Books

Additional Books

EPSScentral Bibliography for Professionals - from the legacy sites (PCD Innovations, EPSSInfosite and epss.com!).

Popular Books on Usability and Interface Design

Amazon.com offers a variety of books on Usability and Interface Design for the performance support practitioner. Click on a link to order directly from Amazon!

Popular Books on User Centered Design

Amazon.com offers a variety of books on User Centered Design for the performance support practitioner. Click on a link to order directly from Amazon!

What's the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management Thinking

by Tom Davenport

Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things.

by Donald Norman

Lean Six Sigma for Service

by Michael L. George

Business Process Management: Profiting From Process

by Roger Burlton

Business Process Management (BPM): The Third Wave

by Howard Smith, Peter Fingar

Packaged Composite Applications

A new idea from the O'Reilly series...or is it? Perhaps a Packaged Composite Application is another way to say EPSS

Performance Support Engineering Part One : Key Concepts

Recommended Book ($29.95 Raybould, 2000)

Electronic Performance Support Systems

Recommended Book (Gery, 1991)

Designing and Developing Electronic Performance Support Systems

Recommended Book (Brown, 1996)

Knowledge Management

A contemporary work introducing the field of knowledge management. The three main sections of the text discuss strategy and motivation, process of knowledge management, and metrics, which looks at the impact of knowledge management on an organization. A collection of classic essays, with a selection...

The Knowing-Doing Gap

Every year, companies spend billions of dollars on training programs and management consultants, searching for ways to improve. But it's mostly all talk and no action, according to Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, authors of The Knowing-Doing Gap. "Did you ever wonder why so much education and...

Working Knowledge

When new-car developers at Ford Motor Company wanted to learn why the original Taurus design team was so successful, no one could tell them. No one remembered or had recorded what made that effort so special; the knowledge gained in the Taurus project was lost forever. Indeed, the most valuable...

The Knowledge Management Fieldbook

The Knowledge Management Fieldbook is a hands-on guide full of practical advice for managers wishing to implement knowledge management within their organizations.

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

From Amazon.com: You may be only six degrees away from Kevin Bacon, but would he let you borrow his car? It depends on the structures within the network that links you. When the power goes out, when we find that a stranger knows someone we know, when dot-com stocks soar in price, networks are evident. In Six Degrees, sociologist Duncan Watts examines networks like these: what they are, how they're being studied, and what we can use them for. To illustrate the often complicated mathematics that describe such structures, Watts uses plenty of examples from life, without which this book would quickly move beyond a general science readership. Small chapters make each thought-provoking conclusion easy to swallow, though some are hard to digest. For instance, in a short bit on "coercive externalities," Watts sums up sociological research showing that: "Conversations concerning politics displayed a consistent pattern .... On election day, the strongest predictor of electoral success was not which party an individual privately supported but which party he or she expected would win."

Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook (Pioneering Series)

From Amazon.com: For advanced users, it's an excellent reference to extend existing markup knowledge in different creative and technical directions. This book recommends standards-based markup practices to achieve various results within different contexts, from simple padding and floating to Fahrner Image Replacement. Much of the content is rehashed and rearranged from the Simplequiz feature of his website, which is a great way to contrast current presentational "tag soup" conventions with proper structural markup. So far it's all been stuff that I already know and use in my day-to-day design, but I'm seeing a few things in later chapters which should pose both unique solutions to as-yet-unmet CSS design challenges. Don't start with this if you want a starter's XHTML/CSS manual or a comprehensive syntax guide. If CSS isn't like a second language to you yet, you'll probably want to read Web Standards Solutions with a couple of cheat sheets close by. And of course, the easiest way to learn is to do: fire up a text editor and a [real] browser and hammer out that code as you read about it. The sooner you're out of the tag soup, the better.

