For some time I had been slowly acquiring books, reviewing books, and recommending books to collegues who were interested in “getting into” interaction design, user experience design, information architecture or usability. This eventually led to me cataloging my list of what I consider the best books in the field. With help from my friend Dave Malouf (co-founder of the IxDA and Professor of Interaction Design at SCAD), we edited this list of my canon, and now I want to share this list with you. If you have a question about a particular book, feel free to email me.

Next steps, besides slowly acquiring and reviewing more books, is to begin further classification of books. Until that can happen, this is my UX library. If I don’t own it or haven’t read it, it’s definitely not on this list. At the same time, there are books that I own that aren’t included because I thought they sucked for one reason or another. The fourth option is that I have it, have read it, liked it, but simply forgot to include it. So if you ask “Why haven’t you included X, Y, or Z – it’s one of those reasons.”

The Big UX Picture

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper

Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

Leonardo’s Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies by Ben Shneiderman

Core: Required Readings in UX

About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper , Robert Reimann , David Cronin

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites by Louis Rosenfeld , Peter Morville

Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge

Designing the User Interface by Ben Shneiderman

Introductions to UX

The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web by Jesse James Garrett

A Project Guide to UX: For user experience designers in the field or in the making by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design by Bill Buxton

Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices by Dan Saffer

Thoughts on Interaction Design (Perfect Paperback) by Jon Kolko

Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology by Jonas Löwgren , Erik Stolterman

Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman Jr.

Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web by Christina Wodtke

The Electronic Design Studio: Architectural Education in the Computer Era by Malcolm McCulloughWilliam J. Mitchell (Editor), Patrick Purcell (Editor) (Editor),

Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing by Malcolm McCullough

Practice, Methods and Tactics in UX

Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan Brown

The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web by Steve Mulder , Ziv Yaar

Design Research: Methods and Perspectives by Brenda Laurel and Peter Lunenfeld

Rapid Contextual Design: A How-to Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design by Karen Holtzblatt , Jessamyn Burns Wendell , Shelley Wood

Contextual Design : A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs by Hugh Beyer, Karen Holtzblatt

Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by Mike Kuniavsky

User and Task Analysis for Interface Design by JoAnn T. Hackos, Ph.D , Janice C. Redish

The Persona Lifecycle : Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by John Pruitt , Tamara Adlin

Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction by Bonnie A. Nardi

Design Research: Methods and Perspectives by Brenda Laurel (Editor), Peter Lunenfeld (Preface)

Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior by Indy Young

Card Sorting: Design Usable Categories by Donna Spencer

Prototyping: A Practitioners Guide to Prototyping by Todd Zaki Warfel

Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces (Interactive Technologies)  by Carolyn Snyder

Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become by Peter Morville

Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell

Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns and Practices for Improving the User Experience by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone

Search Patterns: Design for Discovery by Peter Morville

Modular Web Design: Creating Reusable Components for User Experience Design and Documentation by Nathan Curtis

Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski

Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook by Dan Cederholm

Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman

User-Centered Website Development: A Human-Computer Interaction Approach by Daniel D. McCracken , Rosalee J. Wolfe , Jared M. Spool

Usability

Don’t Make Me Think: A common sense approach to web usability by Steve Krug

Human Factors in Information Systems: The Relationship Between User Interface Designand Human Performance (Human Computer Interaction)  by Jane M. Carey (Editor)

Web Usability: A User-Centered Design Approach by Jonathan Lazar

Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines by Sanjay J. Koyani , Robert W. Bailey , Janice R. Nall

Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work (Interactive Technologies) by Tom Brinck , Darren Gergle , Scott D. Wood

Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests by Jeffrey Rubin

A Practical Guide to Usability Testing by Joseph S. Dumas , Janice C. Redish

Prioritizing Web Usability (VOICES)  by Jakob Nielsen , Hoa Loranger

Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity by Jakob Nielsen

Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability (Paperback – Jun 28, 2002) by Luke Wroblewski

Web Site Usability (Interactive Technologies)
by Jared Spool , Tara Scanlon , Carolyn Snyder , Terri DeAngelo

Visual Thinking & Info Viz

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition by Edward R. Tufte

Beautiful Evidence by Edward R. Tufte

Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte

Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte

Information Design by RobertJacobson (Editor)

Information Graphics: Innovative Solutions in Contemporary Design by Peter Wildbur , Michael Burke

Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design by Paul Mijksenaar

// credit goes to The UX Canon: Essential Reading For The User Experience Designer

For a long time, I guess I’m running such problem that’s mind block. I sort out the problem and today I’m reading another one cool posts and where cleraly disclosed for what reasons it can happen to anyone. If you’ve in such problem, this post might help you out.

