Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning 2nd Edition

Communicating Design Second Edition by Dan M. Brown is a delightful read--one especially suited for those taking Web programming courses or wanting to learn the inside strategies on Web site design/programming preparation.The book starts off by covering the fundamentals of wireframes, personas, site maps, concept models, and flowcharts. These components of the book are not only technical in a how-to format, but also practical in a business sense. In fact, Dan Brown makes a point of stressing how to negotiate these "deliverables" in business meetings, in essence preparing the reader for a career in design strategies.The second part of the book not only emphasizes how to format the products (i.e., wireframes, personas, etc) into professional deliverables through providing structure for the reports, but also delves into competitive reviews, usability plans, and usability reports. Of most interest to me was the competitive review, as it helped establish the framework (including site map) of a site I'm about to build. One easily overlooked shortcoming of the book is that it doesn't spend the time on research strategies, such as focus groups and interviews that the book A Project Guide To UX Design by Russ Unger does. However, Communicating Design exceeds many other books in its elaboration on the personas, wireframes, site maps, flow carts, etc.--the actual deliverables.Although the book doesn't delve into how to create the deliverables in different software programs (it only mentions a few of the usable programs like Illustrator and Microsoft Visio, for instance), one can go to Lynda.com for a month-to-month membership and access tutorials on these components. Communicating Design shows, instead, how to create the different deliverables, how to conduct oneself in business presentations of the deliverables, and how to format them into impressive reports.It is also important to note that Dan Brown's second edition felt more cumbersome at first, due to its wide size, but after spending time with the interior of the book, the read was quite pleasant. The pages were glossed with lots of white space and friendly diagrams.Dan Brown's book proved essential in helping me prepare for the initial design set-up of a Website, and I would argue that the steps he provides in his book are almost indispensable to making an excellent site. A good companion to this book for web developers, particularly, might be Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, which requires some background knowledge in Javascript and provides Search Engine (i.e., Google) Optimization strategies--a fundamental consideration when starting a site.

Lots to take in. I liked that they stressed that this is more a process for discovering/understanding your content than a goal of creating charts and graphs and Excel files... the goal isnt to make all this documentation, it's to do what works for you in order to HELP you make better decisions, so you can pick and choose which strategies work for you. That's a really valuable lesson to learn. Haven't even finished the book yet but really enjoying it.

OK, I'm biased, but I love this book. Dan did such a great job creating a book that you actually WANT to come back to time and again. If you're like me, you probably have lots of books on your shelf, and they look nice up there, but you may not take them down and actually use them very much. This book might not look as nice on your shelf, because you'll use it so much that it will get beat up. Which is a good thing.

This was a required reading for a class I took. The author really thinks they are funny and it distracted from the context he was trying to convey. The text is riddled with worthless text that totally made me lose interest in the book. If you are looking for a book to help you with web design this is not a book for you. It will help you conduct a project and how to manage a meeting...If you can decipher through the scatter brained thoughts.

This book was a great resource in giving best practices of how to display complicated UX ideas and design. The cherry on top was that each design section also comes with suggestions on how to run a client through a meeting using the tools referenced.

I really enjoyed this book and the way it walked through the process. I have overseen the building of several sites and always keep in mind the ideas I learned in this book.

I purchased this book because I needed it for school. I haven't had any trouble reading it and there are a lot of good and helpful ideas within.

This was terrible. It has a lot of useful information, but the way it's presented is drawn-out and boring. I couldn't stay focused for more than a minute. It's super dry, so make sure you have a Gatorade. After reading this you're going to be weak from dehydration and boredom. Did I learn anything? Sadly, no.