Book Review: Effective Prototyping for Software Makers

Over on UX Matters, Leo Frishberg has written an extensive review of a new book on prototyping called “Effective Prototyping for Software Makers”.

Leo’s conclusion stated:

“In spite of the challenges this book presents to the casual reader, I would recommend it to anyone who considers prototyping an integral part of the software development process. If you have never used prototyping to make your products more usable and better targeted—while ultimately reducing your workload and simultaneously improving your code—this book provides a thorough discussion of the topic.”

The entire review can be found at this link.

The authors also have a website where you can download sample chapters and learn more about the authors.

“Visit our wite at www.effectiveprototyping.com.  Maybe this will help inform your decision about our book.

Once you own the book we will use this site to keep you posted on updated materials. For example, we have some prototyping samples as well as worksheets in our book. These will be available (in their native editable formats) via the web site; as will updates as we get more reader and usage feedback.”

Here is the detailed information on the book:

Effective Prototyping for Software Makers

Authors: Jonathan Arnowitz, Michael Arent, and Nevin Berger

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann, Elsevier, Inc.

Publication date: 2007

Format: Paperback; 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches; 624 pages

ISBN: 0120885689

List price: $59.95

Community Discussion with Ubёrblogger Robert Scoble

B2B Marketing blogger, Paul Dunay, writes a blog on Buzz Marketing for Technology.  He recently interviewed Robert Scoble and posted the podcast on his blog.  The discussion is an interesting overview of community, blogging, Twitter, podcasting, etc.

“Ubёrblogger Robert Scoble is truly one-of-a-kind. For those who don’t know him, he gained fame as a technology evangelist at Microsoft and then quickly became the company’s most outspoken and influential blogger. He now interviews people like Bill Gates for his blog, and the worldwide media watch his every move.

I got a chance to interview Robert Scoble on the topic of “Communities, Social Media, Twitter and More.” I think his insights into how to get started with blogging are spot on.”

The entire podcast from Veotag can be found here.

Here is some additional background on Robert Scoble – “Robert Scoble is a technical evangelist, writer, and author of the popular blog Scobleizer. He is currently Vice President of Media Development at the Palo Alto-based video-podcast startup company PodTech.net, where among other things he produces the ScobleShow, a series of interviews and stories about, as the site puts it, “geeks, technologists and developers.”  His blog is available here.

Everything is Miscellaneous

David Weinberger has written a new book called “Everything is Miscellaneous” which covers the breakdown of the established order of ordering.  In the book, he explains how methods of categorization designed for physical objects fail when we can instead put things in multiple categories at once, and search them in many ways. This is no dry book on taxonomy, but has the insight and wit you’d expect from the author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and a former writer for Woody Allen.

I recently ran across David’s book when someone made an opinion that Catalyze was ‘hard coding’ the hierarchies and navigation in our new community.  While searching for more information, I ran across a video of David’s recent presentation at Google Tech Talks on May 10, 2007.  The video is about 60 minutes long, but is well worth the investment of time as David is quite entertaining and can be found at Google Video.

The concepts outlined in this book will probably come into play as Catalzye changes form as more people start coming through the door.  We definitely recognize that there is more than one order of categorization for Catalyze – but we had to put an initial stake in the ground to get things going.  However, we are using TAGS to help with categorization and will let members tag information that they add and review.

I’m tagging this with Miscellaneous.

More information on David Weinberger can be found at his Everything is Miscellaneous blog and website.

User Experience Podcasts – UXPod.com

Do you like to listen to podcasts?  Do you want to learn about usability from some of the top experts in the world?

If so, you should check out the User Experience or UX Podcasts website at this link.  User experience guru Gerry Gaffney of Melbourne-based Information & Design consultancy interviews experts in these 20-25 minute podcasts.  Gerry generally adds a new podcast about every month.

Some of the archived podcasts include interviews with:

• Peter Benda
• Joel Sposky
• Alan Cooper
• Elizabeth Rosenzweig
• Steve Krug
• Jesse James Garret
• and many, many others.

There is a link on the site that will automatically send the podcasts to your iPod for downloading.