Defensive Design for the Web: How to Improve Error Messages, Help, Forms, and Other Crisis Points (Voices That Matter)

From Amazon.com: The authors present 40 guidelines that cover different aspects of defensive design, or contingency design as they call it. Some are pretty basic, such as "Always identify errors the same way". Others require a bit more thought in the coding of the site, such as "Assist form dropouts by saving information". But instead of just stating the guideline and moving on, they take it a step further. Using familiar and popular web sites, they provide "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" examples of each guideline. By seeing the guidelines actually applied in real-life, you are much more likely to understand the problems associated with it. I know if my site was used as a "thumbs down" example, I'd be motivated to get it fixed post haste. At the end of the book, there is a contingency test you can apply to your site. You start by taking the test yourself as a baseline. After you think you've cleaned up the site, then have some real visitors use the site and take the test. If you can do well in both these scenarios, then your site is better off than most others out there. You're probably also seeing a high rate of repeat traffic. The book is easy to read, but you'll most likely return to the guidelines over and over. This is a book that is going to be no more than an arms-length away.

2004 Update : Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (3rd Edition)

This book should be of some interest to those in the education field who are struggling with the transition to technology. A 3rd Edition says something ...

EPSS Revisited: A Lifecycle for Developing Performance-Centered Systems

Gary Dickelman's compendium of performance-centered design articles from Performance Improvement

Books by Naomi Karten

Of special interest is Naomi Karten's expertise around fostering communication between technical and nontechnical people. Good reading for the performance support practitioner.

Books by Leonard Shlain

Leonard Shlain makes brilliant use of his medical expertise in his highly original and intellectually stimulating inquiries into the uniqueness of humans and evolution of our sexual roles in the shaping of civilization. He takes an evolutionary approach to solving the conundrums of misogyny and patriarchy, guiding his curious, perhaps skeptical, certainly riveted readers through well-grounded and intriguing speculations on these topics.

On Intelligence

Jeff Hawkins, the high-tech success story behind PalmPilots and the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, does a lot of thinking about thinking. In On Intelligence Hawkins juxtaposes his two loves--computers and brains--to examine the real future of artificial intelligence. In doing so, he unites two fields of study that have been moving uneasily toward one another for at least two decades. Most people think that computers are getting smarter, and that maybe someday, they'll be as smart as we humans are. But Hawkins explains why the way we build computers today won't take us down that path. He shows, using nicely accessible examples, that our brains are memory-driven systems that use our five senses and our perception of time, space, and consciousness in a way that's totally unlike the relatively simple structures of even the most complex computer chip. Readers who gobbled up Ray Kurzweil's (The Age of Spiritual Machines and Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open will find more intriguing food for thought here. Hawkins does a good job of outlining current brain research for a general audience, and his enthusiasm for brains is surprisingly contagious. --Therese Littleton

Breakthrough

In "Breakthrough," Mark and Barbara Stefik show us how innovation works. Drawing on stories from repeat inventors and managers of technology, they uncover the best practices for inventing the future. This book is for readers who want to know how inventors do their work, how people become inventors, and how businesses can create powerful cultures of innovation.

Rapid Contextual Design : A How-to Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies)

This handbook introduces Rapid CD, a fast-paced, adaptive form of Contextual Design. Rapid CD is a hands-on guide for anyone who needs practical guidance on how to use the Contextual Design process and adapt it to tactical projects with tight timelines and resources. Rapid Contextual Design provides detailed suggestions on structuring the project and customer interviews, conducting interviews, and running interpretation sessions. The handbook walks you step-by-step through organizing the data so you can see your key issues, along with visioning new solutions, storyboarding to work out the details, and paper prototype interviewing to iterate the designall with as little as a two-person team with only a few weeks to spare!

Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Usability design is one of the most important--yet often least attractive--tasks for a Web developer. In Don't Make Me Think, author Steve Krug lightens up the subject with good humor and excellent, to-the-point examples.

Designing Web Usability

by Jakob Nielsen. Creating Web sites is easy. Creating sites that truly meet the needs and expectations of the wide range of online users is quite another story. In Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, renowned Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen shares his insightful thoughts on the subject.

Web Site Usability

by Jared M. Spool, Terri DeAngelo, Tara Scanlon, Will Schroeder. Spool and his buddies are usability engineers; they study how folks use computers. For the past couple of years, they have paid a lot of attention to how people use webbed interfaces for navigation and searching.