Alex Monroe is the founder of GetYourBizSavvy.com, a source for entrepreneurs featuring interviews with leading entrepreneurs from around the world.

We all have great ideas, but finding them is the difficult part. When you can’t think of an article to write, a way to attract more readers, or the next chapter of your book, you’re suffering from a mind block. What do I do, is the question you might ask yourself. It is important to get you thinking, get your mind in motion. Here are ten steps to keep you innovating.

1. Newspapers/Magazines

Pick up a few newspapers and magazines and start flipping through pages. Search everything including advertisements and classifieds. Read the articles that are really interesting. The New York Post always offers an odd article and their cartoons are great. Cartoons can even help you relate to something and come up with an idea.

2. Blogs

There is pretty much a blog on everything. Search blogs similar to the content you offer. Read the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs. Maybe find a new blog in a completely different field. All these will help you create ideas.

3. Books

Read something. Learn about something you never knew about. Getting knowledge on a new subject will create a lot of opportunities.

4. Music

Insert the mixtape that you love and groove to. Music is motivational, inspirational and symbolic. If you don’t think of something while you’re listening and bopping your head, you might learn something within the lyrics.

5. Phone a friend

Call someone you can talk to and also listen to. Ask them about problems they have been facing or if they have anything exciting to talk about. They might say one thing and it will click for you.

6. Ask the audience

This is starting to sound like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire! In all serious though, ask your audience. Bloggers, write a post asking the readers what they want to see from you. Ask for feedback. Let them know what you want to do and ask for ideas. Remember that the readers are the one’s keeping you going, so they will love that.

7. Go for a walk

Fresh air is a beautiful thing. Take deep breaths of it. Get your blood flowing and the ideas will come too.

8. Meditate

Just relax and let go. Go to another place. Come back once that innovation wakes you up.

9. Eat

Mmm…cheeseburger and french fries. According to The Thinking Business, proteins and carbohydrates are essential in business. They explain that carbohydrates leave you feeling “calm and relaxed” and proteins “improve mental performance”. After a good meal, your brain will be back on track.

10. Get your mind off it completely

If nothing seems to be working for you, it might be because you give yourself no down time. You give your work time, but you don’t give yourself time. YOU time is extremely important because it gets your mind off your work. You have been working so hard being innovative that you exhausted your resources. Go to the movies, play a sport, watch some movies, and then when you return to your work the next day you will feel refreshed and ready to exhaust yourself again.

You know what to do now. You have ten ways to get innovative. Now do it!

Content Credit goes to Jhon, Alex Monroe & 10 Innovative Ways To Get Yourself Out of a Mindblock.

We are always talking about web usability and we shouldn’t forget about the advertisement usability. What does it mean? The way actually ads are presenting to the audience and easiest way an audience understanding or holding the main theme of the ads inside brain. When it really makes sense — how fast and easily an ads motive an customer and insisting customers to try it or buy it. Let see more.

Founded in 1987, TechSmith is the world’s leading provider of screen capture and recording software for individual and professional use. People everywhere use our products to capture content from their screens in ways that help them communicate more clearly, create engaging presentations for diverse audiences, and analyze product usability and customer experience.

With products localized into five languages and a distribution network of resellers in more than 30 countries, TechSmith’s global reach is continually expanding.

LinkedIn is a free business social networking site that allows users who register to create a professional profile visible to others. Through the site, individuals can then maintain a list of known business contacts, known as Connections. LinkedIn users can also invite anyone to join their list of connections. LinkedIn offers an effective way by which people can develop an extensive list of contacts, as your network consists of your own connections, your connections’ connections (2nd degree connections), as well as your 2nd degree’s connections (called your 3rd degree connections). From this network, individuals can learn of and search for jobs, business opportunities, and people. LinkedIn also serves as an effective medium by which both employers and job seekers can review listed professional information about one another. LinkedIn follows strict privacy guidelines wherein all connections made are mutually confirmed and individuals only appear in the LinkedIn network with their explicit consent. Other LinkedIn features include paid accounts that offer more tools to find people, and “LinkedIn Answers” developed in January 2007. A free feature, “LinkedIn Answers” allows registered users to post business-related questions that anyone else can answer.

Dell Inc. is a multinational information technology corporation that develops, sells and supports personal computers and other computer-related products, as a merchant . Based in Round Rock, Texas, Dell employed more than 76,500 people worldwide as of 2009^[update].^[1]

Dell grew during the 1980s and 1990s to become (for a time) the largest seller of PCs and servers. As of 2009^[update] it held the third spot in computer sales within the industry behind Hewlett-Packard and Acer Inc.^[2] As of 2009, the company sold personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, and computer peripherals. Dell also sells HDTVs, cameras, printers, MP3 players and other electronics built by other manufacturers.

In 2006, Fortune magazine ranked Dell as the 25th-largest company in the Fortune 500 list, 8th on its annual “Top 20″ list of the most-admired companies in the United States.In 2007 Dell ranked 34th and 8th respectively on the equivalent lists for the year. A 2006 publication identified Dell as one of 38 high-performance companies in the S&P 500 that had consistently out-performed the market over the previous 15 years.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it is America’s largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc., as of January 2010.

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and launched it online in 1995. It started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified to product lines of VHS, DVD, music CDs and MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and so on. Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and China. It also provides international shipping to certain countries for some of its products.

On January 15, 2009, a survey published by Verdict Research found that Amazon was the UK’s favorite music and video retailer, and came third in overall retail rankings.

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. As of October 2009, it claims to host more than 4 billion images.

Fast Company is a full-color business magazine that releases 10 issues per year and reports on topics including innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design, and social responsibility. As of June 30, 2009, the magazine has a circulation of 723,230. Fast Company’s current editor is Bob Safian, a veteran of Fortune and Smart Money.

Fast Company was launched in November 1995 by Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, two former Harvard Business Review editors. The publication began with $550,000 in funding from 11 individuals, raised to create a prototype.

In 1997, Fast Company created an online social network, the “Company of Friends” which spawned a number of groups that began meeting in person.

In 2000, Fast Company was sold to Gruner + Jahr, majority owned by media giant Bertelsmann, for $350 million. At the time this was the second largest amount for any US magazine in history. G&J sold the magazine in 2005 and shortly thereafter exited the U.S. magazine market.

Canon Inc. (キヤノン株式会社, Kyanon Kabushiki Gaisha^?, TYO: 7751, NYSE: CAJ) is a Japanese multinational corporation that specializes in the manufacture of imaging and optical products, including cameras, photocopiers, steppers and computer printers. Its headquarters are located in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan.

Business Plan, We help people succeed in business. We are here to help you, to teach you, and to provide solutions that build and grow your business. We believe that:

• You are the most capable person to plan, build, and grow your business.
• Business planning and strategy isn’t rocket science; we all just need to learn together.
• Planning and running a business can be a lot of fun… really!
• You can be successful doing it.

Bplans.com contains the largest single online collection of free sample business plans. In addition, it has helpful tools and know-how for managing your business. Bplans.com includes practical advice on planning, interactive tools and calculators, and a panel of experts who have answered thousands of questions from people like you. Bplans.com has won several awards as a valuable “plain talk” resource.

Bplans.com is owned and operated by Palo Alto Software, Inc. as a free resource to help entrepreneurs plan better businesses. Palo Alto Software – The Planning People – develops, publishes, and markets software products for use with personal computers. Its products offer task-oriented, “know how” solutions for small-business and home-office entrepreneurs, professionals, and middle managers. The company is a privately-owned corporation in Eugene, Oregon.

