About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design by the book

Originally written in 1995, About Face 3 is the 2007, third edition of this book by authors, Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, and David Cronin.   For decades these 3 have thought, worked, and advocated ”knowing what the user wants” as they advocate interaction design form, function, content, and behavior concepts.

Interaction design, is many times limited to hardware and software application and interface design; look to Apple as a recent beacon for intuitive interaction design.

My research on buyer and community persona for organization strategy and development blog series led discovery of other design-thinking strategies pioneers:

• David Meerman Scott for web site marketing and design;
• Adele Revella for organization marketing and sales, and
• Lene Nielsen for user experience and buyer persona development.

However, there were a set of other perspectives, generally thought of from the software, developer, hardware side of the fence.  Most notable of these proponents was Alan Cooper et al.  Most cited as the radical departure from designers designing for themselves, coders coding for themselves, and too few designing or coding for the end-user, was this original release of About Face and goal-oriented design.

This might be the best book I’ve read in years and, along with the other listed above, have forced a radical transformation on most of my organization design concepts.  So far, heavily highlighted, underlined, and marked-up, this book offers tactical and strategic options for anyone who designs anything:  from training, to communication, to projects, to change management, to strategic plans.

Here, also, a visual timeline of other community, social media, persona design influences.

Read More Books

See a more current set of books on my reading list heavy rotation page.

About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design by the book is a post from: Toby Elwin Copyright ©2013 TobyElwin.com.

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