Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning

by Dan M. Brown

Book Overview

Successful web design teams depend on clear communication between developers and their clients--and among members of the development team. Wireframes, site maps, flow charts, and other design diagrams... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321392353
• ISBN13: 9780321392350
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Peachpit Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.6" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

What a relief

As soon as I picked up this book, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I've been working with wireframes for many years, and creating them for a couple of years, but it's my experience that everyone does them differently, and so I gratefully welcome an overview of the basics. I almost don't dare to write this next thing, so unbelieving am I at my good luck, but here are all the documents he covers, filling in holes in my knowledge base: 1. Personas 2. Usability test plans 3. Usability reports 4. Competitive analysis 5. Concept models 6. Content inventories 7. Site maps 8. Flow charts 9. Wireframes 10. Screen designs As he says in his preface, it's a how-to book. It's a cookbook. It's for people who make the docs, people who use the docs, and people who review the docs. I'm really excited. Methodology is great, but what a joy it is to just get some basic templates!

Practical and Useful

I found Dan's book just as I was beginning a new job as an information architect. Although I've done this work for a number of years, I found that he had some great tips on just about everything--from constructing a wireframe (how much detail, what to include, etc.) to the most strategic ways to do a wireframe walkthrough with a team. I appreciate Dan's common-sense, real-world approach.

The meta-web development communication book

Dan Brown did it. I never imagined someone would pull it off, but he came up with a meta-web development communication book, a book about the process of putting together user needs, strategy and web design documents. In these three categories, he covers the ten web site communication deliverables he considers to be of most value, taking the reader through a structure that will help in the process of conception, construction, presentation to others and context. I found the concept of Personas he introduced very interesting (and innovative in the web development space) and later picked up a book that specialized on the topic ("The User Is Always Right" by Steve Mulder and Ziv Yaar) to learn more about it. In terms of the rest of the concepts he introduced, if you are a seasoned web producer/development specialist, you may not find most of them to be new, but seeing the whole package in front of you will be useful and refresh items you know to be of importance. If you are becoming acquainted with this area, the book will become a permanent reference you will want to take with you at all times along with "Web Project Management: Delivering Successful Commercial Web Sites" by Ashley Friedlein.

Practical, comprehensive advice for creating and presenting documentation

If you're a nerd like me, then you feel giddy when someone publishes a cool nerdbook. I have stayed up late reading this book and and filled the margins with notes and stars. Brown gives simple, applicable advice about creating and presenting Web deliverables. I am impressed with his comprehensive coverage of the entire life of each deliverable and with how he shapes content into the book's practical structure. Brown writes clearly and concisely, and he crafts his content with solid writing patterns that make the book easy to understand and easy to use. He's as thoughtful about the use of the book as he is about the use of his Web documentation. Brown groups the deliverables into user needs documents, strategy documents, and design documents. Each deliverable is its own independent chapter. Each chapter covers creating the deliverable, presenting it, how to use it in a project, and how it fits with other documents. He prioritizes the deliverable's content so you know which information is most essential. For each deliverable, Brown writes about the challenges one will face when creating the document and presenting it. For example, he writes about how to structure meetings to prepare for and solve common meeting challenges. This book has helped me because I'm relatively new to Web documentation, but I'm sure veterans will find it useful, too. I highly recommended it.

Keep the "White Board Book" Alongside Your Polar Bear Book

Dan Brown's first offering is a practical guide for Information Architects (IA) and other usability and user experience professionals in the web/software design and human factors engineering industries. Because IA is an emerging field, Dan draws from his vast experience to describe 10 typical deliverables that help facilitate the design of useful products. You may already be familiar with these types of documents, but Dan inspires creativity by showing examples of each type of deliverable. In addition, he provides a focus for each section by explaining the purpose of the deliverable, its intended audience, level of effort to produce the deliverable, context (when should it be produced in the development process?), and format (what might it look like?). I won't outline each type of deliverable here because you can simply view the table of contents, but I will say this...After owning the book for less than a week, it sits right beside me at work. A few days after receiving the book, I was asked to create a content inventory of a particular web site. The practicality of the book helps me focus on what information I should be communicating to my intended audience and the examples spark ideas to make my work product better. This isn't a book to tell you how to do your job, but it is a book to help you effectively communicate with a diverse group of stakeholders so that the resulting product fulfills its requirements and results in a high ROI.