Don’t always think about your Business, we should care of your health and we should think about RSI, CVS and Technostress. Understand the RSI, CVS and Technostress – if anyone exist inside you or any symptom — then you should meet with a doctor. I’ve read Management Information System (MIS) in my last semester. You can read this book from Google Books.

I’m a fan of Maki, who is a great online marketer, just came across from anther one productive post,where he shared how you can make your web surfing more efficient and achieve the goals. Yes, I’m also thinking about it and I’ve spend a LOT time through a big percentage are totally non-productive – with pains – no gains. Also, I noted “you should always keep your mental energy focused & you’re reminding yourself of what you want.” – yes with limited energy and keep focusing onto the target to achieve the objective and finally reach to the goal.

Everyone has their favorite way of using the internet. Many of us search to find what we want, click in to a specific website, read what’s available and click out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it’s efficient. We learn to tune out things we don’t need and go straight for what’s essential.

This goal-oriented way of surfing the web is largely based on short-term results. For example, finding facts to write a blog post, doing a comparison before making a purchase and reading a news site to find out what’s happening right now.

If you do all this everyday it becomes like an unconscious habit. You go to the same familiar sites, click from link to link, extract what you want, linger a little for online chit-chat before drifting somewhere else.

So, how is this related to achieving your goals or being successful? Let’s use the topic of internet marketing and making money as an example.

If you’re a online marketer or business owner, you want to maximize your profits and sphere of influence. In order to achieve that, many things need to be done: on the practical side of things you need to get more targeted web traffic, optimize your sales page, promote your brand, increase your opt-in subscribers, network with peers, build links, provide customer service, create content/products, test your design/interface etc. All of these tactics are all directed towards the end goal of getting more customers and making more sales.

In order to reach this goal, incremental improvements to your business or strategy must be made everyday. You need make small tweaks, adjustments and innovations consistently to build on your success. These gradual step by step improvements will help you to reach your objective. But how do you constantly improve and stay on track to reach your income goal?

Image Credit: El Fotopakismo

A simple way to do this is to surf or use the internet with greater awareness in order to actively archive/assimilate what is beneficial. Awareness doesn’t refer to a serene zen-like consciousness of the websites you visit but rather, the awareness to connect what you do or experience online with the ultimate success of your business or goals. It should all link back to that final end.

And the way you do this in practice is easy: Maintain an all-purpose swipe file and record what you find interesting or useful when you surf the web everyday. To set this up for use while surfing the web, sign up for a free online bookmarking site or install a browser addon. Anything that allows you to bookmark webpages and/or write down your thoughts with just one or two clicks. You want to make it as easy and as hassle-free as possible.

Some of the tools you can use include evernote, delicious or the simple scrapbook addon for Firefox. It’s important to use tools that allow you to easily tag, categorize and search whatever you archive while also keeping your collection private.

Continuing with the online marketing example, I would be using these tools to record the following things while I surf the web:

• Web design/usability – Things I focus on include the overall design of the page, font type, site navigation, placement of ads, widgets, custom site features or plugins among many other things. These are details you can easily pass on to your coder or designer on the same day.
• Graphics/images – See a particular ad banner or button you like? bookmark the page and make a note of it. Or download it and put it in a folder. You may not have the rights to use it but its easy to find someone to create something similar to it.
• Sales page/Pre-sell pages – I spend a lot of time looking at sales/pre-sell pages everyday because I’m interested in how people sell. What words/images they use and how they arrange everything to make a coherent pitch. I’ll bookmark whatever I find appealing and make a note of what I like about it (important). This doesn’t just include lengthy Clickbank style salespages but e-commerce sites/marketplaces and blogs.
• Strategies/tactics – This involves marketing tactics that I find to be particularly ingenious. Examples include linkbait methods, product launch tactics and general public relations/advertising stuff. Much of these strategies can be found not just from the direct observation of marketers but from analysis of current news stories.
• Possible collaborators/JV partners – Whenever I come across a marketer, webmaster or business owner who has a product, site or service aligned with my interests, I will archive their contact details. This also includes people I comes across randomly on Twitter or those I discover via a targeted google search using keywords relevant to my business/product/niche focus. The goal here is to extend your sphere of influence by eventually leveraging another person’s reach.
• Copy and Content – This includes specific lines from sales-pages or emails/newsletters I receive while being on various mailing lists. Examples include email titles, email content, sales page titles, sales copy, adword ads, chapter listings and book titles on Amazon, language style/lines used by forum users in a specific niche etc.
• Ideas for social currency – Any interesting piece of information you come across can be bookmarked as ideas for a blog post, shared on twitter, posted to your email list, weaved into a product or used as a conversational topic in your favorite online community in order to build influence/reputation. Generally this category involves information I consume while reading news sites and not stuff I research on purpose. In other words, this is random zeigeist data (popurls.com/google trends and news/twitter trends/digg frontpage) that can be used towards multiple purposes.

