Deliberate Intervention

“Do no harm” is Alex Schmidt’s mantra throughout Deliberate Intervention—a book that delves into how policy and design can work together to prevent harms in technology. Using the journalistic approach she employed as an NPR reporter, Schmidt studies the history of policy making, its biases, and its evolution in the changing technology field. The beginning of each chapter highlights a graphic showing the transformation of policy and design, drawn by well-known illustrator, MJ Broadbent.

Readers will learn:

• How policy and design can partner.
• The history of policy and how evident harms have led to policy interventions and improvements.
• As harms emerge from technology, individuals and companies really do have the tools to intervene.
• Government can control harms with new policies.
• How to create better policy with solid design measures.
• What the future looks like for people with the advent of new technology.

Who this book is for:

This book is for anyone who is concerned about the harms of technology and interested in ways to circumvent them, i.e., policy makers, CEOs of tech companies, IT people, designers, lawyers, security analysts, product managers, healthcare workers, historians, writers—in other words, just about everyone. It’s particularly helpful for anyone who is designing anything that involves technology and is worried about the potential harm in their decision-making.

Playful Design

Game design is a sibling discipline to software and Web design, but they’re siblings that grew up in different houses.  They have much more in common than their perceived distinction typically suggests, and user experience practitioners can realize enormous benefit by exploiting the solutions that games have found to the real problems of design.  This book will show you how.

Content Everywhere

Care about content? Better copy isn’t enough. As devices and channels multiply—and as users expect to relate, share, and shift information quickly—we need content that can go more places, more easily. Content Everywhere will help you stop creating fixed, single-purpose content and start making it more future-ready, flexible, reusable, manageable, and meaningful wherever it needs to go.

Liminal Thinking

Why do some people succeed at change while others fail? It’s the way they think! Liminal thinking is a way to create change by understanding, shaping, and reframing beliefs. What beliefs are stopping you right now?

You have a choice. You can create the world you want to live in, or live in a world created by others. If you are ready to start making changes, read this book.

What is liminal thinking? Liminal is a word that means boundary, doorway, portal. Not this or that, not the old way or the new way, but neither and both. A state of ambiguity or disorientation that precedes a breakthrough to a new kind of thinking. The space between. Liminal thinking is a kind of psychological agility that enables you to success- fully navigate these times of transition. It involves the ability to read your own beliefs and needs; the ability to read others’ beliefs and needs; and the habit of continually evaluating, validating, and changing beliefs in order to better meet needs.

The User Experience Team of One (1st Edition)

Second edition now on preorder!

The User Experience Team of One prescribes a range of approaches that have big impact and take less time and fewer resources than the standard lineup of UX deliverables. Whether you want to cross over into user experience or you’re a seasoned practitioner trying to drag your organization forward, this book gives you tools and insight for doing more with less.

Design for Kids

Emotion. Ego. Impatience. Stubbornness. Characteristics like these make creating sites and apps for kids a daunting proposition. However, with a bit of knowledge, you can design experiences that help children think, play, and learn. With Design for Kids, you’ll learn how to create digital products for today’s connected generation.

Living in Information

Websites and apps are places where critical parts of our lives happen. We shop, bank, learn, gossip, and select our leaders there. But many of these places weren’t intended to support these activities. Instead, they’re designed to capture your attention and sell it to the highest bidder. Living in Information draws upon architecture as a way to design information environments that serve our humanity.

Project Management for Humans

Project management—it’s not just about following a template or using a tool, but rather developing personal skills and intuition to find a method that works for everyone. Whether you’re a designer or a manager, Project Management for Humans will help you estimate and plan tasks, scout and address issues before they become problems, and communicate with and hold people accountable.

Design Is the Problem

Product design can have a tremendous impact on the world in terms of usability, waste, and resources. In Design Is the Problem, Nathan Shedroff examines how the endemic culture of design often creates unsustainable solutions, and shows how to ensure that design processes lead to more sustainable products and services.

Card Sorting