Product Description

Most discussion about Web design seems to focus on the creative process, yet turning concept into reality requires a strong set of deliverables—the documentation (concept model, site maps, usability reports, and more) that serves as the primary communication tool between designers and customers. Here at last is a guide devoted to just that topic. Combining quick tips for improving deliverables with in-depth discussions of presentation and risk mitigation techniques, authorDan Brown shows you how to make the documentation you're required to provide into the most efficient communications tool possible. He begins with an introductory section about deliverables and their place in the overall process, and then delves into to the different types of deliverables. From usability reports to project plans, content maps, flow charts, wireframes, site maps, and more, each chapter includes a contents checklist, presentation strategy, maintenance strategy, a description of the development process and the deliverable's impact on the project, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45757 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From the Back Cover
Most discussion about Web design seems to focus on the creative process, yet turning concept into reality requires a strong set of deliverables—the documentation (concept model, site maps, usability reports, and more) that serves as the primary communication tool between designers and customers. Here at last is a guide devoted to just that topic. Combining quick tips for improving deliverables with in-depth discussions of presentation and risk mitigation techniques, authorDan Brown shows you how to make the documentation you're required to provide into the most efficient communications tool possible. He begins with an introductory section about deliverables and their place in the overall process, and then delves into to the different types of deliverables. From usability reports to project plans, content maps, flow charts, wireframes, site maps, and more, each chapter includes a contents checklist, presentation strategy, maintenance strategy, a description of the development process and the deliverable's impact on the project, and more.

About the Author
Dan Brown has been practicing information architecture and user experience design since 1994. Through his consulting work in both public and private sectors, he has improved enterprise communications for both Federal and Fortune 500 clients, currently the Federal Communications Commission. Dan writes and speaks frequently on information architecture, and contributed to the inaugural issue of UX Matters, a new online magazine dedicated to user experience design. Dan is very active in the local Washington, DC information architecture community, and serves on the advisory board for the Information Architecture Institute.

Customer Reviews

A must read for anyone involved in producing website documentation
If you work in web product design or development, you will be well aware of the challenges of creating and communicating web design documentation. Dan Brown, a respected information architect, has put together a really useful book, covering the most crucial documentation that every effective web project will require. As an aspiring Information Architect I found the sections on design documentation including site maps, flow charts and wireframes really useful. Brown utilises a layered approach to producing documentation, which starts with the most important elements and then builds additional detail in subsequent layers. Whatever your level of experience, this book brings real clarity to producing the documentation that can make or break a web project.

Real world application of user-interface documentation
Dan's book is of profound relevance to anyone involved in producing web design documentation. During his day-long tutorial workshop at User Experience 2006 in London Dan taught me more about producing effective and compelling user-experience documentation than anything I'd learned at any time since 2001 and it's all in this book. His is the most comprehensive guide to allowing our work to inform and shape the creation of ground-breaking information architecture and yet it has been written in an accessible, friendly and authoritative manner. This book and Dan's regular contributions to Boxes and Arrows and the IA institute are essential reading for aspiring and practising user-experience professionals.

Good ideas, poor structure
This is a great book for dipping into (Brown cites numerous practical examples and techniques), but a heavy going read if you like doing things cover-to-cover.

The text books I like tend to have a very clear structure intended to make learning easy, but the mass of detail and alternative ways of doing things that Brown includes makes spotting and digesting the key points hard work.

If I could I'd give the content 4 or 5 stars, and its structure a lowly 3.

Still glad I bought it though.