Notes on Creating and Using Your Swipe File

Image Credit: felipe_gabaldon

1. Keep everything organized. Use tags appropriately so everything is in the right category and can be easily pulled up for reference. You don’t want a long chaotic list of webpages you can’t use. You want them to be action-friendly examples that are highly specific. Very useful when you want to hire someone and need to show what ad banner image, design style or site feature you want.
2. Don’t steal (at least not overtly). Keeping a swipe file doesn’t mean you should just copy and paste whatever you bookmark and use it for your site. One or two lines of copy might not hurt but try tailoring it to suit your persona/style/website. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. Find a good idea and instead of just applying it to your business, think about how you can improve on it even more.
3. Don’t stay within your niche. For example, you specialize in sports news, don’t just bookmark other sports-related websites. Read widely. A lot of the best sites in terms of content structure/delivery/display will be outside of your niche. Once you find them you can easily transplant their methods to give you a competitive advantage over other sports sites that just follow what everyone else is doing.

You should probably get the hang of this method by now. To clarify once more, I’m not talking about specifically doing research to find and archive data. This isn’t some competitor analysis method where you sit down for an hour and start going through all the websites or people in your industry in order to swipe their greatest hits.

The technique I’m proposing in this article simply involves changing the way you naturally surf the web everyday by developing a much greater attention to detail and aligning what you see or do online with a long-term end goal. Your switch is always on and you’re always looking to build on your current success. Always. All the time.

Develop a Web Surfing Pattern that Makes You Take Action

Image Credit: eriwst

If you’re really serious about building a profitable online business or becoming influential/successful in whatever you do, you should always keep your mental energy focused and your activities directed.

This is especially the case when you spend a LOT of time working online. Sure, you can relax from time to time but keep the line taut. If your online activities are always random and short-sighted, you’ll just jump from one link to another. This becomes a huge time-sink. While Wikipedia and Youtube or your favorite forum/social news site is a fun place to hang out, they aren’t always beneficial. Your attention and energy is limited so use it wisely.

Of course, if you’re only interested in killing time, you can use the internet anyway you want. But if you’re trying to become rich, influential and successful, you need focus. Eventually this unwavering attention will lead to success because you’re always tuned in towards constant improvement while keeping track of your goals. Every single time you click a button to archive something, you’re reminding yourself of what you want.

While the field of internet marketing was used for this example, this purposeful web surfing mindset can be thought of as a self-actualization tool. A well organized swipe file could be thought of as a constantly evolving vision board of some sort.

Like a vision board, your swipe archives are a constant reminder of your objective and tasks to be done. After all, you’re constantly collecting inspiring/interesting material you experience while web surfing and arranging them so they motivate you to move towards your specific goals. Be it to lose weight, learn spanish or improve your website. This is different from the old way of casually surfing the web without any particular focus on a long-term end goal.

So two things to put into action immediately after reading this article:

1. Consciously connect whatever you do online with your ultimate goal. Structure the time you spend on the web so that it always flows towards that objective.
2. Develop the habit of archiving whatever you experience on the web in order to use them as references/methods to improve what you are currently doing.

Keep this focus in the center of your mind and actively swipe whatever helps you reach your objectives. Do this consistently every day and you will develop a natural web surfing rhythm that will in the long run help you to accomplish your goals.

Content courtesy via How to Achieve Your Goals by Changing the Way You Surf the Web