My UX Books Reading List for 2011

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These are the books I will read. Couple of them are already installed in my head.  (List recommended  by @MattLewisDesign from http://www.uxbydesign.org/2009/06/24/20-user-experience-books-you-should-own/)

  1. Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World by Peter Merholz – READ
  2. Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan Brown
  3. Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs (Interactive Technologies) by Hugh Beyer
  4. Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience by James Kalbach and Aaron Gustafson
  5. Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices (Voices That Matter) by Dan Saffer
  6. Designing for the Social Web (Voices That Matter) by Joshua Porter
  7. Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell – READ
  8. Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman Jr.
  9. Designing Web Interfaces By Bill Scott
  10. The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web (Voices That Matter) by Jesse James Garrett – READ
  11. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville
  12. A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler
  13. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug – READ
  14. Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics (Interactive Technologies) by Thomas Tullis
  15. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design by Bill Buxton
  16. Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior by Indi Young
  17. Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions by Tim Ash
  18. WebForm Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski – READ
  19. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam
  20. Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research By Mike Kuniavsky (Recommended by my mentor)
  21. Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems by Steve Krug - READING

Swap.com Search Fail

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Okay, I am kind of little frugal when it comes to buying books, I do look for a good deal or willing to buy it used online mostly from Amazon.com until and unless if it is not available anywhere in Used condition, then my second choice is Swap.com, a cool website where you can trade-in your unwanted CDs, DVDs, Video Games and Books with something you want. Pretty cool.

However I hate there search feature, they implemented in such a way that it won’t search the “Complete Title”. Instead the search engine at Swap.com is actually using the first three words of the book. Good stuff is it does offer the auto-complete. But sometime when you copy paste the desired book name in to the search box and try to search the desired keyword at Swap.com you will be disappointed.

Check out the following video:

I think the best way to implement the search is using the “Like” Feature and and also make sure the “:” is not hurting your Search Queries, sometime those special character become too annoying and best way to deal with them is encode them in HTML and then decode them in to the unicode for your database query related operation.

If you have more ideas about Search Logics and Algorithm please do let me know in the comments section.

Thanks

Keep the basic intact, case of iPhone App.

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When you buy an app you expect some basic feature to work fine, in case of app that related to your culture or religion you expect it adhere the basics of the captioned context.

In terms of iPray iPhone App, all is good: Prayer Timings, City Search (although it is clumsy, but it will work) and Push Notification about Prayer Time .

However the one big caveat and it is really astonishing. Let me briefly describe it, in Islam, there is a prayer call “Adhan” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhan). Muslim are supposed to be praying 5 times a day, that is Fajar (Dawn to sunrise), Zuhar (After true noon), Asr (Afternoon), Maghrib (Right after sunset until darkness) and Isha (Dusk until Midnight). So the Adhan is called before every prayer and in Fajar Prayer Adhan, there are specific words which every Prayer Caller (Muezzin) supposed to recite and it is the way Prophet Muhammad Peace Be Upon Him prescribed. But in iPray App by Guided Ways they are “Fajar Adhan”. So why this basic Fajar Adhan is missing in this app?

In my opinion they didn’t do any kind of Usability Testing/User Acceptance Testing OR may be they missed it intentionally for the sake of Space? I highly doubt it, because if some Muslim downloading any app that helps them to do their religious duty they expect the basic without any compromise.

The best way to use this app if you already downloaded this app then to turn off any Adhan Notification for Fajar and select regular Beep Alarm for the Fajar Adhan. Also please submit your reviews to their iPhone App Page and let them know that they should not miss the basics.

‘Sidamo’ A Word Game by R3GM

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Finally! its here. My friend Randolph Cabral running a small startup R3GM is just published his first game in Windows Phone 7 Market!

I used to play a bit while it was in its infancy. And I would say one thing only….Randolph Cabral is very particular about the interface and all the detail related to it.

