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Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services
Whether you're designing consumer electronics, medical devices, enterprise Web apps, or new ways to check out at the supermarket, today's digitally-enabled products and services provide both great opportunities to deliver compelling user experiences and great risks of driving your customers crazy with complicated, confusing technology. Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.
768 pages, Paperback
First published January 16, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 26, 2010
A hefty 740 pages, this book is comprehensive and precise just like About Face was except Kim's book has more of a focus on methodology, research, persona development and design language. Some great examples in here with an entire chapter devoted to a sample user interview. If you already own About Face 3 then you should get this book too. If you want to choose between them and you're more a researcher/designer than web/software interaction developer then I suggest you just get this book.
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January 7, 2016I have an extra copy if anyone wants it.
December 13, 2015
As close to a UX bible as you'll find.
September 13, 2017
The perfect monitor riser. Uses dense, knotty prose in an attempt to dress up what is basically common sense advice on how to communicate and pay attention when you ask questions. Worst of all, when attempting to critique this book in the UX community you discover there are a lot of naked emperor apologists in our profession.
There are specific tactics here for doing user research, but these could be just as easily learned in any number of other ways—ones where the heart of the matter isn't buried under piles of dry text. The good points about UX and how to do it well are smothered, while the edge cases and hypothetical client interactions are given star treatment. Read Lean UX instead to gain much the same knowledge
There are specific tactics here for doing user research, but these could be just as easily learned in any number of other ways—ones where the heart of the matter isn't buried under piles of dry text. The good points about UX and how to do it well are smothered, while the edge cases and hypothetical client interactions are given star treatment. Read Lean UX instead to gain much the same knowledge
August 5, 2018
How the hell does this have 4+ stars average rating? What is wrong with the people on Earth? (C’mon, asteroid.) “Design for the Digital Age” is a phone book with prescriptive instructions that take all the joy out of UI design. The author makes UX an elitist ivory tower practice with pejorative terms like “swoop and poop.” I think this book is for agency drones and hand-wavers who make their living selling the emperor’s new clothes.
November 9, 2020
It has good information but, like most design books, it’s poorly written and could be half as long.
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May 30, 2011I got as far as the chapter on Detailed Design before I realised that despite my best intentions, I would never get around to finishing this book.
Close enough to mark it "read" though, I think
Pity, it was a pretty good, comprehensive read, a bit intimidating at times, but quite enough to get me excited about interaction design... probably another passing fancy
Close enough to mark it "read" though, I think
Pity, it was a pretty good, comprehensive read, a bit intimidating at times, but quite enough to get me excited about interaction design... probably another passing fancy
May 8, 2017
Topic: General UX reference book that covers design process in depth
Why Read It: Not a quick read, but gives you deeper understanding of the field. This is the type of book that gives you a sense of the design process that many UX hiring managers are looking for.
When to Read it: This book is rather dense, so design beginners should check it out after reading some quick, fun books on UX. Meant for repeated reference.
Kim Goodwin’s Designing for the Digital Age is a thorough handbook that walks you through the entire design process, from setting goals, to research, to design.
This is one of those books where it makes sense to take an a-la-carte approach – read the sections that interest you.
If you’re right at the beginning of a huge project, starting from the beginning to end will guide you in the right direction. This book is a required read for some UX classes.
Why Read It: Not a quick read, but gives you deeper understanding of the field. This is the type of book that gives you a sense of the design process that many UX hiring managers are looking for.
When to Read it: This book is rather dense, so design beginners should check it out after reading some quick, fun books on UX. Meant for repeated reference.
Kim Goodwin’s Designing for the Digital Age is a thorough handbook that walks you through the entire design process, from setting goals, to research, to design.
This is one of those books where it makes sense to take an a-la-carte approach – read the sections that interest you.
If you’re right at the beginning of a huge project, starting from the beginning to end will guide you in the right direction. This book is a required read for some UX classes.
February 8, 2019
I came back to this book many times as a great starting point for brainstorming, forming a framework, and referencing. I love how this book provides lots of details before the visual design part, how it gives good examples on user research, user personas, delivering product requirements (deriving from specific personas and scenarios, and leading to specific mapping of the requirements, such as data needs, functional needs, product qualities), and forming deeper user data analysis. It even provides templates and examples for project management for different kinds of design projects, and puts design in a bigger context. It shows how design could work cross departmentally, and how communication matters. Overall a very comprehensive guide and a book worth keeping!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 13, 2021
It's the one book from my education that I keep referencing and coming back to (so far). It has a great and extensive collection of methods and examples that are very helpful. That being said, it's a very heavy and slow read (a thicc boi). It's not a book I would recommend to read cover to cover to improve one's understanding of UX and interaction design, but rather a book I'd say to pick up when you have a specific method you want information about and just read that chapter/section of the book.
March 25, 2019
Kim is one of the most respected UX experts in the field. She knows the big picture and the little details and she did everyone a favor by writing this massive tome. I am personally insulted on Kim's behalf by some of these negative reviews by UX wankers, don't listen to them, listen to her.
June 15, 2020
Great textbook for an overview of what human-centric design is. Perfect textbook to have around for reference.
July 19, 2022
Extremely thorough, but a wonderful, generous resource
May 7, 2019
Ok
A lot to read through but some good info. A lot of situational context made it a bit tougher to get through.
A lot to read through but some good info. A lot of situational context made it a bit tougher to get through.
August 11, 2015
Great solid guide to user experience design from strategy to implementation. I used this in a class on goal-centered user experience development and Marketing and this book provided an excellent overview of UX and the UX development process, along with very detailed practical techniques that were very useful for both beginners (my students) and practitioners who have been at it a while but need some new perspective.
November 22, 2010
Wonderful step-by-step tour through the Cooper method of discovering user needs, categorizing and measuring requirements and delivering designs that underpin delightful interactive systems. Yes, it's thick, but it's also an easy read and great reference.
November 3, 2015
This was my bedside book for digital design for several years. Now still I have it at hand since its some of the more exhaustive books on HCI/UX I have in my shelves, specially for designing physical interactive products. detailed HCI/UX.
February 17, 2011
Good as an overall reference which might come in handy when I'm starting a project dealing with clients.
March 19, 2016
Fantastic book outlining the Goal Directed Design approach.
May 13, 2016
+Gutes Nachschlagewerk zum Einstieg
-Als Ebook eher mühsam
-Als Ebook eher mühsam
August 31, 2011
Great book for those wanting to get a high level understanding of the digital design process.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews