Jason Santa Maria

Conversation Design is a guide to bridge the gap between functional requirements and conceptual design for Voice Interface Apps like Alexa Skill and SiriKit. Product managers need tools to communicate with Voice User Interface designers to turn user scenarios into conversations. This short and concise guide defines the elements, captures the flow and helps you iterate along the engineering lifecycle without going into the details of various components described in much longer books.As a product owner you need a framework to work in a world of voice, capturing features and functions in a scriptable form so VUI designers can do their job. As we move into a voice enabled world where Apple Siri handles over 100 billion voice commands a year, Google Now conducts over 20% of searches on Android devices using voice, Amazon Alexa has taken up residence in 4% of US households, you need to learn from user interactions and iteratively improve conversations. Conversation Design breaks down the complexity of the architectures into easy to understand components to help you develop voice enabled applications that are better than novelty.Please contact me at ashvin@mandovi.us with feedback and request to include in the next edition. Looking for real world experiences to improve the content as we develop this discipline.

What do primordial bacteria, medieval alchemists, and the World Wide Web have to do with each other? This fascinating exploration of how information systems emerge takes readers on a provocative journey through the history of the information age. Today's "information explosion" may seem like an acutely modern phenomenon, but we are not the first generation—nor even the first species—to wrestle with the problem of information overload. Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing from Ice Age taxonomies to Sumerian archives, Greek libraries to Dark Age monasteries. Today, we stand at a precipice, as our old systems struggle to cope with what designer Richard Saul Wurman called a "tsunami of data." With some historical perspective, however, we can begin to understand our predicament not just as the result of technological change, but as the latest chapter in an ancient story that we are only beginning to understand. Spanning disciplines from evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology to the history of books, libraries, and computer science, writer and information architect Alex Wright weaves an intriguing narrative that connects such seemingly far-flung topics as insect colonies, Stone Age jewelry, medieval monasteries, Renaissance encyclopedias, early computer networks, and the World Wide Web. Finally, he pulls these threads together to reach a surprising conclusion, suggesting that the future of the information age may lie deep in our cultural past.

English translation of this contemporary classic: accessible, informative and invaluable.

An official companion guide to the award-winning HBO series set against the backdrop of Baltimore journeys behind the scenes to examine the real-life people and events that inspired the show's gritty and realistic stories; offers a detailed overview of the show's first and second seasons; and furnishes a look at future seasons. 35,000 first printing.

This show-all romp through design-world darling Jessica Hische's sketchbook reveals the creative and technical process behind making award-winning hand lettering. See everything, from Hische's rough sketches to her polished finals for major clients such as Wes Anderson, NPR, and Starbucks. The result is a well of inspiration and brass tacks information for designers who want to sketch distinctive letterforms and hone their skills. With more than 250 images and metallic silver ink printed throughout to represent her penciled sketches, this highly visual book is an essential—and entirely enjoyable—resource for those who practice or simply appreciate the art of hand lettering.

The Shape of Design is an odd little design book. Instead of talking about typography, grids, or logos, it focuses on storytelling, co-dependency, and craft. It tries to supplement the abundance of technical talk and how-to elsewhere by elevating why great work is done.  Shape is a book about objectives, and it zooms out to answer a couple big questions: How does it feel to make things for other people? And how can we do so in a meaningful, engaged way?

Git’s model of version control makes it indispensable for collaborating on digital projects of all stripes. Get situated with Git as David Demaree guides you through the command-line workflow, the nuances of repositories and branches, the elements of a solid commit message, and more. Pick up common version-tracking tasks, along with advice on trickier scenarios. You’ll learn how to put Git to work for you—and work better with your team. Contents: Thinking in Versions - Basics - Branches - Remotes - History. Author David Demaree is a web developer, designer, speaker, and product person based just outside New York City. He’s a senior product manager for Adobe Typekit, working on ways to make it easy for everyone to find and use great fonts wherever they need type. David has spoken at design and tech events in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and he writes about software on Medium.

With more than 500 new apps entering the market every day, what does it take to build a successful digital product? You can greatly reduce your risk of failure with design sprints, a process that enables your team to prototype and test a digital product idea within a week. This practical guide shows you exactly what a design sprint involves and how you can incorporate the process into your organization. Design sprints not only let you test digital product ideas before you pour too many resources into a project, they also help everyone get on board―whether they’re team members, decision makers, or potential users. You’ll know within days whether a particular product idea is worth pursuing. Design sprints enable you to: Clarify the problem at hand, and identify the needs of potential users Explore solutions through brainstorming and sketching exercises Distill your ideas into one or two solutions that you can test Prototype your solution and bring it to life Test the prototype with people who would use it

The biography of one of world’s most popular typefaces. “Whether one likes Palatino or not, Mr. Bringhurst’s book is an instant classic.”―The Wall Street Journal Hermann Zapf was one of the great practitioners of the graphic arts and Palatino is probably the most widely known and used of all Zapf faces. Author Robert Bringhurst traces Palatino’s development, with all its infinite permutations, and often invisible refinements through a long and fascinating history of variations and permutations, imitations and conflations―from hot metal, through the brief interlude of film setting and finally into the digital world. It is all here, in encompassing detail: a fully illustrated account of Palatino and its extended family: foundry and Linotype, Michelangelo, Sistina, Aldus, Heraklit, Phidias, Zapf Renaissance, PostScript Palatino, Palatino and Aldus Nova, and Palatino Sans. Included with the text are over 200 illustrations of design sketches, working drawings, smoke proofs and test prints, matrices, foundry and Linotype patterns. But beyond that, the book is an argument that artists who create letters can, and should, be judged by the same standards and held in the same esteem as composers who write music and artists who paint on canvas. Bringhurst asks the question, “Can a penstroke or a letterform be so beautiful it will stop you in your tracks and maybe break your heart?” In this groundbreaking and totally original book, he answers the question: “It can.”

Design research is a hard slog that takes years to learn and time away from the real work of design, right? Wrong. Good research is about asking more and better questions, and thinking critically about the answers. It’s something every member of your team can and should do, and which everyone can learn, quickly. And done well, it will save you time and money by reducing unknowns and creating a solid foundation to build the right thing, in the most effective way. In Just Enough Research, co-founder of Mule Design Erika Hall distills her experience into a brief cookbook of research methods. Learn how to discover your competitive advantages, spot your own blind spots and biases, understand and harness your findings, and why you should never, ever hold a focus group. You’ll start doing good research faster than you can plan your next pitch. Erika Hall has been working in web design and development since the late 20th century. In 2001, she co-founded Mule Design Studio where she directs the research, interaction design, and strategy practices. Erika speaks and writes frequently about cross-disciplinary collaboration and the importance of natural language in user interfaces. In her spare time, she battles empty corporate jargon at Unsuck It. She also co-hosts Running from the Law, a weekly podcast on business law and endurance fitness, and can probably outrun you.

Utilize this typography book to master responsive typography and craft effective communication for your readers.