BOOKS
These are some of my favorite books. I hope you enjoy them.
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Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping
MarketingA fascinating look on how consumers navigate retail environments, based on years of studiesof shoppers made by Underhill's retail conslustancy, Envirosell.
This book exposes you to the numerous subtle manipulations that store managers employ to gain customers. The factors that end up affecting sales are numerous - from the height of the object on a shelf, the organization of the checkout line, all the way through where in a store baskets are placed (the further in the store, the better).
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The Visual Miscellaneum
Visual DesignA highly immersive collection of eye candy, this book is a great source of inspiration for visualization and other forms of graphic design. Ranging from network visualizations, to drink recipe designs, through word clouds, McCandless shows the breadth of possibilities available to pixel artists.
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A Visit From The Goon Squad
FictionThis novel traces the life history of an intertwined group of characters, richly connected through shared experiences and shared friends. Every chapter is from the perspective of a different person, making this book a very enjoyable read.
Egan won a Pulitzer prize for this book, and it has been called the "Pulitzer prize for hypertext" by some. Indeed, the foreshadowing and back-references in the book are really fun to disentangle, because everything is seemingly related. I even made a visualization of the relationships between the characters.
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Universal Principles of Design
Interaction DesignComprised of 125 case studies of how various design rules apply to real world products and systems, this is a tremendously fun book with which to learn about design principles. The examples come from nature, advertising, products, software, and other fields, and include references for further learning.
One of my favorite principles that I learned about in this book is that of the entry point: ensuring that functionality is accessible from when a user first interacts with it, by reducing barriers, providing an overview, and creating lures for further interaction. The examples given are great, including the Wall Street Journal print edition which contains summaries of all content on the first page, as well as Apple Retail stores which all contain an impressive glass staircase which beckons shoppers into the store.
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Typographic Design: Form and Communication
Visual DesignA wonderful overview of typography as a field. This book covers the terminology and technology of modern type, as well as the history of written styles back to ancient history. It's incredibly visually appealing, with many examples of various types and styles.
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The Design of Everyday Things
Interaction DesignNorman's core thesis is that humans approach interaction with objects in an emotional way, often blaming themselves when they are unable to use technology. In this book, he enumerates some common pitfalls of design, and opens your mind to looking at the world through the lens of affordances, error recovery, and feedback.
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Steve Jobs
BiographyWritten after dozens of interviews with Steve and his friends and coworkers, this biography is an inspiring glimpse into the life of a creative person who happened to create multiple billion-dollar companies. His style was that of a dictator, which led to both great products as well as difficult relationships with those around him.
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Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
MarketingOriginally published in 1981, this book documents the shift from promoting products by showcasing features, to instead comparing to and distinguishing from existing products and trends in markets. A fascinating insight into how brands relate to one another.
One example of a modern brand strategy that Ries describes is that of sub-brands: Proctor and Gamble's dominant strategy. For each product they launch, such as Tide, Cascade, or Duracell, they create a new brand that is unencumbered by previous brand associations. The authors note that one of the most common failures of marketing is line-extension, when a brand comes to stand for too many different things, which becomes difficult for people to remember.
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The New New Thing
BiographyThis book is a great view into the life of Jim Clark, a dot-com entrepreneur who founded three multi-billion dollar companies: Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon. Not only a biography of Clark, this book documents the dot-com bubble, with all of its excesses and rampant speculation.