Published Books

The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.

Book’s cover image

Publication date: 2014-01-01

Free textbooks written by more than 100 leading designers, bestselling authors, and Ivy League professors. We have assembled our textbooks in a gigantic encyclopedia, whose 4,000+ pages cover the design of interactive products and services such as websites, household objects, smartphones, computer software, aircraft cockpits, and what have you. Name an item of design interest, and you'll probably find it discussed inside.

Authors

Rikke Friis Dam and Mads Soegaard

Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Business Software

Book’s cover image

Publication date: 2013-06-25

Gamification is becoming a common buzzword in business these days. In its November 2012 press release, Gartner predicts that "by 2015, 40% of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations. In the same report, they also predict that - "by 2014, 80% of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives, primarily due to poor design".

What is gamification? Does it belong in the workplace? Are there design best practices that can increase the efficacy of enterprise gamification efforts?

Janaki Kumar and Mario Herger answer these questions and more in this book Gamification @ Work. They caution against taking a "chocolate covered broccoli" approach of simply adding points and badges to business applications and calling them gamified. They outline a methodology called Player Centered Design which is a practical guide for user experience designers, product managers and developers to incorporate the principles of gamification into their business software. Player Centered Design involves the following five steps:

  1. Know your player
  2. Identify the mission
  3. Understand human motivation
  4. Apply mechanics
  5. Manage, monitor and measure

Kumar and Herger provide examples of enterprise gamification, introduce legal and ethical considerations, and provide pointers to other resources to continue your journey in designing gamification that works!

Keywords:
Gamification, Enterprise Gamification, Gamification of business software, enterprise software, business software, User experience design, UX, Design, Engagement, Motivation.

Authors

Mario Herger and Janaki Kumar

The Social Design of Technical Systems: Building technologies for communities. 2nd Edition

Book’s cover image

Publication date: 2014-03-01

Hundreds of millions of people use social technologies like Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube every day, but what makes them work? And what is the next step? The Social Design of Technical Systems explores the path from computing revolution to social evolution. Based on the assumption that it is essential to consider social as well as technological requirements, as we move to create the systems of the future, this book explores the ways in which technology fits, or fails to fit, into the social reality of the modern world. Important performance criteria for social systems, such as fairness, synergy, transparency, order and freedom, are clearly explained for the first time from within a comprehensive systems framework, making this book invaluable for anyone interested in socio-technical systems, especially those planning to build social software. This book reveals the social dilemmas that destroy communities, exposes the myth that computers are smart, analyses social errors like the credit meltdown, proposes online rights standards and suggests community-based business models. If you believe that our future depends on merging social virtue and technology power, you should read this book.

Authors

Adnan Ahmad and Brian Whitworth

Bringing Numbers to Life

Book’s cover image

Publication date: 2016-11-03

The evolving digital landscape is changing how we interact with numbers in our work and personal lives. The Internet, unprecedented data creation & access, accelerating computing power, dynamic digital displays, social networks, and mobile content consumption are enabling breakthroughs in how quantitative data is presented, manipulated, and acted upon. In parallel, the Design Thinking movement is popularizing innovation methods long known by designers, allowing us to challenge deep-seated conventions of how the built world appears and behaves.

Bringing Numbers to Life: LAVA and Design-Led Innovation in Visual Analytics presents the context, process, and results of a multi-year investigation, at business software giant SAP, into how computing technology can better enable people to discover and make sense out of the numbers that impact them. The results will change how you view quantitative information. The story will empower you to achieve design goals despite seemingly impossible resistance. The book is packed with full-color and detailed examples, and includes Web access to videos, animations, documents, and design artifacts from the project.

John Armitage is a strategic digital product designer and practice leader. During his 25-year career in the software industry, he has performed principal designer and team/practice leadership roles in consulting and development organizations. Since 2002, he has led user experience design teams with Peoplesoft, BusinessObjects, SAP, and Host Analytics.

Authors

John Armitage

The Glossary of Human Computer Interaction

Book’s cover image

Publication date: 2015-07-05

A comprehensive - an ever-growing - glossary of key terms in Human-Computer Interaction

Authors

Rikke Friis Dam and Mads Soegaard