Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Whether you're designing consumer electronics, medical devices, enterprise Web apps, or new ways to check out at the supermarket, today's digitally-enabled products and services provide both great opportunities to deliver compelling user experiences and great risks of driving your customers crazy with complicated, confusing technology.

Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword
• 8 Example Interview
• 9 Other Sources of Information and Inspiration
• 10 Making Sense of Your Data: Modeling
• 11 Personas
• 12 Defining Requirements
• 13 Putting It All Together: The User and Domain Analysis
• 14 Framework Definition: Visualizing Solutions
• 15 Principles and Patterns for Framework Design
• 16 Designing the Form Factor and Interaction Framework
• 17 Principles and Patterns in Design Language
• Introduction
• 18 Developing the Design Language
• 19 Communicating the Framework and Design Language
• 20 Detailed Design: Making Your Ideas Real
• 21 Detailed Design Principles and Patterns
• 22 Detailed Design Process and Practices
• 23 Evaluating Your Design
• 24 Communicating Detailed Design
• 25 Supporting Implementation and Launch
• 26 Improving Design Capabilities in Individuals and Organizations
• Index
• 1 Goal-Directed Product and Service Design
• 2 Assembling the Team
• 3 Project Planning
• 4 Research Fundamentals
• 5 Understanding the Business
• 6 Planning User Research
• 7 Understanding Potential Users and Customers

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Kim Goodwin is VP Design and General Manager at Cooper, where she leads an integrated practice of interaction, visual, and industrial designers, and also directs the development of the acclaimed Cooper U design curriculum. Kim knows the design world from multiple angles; she started her career as an in-house and freelance designer and spent several years as an in-house creative director before joining Cooper 11 years ago. Kim has led projects involving a tremendous range of design problems, including Web sites, complex analytical and enterprise applications, phones, medical devices, services, and even organizations. Her clients and employers have included everything from one-man startups to the world's largest companies, as well as universities and government agencies. This range of experience and a passion for teaching have led to Kim's popularity as an author and as a speaker at conferences and companies around the world.