelf. I know of one in our midst who has successfully used several of these techniques on a recent project. If you are looking for a higher-level approach to your design conundrum you won’t likely find it here.

About the authors: Dave Gray founded XPLANE in 1993 to create graphics for magazines. XPLANE quickly expanded its repertoire to include illustration work for other media as well as interactive design. XPLANE was acquired by Dachis Group of Austin, TX in April 2011. Dave is also the author of: SELLING TO THE VP OF NO. Sunni Brown has consulted with XPLANE for several years. James Macanufo has been involved as a Sr. Consultant for Dachis Group and more recently with XPLANE. Dachis recently raised some $44 million in a round of financing.

The Myths of Innovation
Scott Berkun
O’Reilly Press
225 pgs - paperback
ISBN: 978-1-449-38962-8

I don’t recall what prompted me to pick up Scott’s book - perhaps the idea that it would offer a recipe for innovation hidden within the myths? In fact, the idea of an “innovation methodology” is cited (early) as one of the myths of innovation on page 37.

The chapter titles hint at the myths to be addressed:

* The myth of epiphany
* There is a method for innovation
* People love new ideas
* The lone inventor
* Good ideas are hard to find
* The best ideas win
* Innovation is always good

By the end of this great little book you’ll be convinced that:

* Epiphany moments do not drive innovation (hard work and follow through do).
* There is no methodology that always yields innovation.
* People do not love new ideas (they often resist them tooth and nail).
* The “lone inventor” usually has help (often a lot).
* Good ideas are a dime a dozen!
* The best ideas do not always win and
* Innovation is not always good when viewed through the lens of time and consequences.

I really liked this one! When reading a book that I suspect I’ll subsequently review I tag pages with those skinny, colored Post-it flags. This one ended up with 33 markers on pages that contained ideas I wanted to highlight. I thought about simply copying out those ideas and letting Scott’s words speak on behalf of the book (in fact, if you contact me, I’ll send you the list).

I believe that those of us who have chosen to work in the field of human-computer interaction tend to strive for innovative ideas and approaches in what is (for the most part) a discipline that requires us to draw on the successful patterns of others. We want to be innovating! Innovation is popular! When I searched Amazon on “innovation” I got 43k hits! This book (#6 on the Amazon list) offers us absolution by dismissing many of the deeply held myths we’ve all accumulated in an industry that thrives on innovation (or at least the perception of innovation).

You can find Scott online on Twitter @berkun or via his website: http://www.scottberkun.com

Information Flow and Knowledge Sharing
By: Flávio Soares Corrêa da Silva (Department of Computer Science, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil) and Jaume Agustí-Cullell (Campus de la UAB, Bellaterra, Spain)
Hardcover: 296 pages
Publisher: Elsevier Science MAR 2008
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0444529357

After surveying the reduced attendance at the March CHIFOO meeting, I coughed up an extra buck for a few more chances at a door prize. I was rewarded with a copy of Information Flow and Knowledge Sharing and after checking the selling price ($130) on Amazon, I figured I’d gotten a deal. All I had to do was read it!

Facts are facts - right?

Well, maybe…

...by the time I had made it to the end of the first intermission on page 64 I had been gently reminded that your facts might not necessarily be my facts (a point all too readily apparent when one considers how differently John Boehner and Harry Reid perceive the same reality). No, this book isn’t about politics - it does however lean more towards philosophy (the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics) than towards a “how to” guide of User Experience design.

About those intermissions: the authors have presented their material in ten chapters that have been separated by seven “intermissions” (view the Table of Contents: http://bit.ly/epDrJ3). These intermissions take the form of an illustrative story intended to reinforce the material being covered. I found the technique helpful although I was at first skeptical.

- What is the difference between information and knowledge?

- Why is knowing the difference important to those of us designing user experience?

- Why is remembering that your truth differs from the truth experienced by your users important?

These are some of the questions raised by Corrêa da Silva and Agustí-Cullell. While obvious answers are never provided, the aware reader is lead to conclusions by the questions asked.

Information systems are constructed to represent simplified models of reality. The language and media chosen to represent the information system impose limitations on the accuracy and completeness of the system. The creation of an information system is influenced by the interests, prejudices, purposes and goals of its creator. The interpretation of an information system is influenced by the interests, prejudices, purposes and goals of its receiver. While the creator certainly intends to specify a perfect system, distortions caused by: language and media choices, interests, prejudices, purposes and goals result in an imperfect information system which is further distorted upon receipt.

In other words: in a perfect world requirements would unambiguously be stated, a system design would be created to satisfy the requirements, specifications would unambiguously capture a design that addresses the requirements and a system would be developed that accurately reflected the specification. As we all have experienced such a scenario is rarely the case! Compromise and negotiation are typically required at every step due largely to the assumptions of perfection made on both sides of the communication equation: sender and receiver.

Chapter 6 on Ontological Reasoning runs a scant ten pages (two of which are full-page illustrations). I often find when learning that the initial presentation of a new concept is greatly enhanced by the use of a concrete example. For the first few pages of this chapter I was struggling until the concrete example of a map was introduced. The map represents a concrete instantiation of a geographical information syntax. The communication space embodied in the map contains the simplified representation of reality as captured by the cartographer who represents the sending agent in the example. By agreeing upon the ontology of a map, the reader accepts the usefulness of the simplified representation provided by the cartographer and the chosen syntax (the scale, symbols and detail provided). The map reader represents the receiver in the transaction. The simple 1:1 interaction between sender and receiver is expanded by introducing a tourist (with map) asking a local for assistance in finding a place. The transaction now contains three participants who have agreed to the map’s ontological usefulness each of whom has a different goal but all of whom have accepted the map as a valid communication vehicle. Although there are no conclusions drawn from the chapter’s material by the authors the reader should be able to extrapolate to UX design scenarios past, present or future.

