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The Book

Why am I awake at 3:30am?  I should be sleeping.  I guess I have alot on my mind.  I have had alot on my mind for the last few months.  Time has not been available to do personal projects.

One proect that has suffered is the book.  It has gone through many, many iterations and has evolved over time into a general purpose web application UX book.  I just have not had the time to work on it.

When I do work on it, I feel like it is a readable and enjoyable book.  However, maybe I am too close to it.  Maybe it stinks and I don’t realize it.  Confidence is a tricky mistress.

Take a look at the first and second chapters of the book.  You can also see the false starts from other versions.  I made PDFs so everyone could see.  The artwork is from google or clipart, so that won’t be too impressive.

Is it readable?  Is it new and interesting?  I’d really appreciate your thoughts.   I can’t spend much time on it these days, but I didn’t want all of the previous work to have been wasted.

Comments

3 responses to “The Book”

  1. Jörn Zaefferer Avatar
    Jörn Zaefferer

    I really like the specifics, there is a lot of good stuff. What I feel lacking most is are outlines.

    The second chapter is about the UI Five, but there is not short list what those are, or a short introduction to the chapter describing them in short.

    The first chapter has a similar problem. I already read parts of it before, so I just noticed that “muddling” was introduced in chapter 1 and picked up in chapter 2 as if it wasn’t mentioned before at all. It would help if muddling is explained once with a few examples, and then referenced when relevant.

    I don’t know how you go about writing, but maybe outlining a chapter in detail first and describing that outline in an introduction paragraph could help.

    PS: There were a few images missing in the PDF. Just the red IE x. At first I thought that was on purpose as an example of bad UX.

    PPS: Tabbing from the comment-textarea here doesn’t give me the Submit button…

    Reply
  2. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    Who is the audience for this book? What is its purpose? I would love to help (if you wanted), b

    Reply
  3. Glen Lipka Avatar
    Glen Lipka

    People making software. To make better software.

    In general, I think a book might not be the vehicle for me. I was hoping my writing was “wow”, but it apparently is not. If it was “wow” I would keep at it. But it’s not, so I would rather not waste my energy.

    Maybe I am better with presentations. Like this one I am using to present to a class at Stanford University.
    http://commadot.com/book/Stanford.pptx

    Reply

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