Books & People

Derek Hansen, Ben Shneiderman, and Marc Smith: Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL (November 10, 2010)

When our author attended a Web 2.0 symposium at the University of Bonn, Germany, in late 2006, the conference speaker who impressed him most was Marc Smith. Smith, who was working at Microsoft Research at the time, used beautiful graphs (probably bubble charts) to visualize social media networks that were derived from analyses of bulletin boards at Microsoft. This summer, some four years later, Ben Shneiderman drew our author's attention to a new book that he had co-authored with Marc Smith and Derek Hansen: Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL. Like Shneiderman, Hansen is a member of the HCIL, the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland. Once again, social media networks and Marc Smith were brought into our author's focus. The title suggests that the book is primarily about NodeXL, a tool for analyzing social networks. As we will see in the course of the review, this is only partly true. The book could actually be regarded as three books in one. But readers get much more than just three books inside one cover: They can also obtain the tool in question free of charge, because NodeXL is available in the Open Source community. What more could you want? Our author will come back to this question in his conclusion.

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Jeff Johnson: Designing with the Mind in Mind – A Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules (October 26, 2010)

Our author heard of Jeff Johnson's book Designing with the Mind in Mind for the first time shortly after the UPA International Conference 2010. As the book had just been released, Johnson expected it to be available at the book stand – but it was not, as a colleague told our author. This news inspired him to include the book in our book list and publish a short presentation on the SAP Design Guild. In time, however, the book disappeared from his horizon. Recently, however, Dan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, SAP User Experience, asked him whether he had read the book – Rosenberg had just finished reading it and had also attended a presentation by Jeff Johnson about the book's topics. This brought the book back to our author's attention – he rushed to buy a copy, read it, and review it. Here is his review!

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Nathan Shedroff: Design is the Problem – The Future of Design Must be Sustainable (July 23, 2010)

In the blog on the companion Website for his new book Design is the Problem, author Nathan Shedroff asks: "Are you as sick of sustainability as I am?" and continues: "It seems that everywhere you turn these days, sustainability is the hot topic. While this is a good thing – and a needed one – people are already getting 'green fatigue'." One might be tempted to ask: "So, why another book about sustainability?" Shedroff argues, and would probably counter, that "over the last 40 years, little has changed in spite of all the discussions, while the issues have increased dramatically. [...] What needs to change is that we all need to decide, now, that sustainability is a given." Shedroff's book intends to push everyone in this direction: While it deals with the negative as well as positive impact of his own profession, design, on sustainability, it considers the impact from a broader perspective – one which might help reach such an agreement.

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Book Reviews In Preparation

• Donald A. Norman (2010). Living with Complexity. MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0262014866, ISBN-13: 978-0262014861 • Preliminary review page

Janet H. Murray: Inventing the Medium – Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice (January 24, 2012)

Digital artifacts pervade our lives, and the design decisions that shape them affect how we think, act, communicate, and understand the world. But the pace of change has been so rapid that technical innovation is outstripping design and, as a consequence, product design teams struggle to articulate shared and enduring design goals. With Inventing the Medium, Janet Murray addresses this issue and provides a unified vocabulary and a common methodology for the design of digital objects and environments.

Murray explains that interaction designers should think of all objects made with bits as belonging to a single new medium: the digital medium. Designers can speed the process of useful and lasting innovation by focusing on the collective cultural task of inventing this new medium. Exploring strategies for maximizing the expressive power of digital artifacts, Murray identifies and examines four representational affordances of digital environments that provide the core palette for designers across applications: computational procedures, user participation, navigable space, and encyclopedic capacity. Creative exercises for students and thought experiments for practitioners allow readers to apply these ideas to particular design problems.
(From book description, adapted)

Murray, Janet H. (2011). Inventing the Medium – Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. The MIT Press • ISBN-10: 0-262-01614-1, ISBN-13: 978-0-262-01614-8

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Helmut Degen and XiaoWei Yuan: UX Best Practices – How to Achieve More Impact with User Experience (December 14, 2011)

This book aims to help readers evolve to a user-centered product development philosophy by presenting real-world user experience success strategies from global corporations. It features in-depth case studies from Yahoo!, Siemens, SAP, Haier, Intuit, Tencent, and more and, thus offers proven methods for instituting user-centered design in industrial environments. As a comprehensive guide, the book covers a variety of user experience techniques, such as analyzing user needs and expectations, creating design concepts, prototyping, using agile development, conducting usability testing, developing user interface guidelines, defining user interface patterns, and specifying metrics. (From book description, adapted)

By the way, the SAP case study was contributed by SAP UX colleague Andreas Hauser and focuses on SAP Business ByDesign.

Degen, H.; Yuan, X. W. (2011). UX Best Practices – How to Achieve More Impact with User Experience. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media • ISBN-10: 007175251X, ISBN-13: 978-0071752510

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Gavriel Salvendy (August 24, 2011)

Gavriel Salvendy is a professor emeritus of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University and Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. of China.

His main research deals with the human aspects of design, operation, and management of advanced engineering systems.

Salvendy is the author or co-author of over 440 research publications including over 240 journal papers, and is the author or editor of 30 books, including the Human-Computer Interaction handbook series (together with Julie Jacko).

Salvendy is the founding editor of the International Journal on Human-Computer Interaction and Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing. He was also the founding chair of the International Commission on Human Aspects in Computing, Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Furthermore, he is the conference series founder of the HCI International conference and its scientific advisor.
(From bio, adapted)

Homepage (Purdue University): engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/People/ptProfile?resource_id=9249
Bio: engineering.purdue.edu/~salvendy

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Julie Jacko (August 24, 2011)

Julie Jacko is a Professor of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, and a Faculty Fellow in the Academic Health Center's Institute for Health Informatics. She is also the Principal Investigator and Director of the University Partnership for Health Informatics (UP-HI).

Her expertise is the design, implementation, and evaluation of interactive, next-generation computing and informatics solutions in complex domains including, but not limited to, healthcare and healthcare delivery, with the purpose of supporting the development of systems that are both usable and accessible. Her research activities focus on human-computer interaction, universal access to electronic information technologies, and technological aspects of health care delivery.

Jacko research track record spans a period of 17 years and over 120 scientific publications. Together with Gavriel Salvendy she is the editor of the Human-Computer Interaction handbook series.
(From bios, adapted)

Homepage (University of Minnesota, School of Public Health): www.sph.umn.edu/facstaff/ourfaculty/faculty/jacko011
Homepage (University of Minnesota, UP-HI): www.uphi.umn.edu/about/faculty/jacko/
Bio: www.sph.umn.edu/facstaff/ourfaculty/faculty/jacko011 • www.uphi.umn.edu/about/faculty/jacko/

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Constantine Stephanidis (August 24, 2011)

Constantine Stephanidis, Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Crete, is the Director of the Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, Head of the Human - Computer Interaction Laboratory, and of the Centre for Universal Access and Assistive Technologies, and Head of the Ambient Intelligence Programme of ICS-FORTH.

In the beginning of the 1990s he introduced the concept and principles of "design for all" in Human-Computer Interaction and for universal access in the evolving information society. Currently, he is coordinating multidisciplinary activities aiming to conceptualize, design and develop in vitro (and deploy in vivo) pioneering, innovative technologies and applications for smart environments, capable of "understanding" and proactively addressing individual human needs, following a human-centered approach.

Stephanidis' research interests in the HCI domain comprise design for all, new methodologies, techniques and tools for the design, development and evaluation of applications and services that exhibit automatic adaptation, personalization and intelligent interface behavior, and HCI in ambient intelligence environments.

He has published more than 550 technical papers in scientific archival journals, proceedings of international conferences, and workshops.
(From homepage, adapted)

Homepage (FORTH - ICS): www.ics.forth.gr/hci/index_main.php?l=e&c=523
Bio: www.ics.forth.gr/hci/index_main.php?l=e&c=72 (short) • www.ics.forth.gr/hci/index_main.php?l=e&c=496 (long)

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