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.

Designing Agentive Technology

Advances in narrow artificial intelligence make possible agentive systems that do things directly for their users (like, say, an automatic pet feeder). They deliver on the promise of user-centered design, but present fresh challenges in understanding their unique promises and pitfalls. Designing Agentive Technology provides both a conceptual grounding and practical advice to unlock agentive technology’s massive potential.

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.

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.

Designing Assistant Technology

One of the biggest concerns that people have about artificial intelligence is that it will diminish its
users, make them less capable and even dependent. But this is only true if the AI is designed poorly, that is, designed like a crutch. In Designing Assistant Technology, Christopher Noessel pens a companion piece to his book Designing Agentive Technology, discussing how AI assistants can help its users and leave them smarter than it found them.

Strategic Content Design

In Strategic Content Design, you’ll learn how content research can transform your content team—bringing new energy and enthusiasm for their work and gaining attention and respect from teams of all types across your company (product management, product design, user research, operations, and engineering). You’ll also get a toolbox with hard-won methods, best practices, and proven tips for conducting quantitative and qualitative content-focused research and testing.

Use this book to:

• Create a strong content research program that builds positive energy, inspires your team, and draws attention to the importance of content to your products and business.
• Determine which methods and tools are ideal for your team’s content research needs.
• Identify which specific words or content elements to test. Efficiently analyze your research results to uncover valuable insights about your audience that will contribute to a measurably improved customer experience (and therefore improved business results).
• Show why content research is worth the time and effort.
• Elevate the role of content design in your company, proving that content is key to creating an outstanding customer experience—and to improving your company’s bottom line by saving your company on costs and increasing revenue.
• Get buy-in and support from colleagues inside and outside of content, leading to improved relationships across teams.

A Web for Everyone

If you are in charge of the user experience, development, or strategy for a web site, A Web for Everyone will help you make your site accessible without sacrificing design or innovation. Rooted in universal design principles, this book provides solutions: practical advice and examples of how to create sites that everyone can use.

Life and Death Design

Emergencies—landing a malfunctioning plane, resuscitating a heart attack victim, or avoiding a head-on car crash—all require split-second decisions that can mean life or death. Fortunately, designers of life-saving products have leveraged research and brain science to help users reduce panic and harness their best instincts. Life and Death Design brings these techniques to everyday designers who want to help their users think clearly and act safely.

We Need to Talk

Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, and years of real-world experience, We Need to Talk provides a practical framework for navigating difficult conversations with confidence and empathy. Whether you’re dealing with workplace conflicts, team dynamics, or challenging personal discussions, this book equips you with the tools to transform confrontational situations into opportunities for growth and understanding. No scripts, no shortcuts—just proven strategies that work.

Who Should Read This Book

If you work with other humans, this book is for you. Whether you’re a leader trying to build psychological safety on your team, an individual contributor navigating tricky workplace dynamics, or someone who wants to get better at having hard conversations, you’ll find practical tools here. While the examples come primarily from technology and creative fields, the framework works across industries and various roles. You’ll learn how to transform potentially confrontational situations into opportunities for growth and understanding, all while staying true to your authentic communication style. This isn’t about becoming a conflict expert—it’s about you feeling confident and capable when those inevitable tough conversations arise.

Takeaways

• Learn the core principles underlying difficult conversations.
• Delve into how your brain processes conflict.
• Study a multitude of techniques for maintaining psychological safety.
• Learn to apply practical solutions to solving real-world problems.
• Practice handling difficult conversations in your own authentic way.
• Figure out specific techniques for staying centered, asking the right questions, and keeping your cool when caught off guard.
• Learn how to navigate the tricky waters of conflict when you don’t agree with your boss.
• Study de-escalation techniques for a tense situation in order to guide conversations back to productive territory.
• Say no and mean it!

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.