Design for Learning

Online learning can be so dull. Enter Design for Learning. Whether you’re a novice or experienced online instructional designer, you’ll learn how to apply industry best practices, how-to examples, powerful templates, and compelling activities to craft compelling instructional content for text, audio, and video. Read, enjoy, and create online learning experiences that will never be called “dull”!

Takeaways

• Writing compelling content and instructional text
• Designing interesting text and visuals
• Planning and producing videos
• Recording sound and voice-overs
• Creating and facilitating live website presentations
• Designing surveys for class feedback
• Rating whether your presentation was successful

Who This Book Is For

• Teachers, learning development professionals, and anyone tasked with designing an online course or a one-off workshop
• Content creators, instructional designers, user experience designers, and others who care about the experience of online learning

Whether you’re a novice or experienced online instructional designer, this book will show you how to apply industry best practices, and provide how-to examples, powerful templates, and activities to craft compelling instructional content—whether text, audio, or video.

Best of all—your course will never be called dull again.

The Leader’s Journey

No one gives you a manual for how to be a great leader. Enter Donna Lichaw. Her step-by-step book draws on psychology, neuroscience, design thinking, and years of coaching experience to help you activate your superpowers and achieve your mission. You’ll transform yourself, your team, and your business into a league of superheroes poised for success. Follow her blueprint to:

• Figure out your core story of who you are as a leader.
• Identify your superpowers and use them for good.
• Map your mission as a leader in order to achieve your goals and make an impact.
• Develop your strategic roadmap by thinking like a storyteller.
• Learn how to handle tough decisions and move forward with purpose.
• Transform your fears from impediments to assets.
• Engage your superfriends, allies, and even your supervillains so that you can all be super together.
• Reflect back on your journey and build energy for your next mission.

Available from Audible and other major audiobook sellers.

Digital and Marketing Asset Management

The digital world is transitioning from text to media: photos, audio files, video clips, animations, games, and more. Enterprises of all kinds struggle with how to manage those media assets. Digital professionals who want to master the life cycles behind creating, storing, and reusing media need the inside scoop on how digital and media asset management technology really works.

The User Experience Team of One (2nd Edition)

Whether you’re new to UX or a seasoned practitioner, The User Experience Team of One gives you everything you need to succeed, emphasizing down-to-earth approaches that deliver big impact over time-consuming, needlessly complex techniques. This updated classic remains a comprehensive and essential guide for UX and product designers everywhere—you’ll accomplish a lot more with a lot less.

Who Should Read This Book

The techniques and advice in this book are applicable to anyone who is just starting out in user experience, as well as seasoned practitioners who have been in the field for years. In addition, anyone who read the first edition will appreciate this updated edition that features loads of new material that has changed over the past 10 years. There are tips, tools, and techniques throughout the book to improve your performance. The various methods detail exactly how to handle a variety of situations—from the timing involved, the materials, when to use that information, and how to try it out. Look for real-life sidebars from the authors, as well as experts in the field. This book applies to a team of one or a team of many.

Takeaways

• The first section covers the philosophy of the UX team of one—why you do it, how you build support, how to identify common challenges, and how to keep growing.
• The second section of the book, “Practice,” gives you tools and techniques for managing this balancing act with detailed methods.
• The 25 up-to-date methods in Part II prompt a question about a specific topic, answer the question, give the average time it will take to deal with the issue, tell you when to use this material, and give you instructions for “Trying It Out.”
• You can learn about the working conditions that a team of one often experiences.
• The book addresses difficult situations that UX practitioners often encounter (for example, the need for speed in corporate environments).
• Be sure to review the UX Value Loop[TM] that Joe created to define UX.
• Check out sidebars that highlight some of Joe and Leah’s personal real-life experiences.
• The end of each chapter tells you what to do if you can “only do one thing”.
• Finally, notes and tips give you handy techniques and tools to use in your own practice.

Available from Audible and other major audiobook sellers.

Make It So

Duly Noted

Better thinking makes you a better person. And few things extend your mind as quickly and powerfully as the humble note. Notes let you fulfill commitments, manage complicated projects, and make your ideas real. Digital notes take you even further. By using the right tools and a bit of discipline, you can cultivate a “personal knowledge garden” where your thinking will blossom.

Who Should Read This Book?

Anyone and everyone who wants to get control of their notes to generate better ideas, learning, and actions. Duly Noted is superb for students, academics, business people, technicians, writers, UX people, managers, leaders—virtually anyone who can benefit from taking and managing notes.

Takeaways

• Learn best-practice note-taking principles so you can take more concise notes.
• Connect your notes to one another to create a personal network of ideas (your own personal “knowledge garden”).
• Capture ideas before you lose them.
• Organize your notes so that you can find and make sense of them later.
• Learn how connected notes can spark insight and lead to new ideas and learning.
• Explore how notes can help you collaborate with other minds, including artificial ones.
• Learn how to use Obsidian, a powerful digital note-taking tool.
• Follow the how-to exercises to lead you through the note-taking maze.

The Right Way to Select Technology

Why do half of all technology projects fail? A major reason is that organizations often pick the wrong tools, leaving them digitally hamstrung from the start. This book offers a modern alternative to traditional waterfall approaches to selecting technology. You’ll learn a practical, adaptive process that relies on realistic storytelling and hands-on testing to get the best fit for your enterprise.

Conversations with Things

Welcome to the future, where you can talk with the digital things around you: voice assistants, chatbots, and more. But these interactions can be unhelpful and frustrating—sometimes even offensive or biased. Conversations with Things teaches you how to design conversations that are useful, ethical, and human-centered—because everyone deserves to be understood, especially you.

Who this book is for

• Design practitioners involved in creating digital products, who are beginning their journey into conversational interfaces.
• Developers who have built voice or chatbot projects, but may not be familiar with advanced design – or even what it truly means to design something.
• Other non-technical members of the team, like PMs and BAs who need to understand the process, and sales reps new to conversational interface products.

Writing Is Designing

Without words, apps would be an unusable jumble of shapes and icons, while voice interfaces and chatbots wouldn’t even exist. Words make software human-centered, and require just as much thought as the branding and code. This book will show you how to give your users clarity, test your words, and collaborate with your team. You’ll see that writing is designing.

Who this book is for

• People who make their living writing and leading content strategy for software interfaces, or those who want to transition into this type of role from another writing background.
• Designers and design leaders.
• Product managers, engineers, and executives.

Available from Audible and other major audiobook sellers.

The Jobs To Be Done Playbook

These days, consumers have real power: they can research companies, compare ratings, and find alternatives with a simple tap. Focusing on customer needs isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a strategic imperative.

The Jobs To Be Done Playbook helps organizations turn market insight into action. This book shows you techniques to make offerings people want, as well as make people want your offering.

Who this book is for

Change makers and transformation agents inside of companies looking to shift focus towards a customer-centric perspective. It’s suited for managers and thought leaders seeking internal alignment around solving customer problems and addressing unmet needs. More specifically, this book is for people who have limited resources and would like to use JTBD in a lightweight manner.

Key takeaway

A new way of seeing your customers and their desired outcomes

Available from Audible and other major audiobook sellers.