About those illustrations: OK, I’ll admit a certain bias towards art. The fifteen illustrations in this book appear to have been the cut-and-paste efforts of non-artists who assumed an artist would take their drafts and create an illustration suitable for inclusion in a book costing $130. While they serve some purpose many are quite trivial and gratuitous.

More about those intermissions: The intermissions tell a story in narrative form and through the story the narrator poses philosophical, metaphysical even existential questions that relate to the crux of information flow and knowledge sharing. UX/UI design is all about both. That said, by the time I had reached the intermission on page 215, I was tired of the intermission narrative.

Chapter 10 is entitled: Conclusion and begins by letting you know that the authors initially intended to write one sort of book but over the course of years ended up writing another. Their final point (well not quite final since an Epilogue follows) seems to be that information may not always be what it appears to you to be and that knowledge is transcendent.

If you are not up for a bit of philosophy this book is probably not for you. If you are expecting a traditional text that lays out a meaningful information flow pattern that you can follow while performing the UX/UI/IA types of work you likely do while at your “day job” this book is also probably not for you. If you’re willing (and have the time) to open yourself to some of the fundamental “big issues” that form the basis of our design thoughts - take the time to read this.

While it’s clear that this text has been translated, it’s also clear that an English-speaking subject matter expert review would have greatly helped smooth out some rough spots. My concern being: muddy information flow and knowledge sharing in the technical chapters could be similar to the obvious (English) gaffes in the intermissions.

On the series:

The stated aim of the book series “Capturing Intelligence”; is to publish books on research from all disciplines dealing with and affecting the issue of understanding and reproducing intelligence artificial systems. Information Flow and Knowledge Sharing (reviewed above) is the second book in this series. The first book in this series:

Fuzzy Logic and the Semantic Web
Edited by: Elie Sanchez,
Hardcover: 496 Pages
Publisher: Elsevier Science FEB-2006
ISBN 10: 0-444-51948-3

...shows the positive role Fuzzy Logic, and more generally Soft Computing, can play in the development of the Semantic Web, filling a gap and facing a new challenge. It covers concepts, tools, techniques and applications exhibiting the usefulness, and the necessity, for using Fuzzy Logic in the Semantic Web. It finally opens the road to new systems with a high Web IQ.

Designing with the Mind in Mind
Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules
by Jeff Johnson, PhD
2010
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers

Jeff Johnson has worked for some of the biggies: XEROX, HP, and Sun and consulted for others including: AT&T, Fujitsu, Informix and Oracle. He has published numerous papers on human-computer interaction and is the author of several books on interface design and design mistakes for both software and web applications.

Designing with the Mind in Mind is a tidy little tome that is quite easy to read. Illustrations abound - hardly a page goes by without one. Most are in color.

Jeff simplifies the cognitive and perceptual science behind what we see and how our brain interprets the incoming flow of information. Topics include:

- Vision
- Use of visual structure
- Reading
- Color vision
- Attention span
- Recognition and recall
- Problem solving and calculation
- Timing

His introduction and appendix cite UI research and guidelines from 1976 through 2007 and stresses the similarities of the major points in each.

The book is explicitly targeted at us: s/w professionals who apply UI and IxD guidelines. A secondary audience is s/w development managers who need to understand the psychological basis of UI design so they can better understand and evaluate the work of those they manage.

I learned some interesting tidbits about how our eyes see and our minds work. His chart of time constants ranging from a millisecond to 100 seconds is worth pasting next to your workstation.

As the science of cognition continues to expand its understanding, Jeff’s book represents a compact, up-to-date overview of how the cognitive sciences play a role in the designs we create.

Within the context of pervasive computing, which weaves intelligence into the fabric of our environments, architectural design informs interaction design as much as interaction design transforms architectural design. So suggests Malcolm McCullough in this extraordinarily deep dive into design theory and the impact of digital, interactive technologies on architecture.

McCullough dispenses with superficial instantiations of digital technology in the built environment—think smart buildings, telepresence, and even GPS-enabled phones—grappling instead with the structural foundations of architectural design theory: the meaning of place, Heidegger’s dwelling, Mumford’s urban planning, and Giedion’s space in the context of “ambient, haptic, and environmentally embedded interface elements.”

While McCullough argues pervasive computing, cyberspace, and virtual realities are grounded in the legacy of architectural design theory, he tacitly accepts their arrival as potential game-changers in the making of architecture. He says, “Whereas previous paradigms of cyberspace threatened to dematerialize architecture, pervasive computing invites a defense of architecture.”

Ultimately, Digital Ground is about architecture in the most profound meaning of the word: how place is imbued with meaning through design…
The full review appears at UXmatters.com.

Sketching User Experiences is a rambling stream of consciousness through Bill Buxton’s head—spanning a treatise on the role of design in business, a history lesson on sketching, and an analysis of specific design solutions. The topics—shifting gently—are often intriguing, and their overall trajectory is completely unpredictable. As, in my current professional context, I am struggling with communicating the power, strategic importance, and benefits of design to the business, I was extraordinarily pleased to find the book speaking about these very topics. You wouldn’t know that you’d find this information in the book from reading the cover or even the first 100 pages.

With Buxton’s casual style and the nearly complete lack of self-promotion in his book, it’s easy to forget Buxton is one of the leading researchers in design. I picked up my copy of the book at the CHI 2007 conference, where I had a chance to chat with Buxton while he signed a seemingly never-ending stream of newly purchased books. His meandering conversational style is not limited to his writing. Buxton is intrigued by many things—one interest leading quickly to another, in a richly interwoven web of associations. ...

The full review appears at UXmatters.com.