New year, new books! Full disclosure: we skipped a December blog post. Consider these late Christmas presents. This month the focus is on areas such as: UX, digital business models, design thinking, marketing and decision making. The titles listed below are only a selection of the new additions. Click here to see a full list of new arrivals from the past few months. If you want to borrow any of the books listed or recommend a book for the library then please get in touch.
Expect more new books before we say goodbye to January and even some exciting news in the not too distant future.
UX strategy : how to devise innovative digital products that people want / Jaime Levy.
Shelf Location: 004.5 LEV
This hands-on guide to user experience (UX) strategy introduces lightweight strategy tools and techniques to help you craft innovative multi-device products that people want to use.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, UX/UI designer, product manager, or part of an intrapreneurial team, this book teaches simple-to-advanced strategies that you can use in your work right away. Along with business cases, historical context, and real-world examples throughout, you’ll also gain different perspectives on the subject through interviews with top strategists. [Publisher text]
User-centered design / by Travis Lowdermilk.
Shelf Location: 004.5 LOW
How do you design engaging applications that people love to use? This book demonstrates several ways to include valuable input from potential clients and customers throughout the process. With practical guidelines and insights from his own experience, author Travis Lowdermilk shows you how usability and user-centered design will dramatically change the way people interact with your application. [Publisher text]
Shelf Location: 658.011.4 CHR
How do companies know how to grow? How can they create products that they are sure customers want to buy? Can innovation be more than a game of hit and miss? Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has the answer. A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights.
After years of research, Christensen has come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they "hire" them to do a job. [Publisher text]
Shelf Location: 658.012.22 LIB
Digital transformation is affecting every business sector, and as investor capital, top talent, and customers shift toward network-centric organizations, the performance gap between early and late adopters is widening. So the question isn't whether your organization needs to change, but when and how much. The Network Imperative is a call to action for managers and executives to embrace network-based business models. [Publisher text]
Designing your life : build a life that works for you / Bill Burnett, Dave Evans.
Shelf Location: 658.310.84 BUR
Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home–at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve.
In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. [Publisher text]
Marketing : concepts and strategies / Sally Dibb, Lyndon Simkin, William M. Pride, O.C. Ferrell
Shelf Location: 658.8 DIB
The seventh edition of Marketing: Concepts and Strategies has been totally revised to reflect the current core themes of Marketing in terms of academic content, but also – given the authors’ wide-ranging consultancy and research experience outside of the lecture theatre – from a practitioner’s perspective. In particular, the world for marketers has gone digital, consumers communicate readily with each other via social media; Marketing has become more aligned to ethical, responsible and sustainability issues; and Marketing as an academic discipline has become more critical and reflective - all of which are developments under-pinning this new edition. [Publisher text]
Algorithms to live by : the computer science of human decisions / Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths.
Shelf Location: 658.012.123 CHR
In a dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, acclaimed author Brian Christian and cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths show how the algorithms used by computers can also untangle very human questions. They explain how to have better hunches and when to leave things to chance, how to deal with overwhelming choices and how best to connect with others. From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living. [Publisher text]
Shelf Location: 658 MAN
In Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams, Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty answer that persistent question with a simple observation: You first must make programmers and software teams manageable. That is, you need to begin by understanding your people—how to hire them, motivate them, and lead them to develop and deliver great products. Drawing on their combined seventy years of software development and management experience, and highlighting the insights and wisdom of other successful managers, Mantle and Lichty provide the guidance you need to manage people and teams in order to deliver software successfully. [Publisher text]