Go ahead check out it on your Windows Phone 7 Market, and if you want to read more about it, go ahead on R3GM Website. Once again Congrats! Randolph for your awesome achievement!

iPhone Apps that Makes Me Productive in 2010

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Recently one of my very best friend requested me to share the iPhone Apps that I frequently use in my day-to-day life. Reason he was wondering is when I told him that “iPhone is the tool that I uses most for my note taking to idea sketching activity”. So here is my apps list:

iThoughts:
I did try the MindMaker now known as MindMiester, I never fall for it head-over-heal as I keep loving iThoughts as time passes and as they keep upgrading it with cool stuff. DropBox Support in the iThoughts is the best ever integration I love! Second important feature is XMind support. Try it out! It is very wonderful app for Mind Mapping, if you love doing your “To Do” in that style? Or laying the map of Project flow, it gives you the bird-eye view about your projects/tasks.

2Do:
What I really like about this app is, how aesthetically pleasing interface is! Only one complain though, if I can sync all my to-do list on DropBox!

Interface:
If you are working on the iPhone App Development, and you need to sketch the rough prototype, and you really want it done without using the Pen & Paper, but right on iPhone!? Then Interface is your best bet! Quickly drop the controls, and create screens, and the best thing is you can export the mock-up in XCode Format!

Momento:
Like any “mentally active” guy :P you may think a lot and the ideas start poping in and out from your mind in one-billionth of the second! Then why not capture it with style. Try Momento it is fun way to keep the journal of your idea or your emotions or anything.

GoodReader:
Now the most important app on my iPhone. GoodReader is your PDF Reader, your MP3 Player, and your Video Player, and it is swiss-army knife of couple of  “on-the-go Reader” that comes with a core feature of converting your iPhone as USB Drive.  I love the PDF Reader feature of this app, it gives you annotation too, a big plus.

Instapaper:
Second most important on-the-go reader for me! Using the bookmarklet in Chrome and then clipping all the articles that I wanna read but couldn’t read it so I queue it in Instapaper. It is basically let you bookmark the article in to their server and then you can download it and read it off-line. A superb commute-companion.

That’s all I have so far, although for fun I do download tons of app 90% free apps to try them and get some inspiration for the apps I am working these days, but mostly my productivity companions are the above captions apps that I used them almost daily.

My Idea Wall

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Today I start using the Posterous Blogging Service for one single purpose, to bookmark my finds in Blog Style. Although there are many public bookmarking services out there, however I need something more like Blog and able to make the “Tweet Shout” while doing it. So there you go :

http://mmudassir.posterous.com/

It will contain all articles, images and videos/audios  that I will be using for my UX, UI, Design and  Idea development.

UX Techniques & Methods: Curated here…

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After reading couple of books and articles for past 11 months, I realized what now I am looking for is the “Practical Approach” toward the UX integration in to the following:

  1. Before accepting a project or developing on my own idea I should think about the Business Strategy and how the Design Strategy can align with it.
  2. Doing “Research” plus “Design Research” once all the ducks lined up.
  3. Then curate all the detail according to the Strategy and Research result in to a meaningful content.
  4. Finally craft the best experience by implementing all the acquired knowledge from Research & Contents that you generated on step 3.

So far so good, however the following methods curated by people who are gurus in this field and agencies who care about user-centered design. I just collected them from different UX Forums for the sake of reference just in case if someone is looking for.

UXBASIS box
www.uxbasis.com

What Is User Experience Design? Overview, Tools And Resources
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/05/what-is-user-experience-design-overview-tools-and-resources/

Jakob Neilsen Thoughts
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/

UPA’s Usability Body of Knowledge
http://www.usabilitybok.org/methods (with awesomeness of How-to
implementation as well!)

UsabilityNet’s interactive methods table
http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/methods.htm

Usability.gov has a great visual map of ux methods
http://www.usability.gov/methods/process.html