I completely forgot – I was planning to share the Table of Contents of my book, Designing the Digital Experience, with y’all! So here it is…
Two Great Book Reviews of Designing the Digital Experience
Book News and The Tech Static recently mentioned my book, Designing the Digital Experience – cool! Book News said the book is “for web developers who are looking to enhance the customer’s experience with ordering and browsing online, stressing the fact that Internet consumers are looking for a pleasant and positive shopping environment as well as bargains.”
And The Tech Static wrote a great review. They said the book “is an entertaining introduction to web design, usability, and Web 2.0 for the beginner, as well as a stimulus for those with previous experience.”
Go read both – then buy lots of the books… they make great stocking stuffers 🙂
Excerpt of Chapter 5 up at Webjunction
WebJunction recently excerpted chapter 5 of my new book in this article: Designing the Digital Experience: What is Community?
Here’s an excerpt of the excerpt:
Chapter 5 – What Is Community Focus?
What exactly is community focus, and how does it facilitate experiences in the digital space? To answer these questions, let’s consider what community focus means in the context of physical spaces, such as in a town hall meeting. In such meetings, people are focusing on one another: listening, sharing opinions, and discussing community needs. This type of interaction allows community members to voice opinions and concerns, providing a voice for the community. In this context, we can say community focus is an emphasis on participants’ ideas, concerns, and interactions.
The town hall meeting is just one example; people obviously hold many different types of meetings, from religious gatherings to departmental business meetings to family reunions. We tend to think meetings are important. Why is that? Because we find conversation important, and meeting together facilitates conversation.
Conversation inherently facilitates something else, too. It allows us to interact with members of our community with whom we wouldn’t normally interact or even know. This type of interaction allows us to feel as if we are participating in the “grand scheme of things.” The challenge, then, is to usher community into our digital space.
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Go read the rest of the excerpt (or buy the book 🙂 ).
Podcast about Designing the Digital Experience
Sarah Long, Director of the North Suburban Library System, interviewed me a couple weeks ago about my book, Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love on her Longshots podcast series (part of the Library Beat blog).
Give it a listen!
Designing the Digital Experience: Chapter 1
My book has been reported in the wild! Someone told me via twitter that she’d received my book, Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools & Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love, from Amazon a few days ago – so that’s cool.
What else is cool? How about giving you chapter 1? Here’s a snippet:
Chapter 1: Welcome to the Experience Economy
“What’s my daughter playing on the computer this evening? Oh, she’s on the American Girl site, and she’s playing Kaya’s Catch of the Day. She also sent an American Girl ecard to her cousin and looked at this year’s new doll. We receive American Girl catalogs and magazines in the mail and check out the latest books from the library. We even visited American Girl Place in Chicago last winter as a birthday surprise (the girls and mom watched a musical, had ate a party, and shopped, while my son and I checked out the science museum and LEGO Store).
What’s going on here? Why is my daughter so into this stuff? Because American Girl is all about the experience. It focuses on the fun of exploring and living as a girl in America’s past. The American Girl people are engaging their market in creative ways - specifically targeting grade school and middle school girls. They know how to delight their customers. I know – I’ve seen my daughter’s smiles. As we continue to think about experience, let’s consider the experiences of a trip to an amusement park and the purchase of a computer.”
Want more? Here’s the rest of chapter 1!