#68/111: Universal Principles of Design

What is it about?

If you want to immerse yourself in design, this is the ideal starting point. William Lidwell, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler show you over 100 different principles of design, including the Golden Ratio, prototyping, the mental model and framing.

What can I learn?

Gestalt theory of perception: The theory includes some interesting observations. One is the ground-object-relationship. You probably know the vase which also looks like two faces. This is an application of this principle. Would you make the vase look more like a actual object, e.g. coloring it, it would become the object and the white space the ground. It is a pretty big topic, so if you want to learn more about the theory there is nice short website about it.

Fitts’ Law: This law applies is peculiar important in usability. It states that the time which takes to reach a element (e.g. a button) depends on the distance and size of it. That is, if you want to minimize the time for your user, you could make your site narrower or just increase the size of the buttons.

Face-Ism Ratio: The ratio is pretty exciting. Researchers found that the ratio of the height of all visible body parts to the height of the head determines how the person looks. If the ratio is high, you look more intelligent, dominant and competent. If you start to decrease the ratio you will look more sensual and attractive.

Conclusion

Universal Principles of Design is a pretty nice book. The layout is great. There is explanatory text on the left and examples and illustrations on the right. That is, each principle is explained on one page. And there are lots of it of various topics. If you are interested in design, you should consider reading this book.

#67/111: Designing the Obvious

What is it about?

What makes a product more usable? Robert Hoekman, jr. shows you how to increase the usability of your web & mobile application and why hover divs aren’t better than pop ups.

What can I learn?

Less is more: I just want to show you this post of milof:

Be forgiving: You often got a pop up asking if you want really delete this message. However, a better way is to allow your user to redo this action. Implement a undo feature into your application. This will maintain the user’s work flow. If you can’t do this because there is a required steps, like entering a valid email address, help your user to do it properly, e.g. use inline validation and some nice Javascript.

Don’t be a jerk: This is probably the conclusion of this book. Your users shouldn’t have to learn how to use your product. The more things your user can do intuitively, the better it is. If they have to learn new things make it easier. Produce videos or screen casts or even some screen shots but don’t just give them 200 pages of plain text.

Conclusion

Designing the Obvious is like Don’t Make Me Think 2.0. Robert Hoekman, jr. also shows how real products could be improved and got a similar causal style. There are some great ideas for better usability. I especially liked the undo function for web applications. Great book, read it for yourself! Recommendation.

#66/111: Advanced Google AdWords

What is it about?

This year online advertising expenses overtook traditional marketing expenses. A lot of this money is invested into Search Engine Marketing. Brad Geddes explains how to market your product/service with Google AdWords.

What can I learn?

Be user-friendly: This mantra applies to SEO as well to Google AdWords. Write relevant ads and landing pages. If someone searches for buy ipod nano, you should display an ad about buying an iPod nano, not about buying an iPod or buying a MP3-Player. Why should you do this? Firstly, it increases your conversion rate because people actually find what they are looking. Secondly, you position gets better if your maximum CPC remains constant.

Use thank you pages: After subscribing to a newsletter or buying a item, you often get these thank you pages. Don’t miss this opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customer. You can provide white papers, offer them subscription to special deals or recommend other products.

Test everything: Everything. Test your headlines, your ad copy, your landing page and different keywords. Google AdWords offers you tools for testing your ads. So how do you test? A simple method is to write three headlines and three ad copies and combine each with another. Therefore, you got nine different ads. If you got enough conversions on the ads. Go with the winner and look for an other keyword to optimize.

Conclusion

Advanced Google AdWords is such a great book. It covers nearly everything you want to know about Google AdWords and SEM. There is so much to learn about in only about 500 pages. There are even plans for starting and running your AdWords campaign. Great book. If you want to learn about Google Adwords, buy this book!

#65/111: Writing White Papers

What is it about?

How to write a white paper? Michael A. Stelzner, who has written over 130 white papers, explains his procedure of writing a white paper from interviewing experts to offering the solution.

What can I learn?

Interview experts: If you aren’t an expert on a topic you could become one or you could interview some. Firstly, you should identify the experts. Write them an email with the most important information (topic, estimate amount of time and questions) and ask them if they could answer your questions.

State the problem in depth: If you are writing a white paper, you should focus on the problem. If you are writing a 6-12 page white paper, circa 2-3 pages should be on the problem. Some people don’t exactly know what the problem is. Let’s take IPv6 as an example. The biggest problem at the moment with IPv4 is its limited amount of IP addresses. You could write about the implications and how IPv6 solves them. Moreover, you could write about additional features of IPv6.

Offer generic solutions first: If you go to the solution, you shouldn’t try to sell your service/product yet. Firstly, offer a generic solution which everybody could implement on their own. This will maintain your credibility. After that you can talk about your specific solution. Tell your readers how it is different and superior to the generic one.

Conclusion

Writing White Papers is a nice book which shows you the basics of writing white papers. Some chapters are disappointing because they are very short. However, if you are a writer and want to go into writing white papers, this could be a valuable asset.