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Rating: 
Summary: Isaac Epp
Review: Actual purpose and persuasiveness in design is often completely neglected, this is a must read for anyone doing digital design. The book is worth it's weight in gold for Chapter 6's "The Design of Everyday Pages", It has excellent design notes... really top notch.
Rating:
Summary: Isaac Epp
Review: Actual purpose and persuasiveness in design is often completely neglected, this is a must read for anyone doing digital design. The book is worth it's weight in gold for Chapter 6's "The Design of Everyday Pages", It has excellent design notes... really top notch.
Rating:
Summary: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Good Book!
Review: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Experience the heart of the "hippie era"Coming straight out of Rolling Stone magazine, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas brings the fear and corruption of an age right into your own home. Pieced together by the author himself as a true account of his past experiences, this book stacks up to be the truest account of life with drugs in the hippie era.
The story begins with Dr. Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, flying down a Nevada freeway with a car full of mass quantities of alcohol and illegal narcotics, fighting of dangerous bats attacking their stolen convertible. As Dr. Duke, the character representing Hunter S. Thompson puts it,
"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers....Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls"
-from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Equipped with their arsenal of drugs, the characters find themselves pitted against society itself in their attempt to cover a magazine story for the Mint 300 desert race. In a desperate struggle to survive in the city, Dr. Duke and his attorney use credit card fraudulence, fake ideas, and an endless supply of narcotics to cover the race, and later, quite ironically, to cover the story of a police convention against drugs. Throughout these endeavors, various life threatening experiences are encountered, mostly resulting from the mind bending dangers of the drugs themselves. As the story comes to a close, both the Dr. and his attorney flee the city, cursing the evils of society.
This novel should immediately attract any survivors of the so called "hippie era along with any ordinary individual looking for a crude, but comical and entertaining view into the mind of a drug user.
When asked to comment on the morals of the book and even on his own past lifestyle, Thomson replies: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
Despite such criticism, the book manager to send an effective message about the dangers of drugs as well as the corruption of society in the 1960's and 70's. The story actually serves as a political satire portraying Thompson's views of society's flaws and the need for reform. It is stated plain and simple throughout the novel that the "reality of society" is just as twisted as the "reality a society on drugs". The character's contempt for authority, along with the ignorance of the police force at the drug convention, effectively demonstrates the lack of power the authorities truly hold over society.
Overall, the book provides a strong and in depth analysis to the 60's and 70's and even greater entertainment, as the main characters stumble about in a drug-caused stupor. I would highly recommend this book to the male youth, although it may be enjoyed by any age or gender searching for a book that will make them laugh. For the more serious audience, this book provides a first hand analysis of an age, from a man who lived in a society where drugs were commonplace in everyday life.
Rating: 
Summary: How to prove through your site that you deserve trust
Review: It is reasonable to say that the point of web design that was most underappreciated for the longest time dealt with assumptions about surfer attitudes. While the common chant was that the Internet was the new economy that relied on brand identity and not profits, it turned out that the chanters were right that it was new, but wrong as to the reason. People did move to the web in large numbers, but were far more reluctant to purchase than anyone anticipated. Fancy graphics, marketing hype and free stuff were not enough to convince many people to buy as old marketing tactics proved largely ineffective.
The answer turned out to be very simple. Create a site that is well organized and make sure that the potential customer can back out of a sale at any time, even after it is consummated. The latter is your decision and requires no significant amount of web expertise to execute. Developing a site that is persuasive in appearance and organization is hard, and this book will show you how to do it. Using sites that are commercially successful, most often Amazon.com, the author shows you the simple, yet effective ways to convince a viewer that you are a site that can be trusted.
The principles that are emphasized in the book are not hard to learn and require no training in graphic design to understand. In fact, most are organizational rather than structural. Advice such as always informing a potential customer that they can opt out of a purchase goes a long way towards convincing them that you are a site to do business with. Showing them where they are on the site also helps increase the level of comfort, even among veteran web shoppers.
Online purchases continue to rise and are apparently the one bright spot in what is considered a poor Christmas 2002 shopping season. Therefore, there is money to be made via an online presence and only a fool would ignore this market. However, the difference between being there and exploiting that avenue is a large one and the information in this book will increase your chances of being profitable.
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Summary: Easy to read introduction to designing for ecommerce
Review: What a pleasure to find a book on this subject that's easy to read. Andrew Chak puts forward each principle clearly, with illustrations, then at the end pulls it all together in a demonstration of how it works in the context of one example. He divides users of ecommerce sites into browsers, evaluators, transactors and customers, and shows you how to satisfy each one. He links his ideas to persuasion techniques put forward by Robert Cialdini in "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion". He explains that you can use six key elements of influence to change the behaviour of web site visitors:
- scarcity
- commitment and consistency
- reciprocity
- social proof
- authority
- liking. While this book doesn't go into any great depth or subtlety, it is an excellent introduction to designing for commercial web sites. It requuires no background as an interface designer, usability expert, graphic designer, marketer or programmer, but would be helpful for all of these disciplines.
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Summary: A wonderful primer for the designer starting in e-commerce
Review: What a wonderfully educating book with tons of ideas on persuading site visitors to take action and click! Andrew Chak has a winner with this "first of it's kind book." While the bookshelves are filled with information and visual design books, Submit Now is the first to present best practices, tips & tricks on creating an e-commerce site which motivates browsers, evaluators, transactors and current customers to act on your site. The tone is very much like Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think," with little chunks of humor thrown in for good measure. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to move their website design skills into the e-commerce domain.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful primer for the designer starting in e-commerce
Review: What a wonderfully educating book with tons of ideas on persuading site visitors to take action and click! Andrew Chak has a winner with this "first of it's kind book." While the bookshelves are filled with information and visual design books, Submit Now is the first to present best practices, tips & tricks on creating an e-commerce site which motivates browsers, evaluators, transactors and current customers to act on your site. The tone is very much like Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think," with little chunks of humor thrown in for good measure. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to move their website design skills into the e-commerce domain.
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