Web Style Guide

by Patrick J. Lynch, Sarah Horton. In 160 pages of expert instruction, authors Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton put the essence of the Yale University Center for Advanced Instructional Media's wonderful online site design guide into traditional print.

Information Anxiety 2

by Richard Saul Wurman, David Sume, Loring Leifer. Information might want to be free; but, why should we free it? We've got enough trouble keeping track of all the petabits that already run around untethered, and risk a computer counterrevolution if we let the situation get much crazier.

Information Design

by Robert Jacobson. Offers hopeful and cautionary visions of how information design can be practiced diligently and ethically, for the benefit of information consumers and producers. DLC: Communication in design.

Visual Explanations

by Edward R. Tufte. With Visual Explanations, Edward R. Tufte adds a third volume to his indispensable series on information display.

Information Visualization

by Colin Ware. Most designers know that yellow text presented against a blue background reads clearly and easily, but how many can explain why? Information Visualization: Perception for Design explores the art and science of why we see objects the way we do.

Web Site Usability Handbook

by Mark Pearrow. The Web Site Usability Handbook is for individuals who evaluate and improve the usability of Web sites. It does not, as the title might imply, specifically show Web developers how to make their sites more usable.

The Usability Engineering Lifecycle

by Deborah J. Mayhew. Presents techniques of Usability Engineering as a series of product lifecycle tasks that result directly in easy-to-learn and use software. Covers organizational issues related to the implementation of Usability Engineering...

Handbook of Usability Testing

by Jeffrey Rubin. Practical, step-by-step guidelines. Arms the beginners with the full complement of proven testing tools and techniques. Requires no engineering or human factors training. Paper.

The Essential Guide to User Interface Design

by Wilbert O. Galitz. An effective software interface can improve user productivity and satisfaction and reduce errors. But designing effective UIs demands unflinching attention to detail--plus the willingness to apply techniques that may at times contradict your common sense and intuition

The Elements of User Interface Design

by Theo Mandel. A total introduction to user interface (UI) design, Elements of User Interface Design covers theory and application with easy language and real world examples.

Making Use

by John M. Carroll. A textbook using a scenario-based approach to looking at human-computer interactions, using concrete stories to create scenarios of use. Provides a vocabulary of activities, software, and drawing general lessons from systems as they are developed and used.

Contextual Design

by Hugh Beyer, Karen Holtzblatt. There's certainly no shortage of software design methods: most demand total allegiance, and many claim to be the only true way to delivering useful and maintainable software systems in a timely manner.

Software for Use

by Larry L. Constantine, Lucy A.D. Lockwood. For anyone who designs applications or Web pages professionally, Software for Use provides an appealingly written guide to user interface design

Web Bloopers : 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies)

by Jeff Johnson. The dot.com crash of 2000 was a wake-up call, and told us that the Web has far to go before achieving the acceptance predicted for it in '95. A large part of what is missing is quality; a primary component of the missing quality is usability. The Web is not nearly as easy to use as it needs to be for the average person to rely on it for everyday information, commerce, and entertainment.

HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks : Toward a Multidisciplinary Science (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies)

by John Carroll. Human-Computer Interaction spans many disciplines, from the social and behavioral sciences to information and computer technology. But of all the textbooks on HCI technology and applications, none has adequately addressed HCI's multidisciplinary foundationsuntil now.

The Craft of Information Visualization: Readings and Reflections

by Benjamin B. Bederson, Ben Shneiderman. Since the beginning of the computer age, researchers from many disciplines have sought to facilitate people's use of computers and to provide ways for scientists to make sense of the immense quantities of data coming out of them. One gainful result of these efforts has been the field of information visualization, whose technology is increasingly applied in scientific research, digital libraries, data mining, financial data analysis, market studies, manufacturing production control, and data discovery.

Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things

by Donald A. Norman. By the author of The Design of Everyday Things, the first book to make the connection between our emotions and how we relate to ordinary objects-from juicers to Jaguars. Did you ever wonder why cheap wine tastes better in fancy glasses? Why sales of Macintosh computers soared when Apple introduced the colorful iMac? New research on emotion and cognition has shown that attractive things really do work better, a fact fans of Don Norman's classic The Design of Everyday Things cannot afford to ignore.

The Design of Everyday Things

by DONALD NORMAN. Anyone who designs anything to be used by humans--from physical objects to computer programs to conceptual tools--must read this book, and it is an equally tremendous read for anyone who has to use anything created by another human.

Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles

by Donald A. Norman. Mining the territory he explored in The Design of Everyday Things , Norman, in the first third of this entertaining and instructive volume, exposes clumsy design practices in water faucets, doors, stoves, kitchens and the U.S. Post Office's new stamp machine.

Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine

by Donald A. Norman. Technology can make us smart. Or stupid. It can liberate. Or enslave. Norman joins a select group of thinkers advocating a human-centered approach to technology. Inspired (or, more accurately, depressed) by Jerry Mander, he wrote this book to examine the differences between humans and machines, and to establish some ground rules for policy that protected the one and leveraged the other. Norman notes that when technology is not designed from a human-centered point of view, it produces accidents and more often than not the human is blamed.

The Invisible Computer

by Donald A. Norman. Currently, computer users must navigate a sea of guidebooks, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and wizards to perform a task such as searching the Web or creating a spreadsheet. While Donald Norman acknowledges that the personal computer allows for "flexibility and power..."

User-Centered Design

User-Centered Design can make any technology product or service far more successful by optimizing your customers' total experience from purchase and unpacking through support, upgrades, and beyond. Now, for the first time, there's a practical guide to introducing, deploying, and optimizing UCD. The field's leading experts present specific methods and techniques for building products that are simpler, more elegant, more powerful, and more profitable.

Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web

Editorial Reviews. From Book News, Inc. As a systems engineer at a nonprofit firm in Reston, Virginia, Passin became fascinated with graphical ways to represent formal logic statements in natural language and their relevance to the Web. He defines the semantic Web as an integrated concept of how computers, humans, and the Web can work together; and introduces systems for representing data and metadata (e.g. topic maps), and how they relate to Web searches. These concepts are applied in two cases studies. Distributed in the US and Canada by Independent Publishers Group.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Ontological Engineering

From the Author: We strongly recommend this book for anyone who wants to have the most updated state of the art on Ontological Engineering, covering also the practical aspects of selecting and applying methodologies, languages, and tools for building ontologies. This book is recommended for researchers, postgraduates, practitioners, libraries, institutions, industry, scientists, students.

American Prometheus.

If you are interested in the exciting period of history that was spawned in part by special relativity, have a look at Kai Bird's new book, American Prometheus. It is a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer that includes a cast of thousands, like Einstein, Bohr, Born, Dirac, Heisenberg et. al. Great reading - a reminder of how we arrived here in 2005.

Changing Minds

From Book News, Inc. Drawing on his innovative thinking on multiple intelligences (e.g, Frame of Mind) and his own experience, the Harvard psychologist presents a new framework for analyzing "levers" that trigger/thwart changes of mind exemplified by historic and current change agents in diverse fields.

Job Aids and Performance Support : Moving From Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere

Not all training requires a formal classroom or complex computer solutions. For some tasks, a job aid is the most efficient and accurate way to get the performance trainers want. This book is revised and updated to reflect both contemporary thought and technology. Written by training expert Allison Rossett, this revised classic text provides all the guidance and tools needed to select, design, develop, implement, and evaluate all sorts of job aids for a variety of workplace needs and environments. This second edition reflects the current technology and emergent thought on cognitive distribution, workflow engineering, and knowledge and learning content management.

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design

 

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

 

Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance

 

Mobile Interaction Design

 

Deming and Goldratt

 

Enterprise Service Oriented Architectures

 

The Zope Book

 

eLearning and Digital Publishing

 

Beyond E-Learning

 

Managing Expectations

 

Ontological Engineering

 

Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web